Adopting best practice frameworks such as ITIL is now more common than not in the United States, but American technology leaders say they still need to master their IT service delivery skills.

Nearly 60% of 100 U.S. CIOs polled confirmed that they are working with ITIL, but less than 10% of that number said they considered themselves "true practitioners." Outside the United States, 66% of 270 organizations have adopted the best practice framework that originated in the United Kingdom, and 17% of those organizations referred to themselves as ITIL practitioners. 

The survey conducted by IT services provider Dimension Data queried 370 CIOs from 14 countries across five continents. Eighty-five percent of American CIOs said ITIL and other IT service management best practices had the actual or potential ability to help optimize existing best practices. Forty percent of U.S. respondents said ITIL enables innovation by offering more efficient approaches to dealing with day-to-day tasks, and 25% appreciated ITIL’s ability to provide common technology for business and IT departments.

On the flip side, 31% of American ITIL users said best practice frameworks could use improvement by way of more actionable direction, and one-quarter said best practices such as ITIL could be more flexible. Just 5% said adopting ITIL stifled innovation “by being too prescriptive," according to Dimension Data.

Among the factors impeding the success of ITIL and IT service management adoption in some American and global IT companies are costs associated with training, certification and implementation, and a lack of internal resources to evaluate implementation readiness, the survey found.

And while a majority of U.S. organizations polled said they are working with ITIL, American companies also put other best practice frameworks to use. For instance, 46% reported using Six Sigma, 38% tap Microsoft Operation Framework, about one-third use ISO standards and 30% engaged with Total Quality Management.