CHICAGO - Two years into his IT service management implementation at Nationwide Insurance, Doug LeMaster came across a prop skeleton with a sign around its neck declaring, "ITIL is dead!" in the area occupied by the company's network group.

The message - referring to the practices of the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL ) - mocked the efforts LeMaster, director of IT program management, began in 2002 to move some 5,000 IT professionals toward consistent management processes that would ultimately enable the Columbus, Ohio, insurance provider to significantly increase IT service availability. But the image stays with him, as a reminder of how difficult IT organizational change can be if managers don't balance efforts proportionally across people, process and technology.

"The biggest pitfall is not recognizing the people element. You have to keep that triangle balanced. It's easy for the pendulum to swing too heavily on the process and technology sides and overlook the people component," LeMaster says.

Last week LeMaster and numerous other IT managers told their best practices and service management stories to some 2,000 attendees at the fifth annual IT Service Management Forum (ITSMF) USA conference in Chicago. The show featured presentations by companies such as Allstate Insurance, Bank of America, Ernst & Young, General Motors, Liberty Mutual Insurance, State Farm Insurance and U.S. Bank, to name a few. Such household names are a testament to the growing interest in IT best practices among U.S. companies.

The ITSMF USA has doubled its membership from about 1,600 in 2004 to more than 3,000 today, and the organization's local interest groups have grown from 20 sprinkled across the country last year to 31 in 2005. Based on data collected from market research firms, ITSMF officials project that the number of companies adopting best practices in the U.S. could continue to grow from about 30% this year to 75% by 2007.

The ITSMF provides resources for companies to learn more about best practices frameworks such as the ITIL, Control Objectives for Information and Related Technology, the Capability Maturity Model and Six Sigma, all of which provide guidelines on how IT staff members should resolve a customer complaint, configure routers or track changes across a server farm, while also documenting the process, for instance.