Understanding what ITIL is not

With the rise of anything good – and the inevitable industry hype that accompanies it – there can be potential dangers. Understanding ITIL means taking a realistic look at what it is and what it offers, and also being clear on what it’s not.

Enterprise Management Associates is seeing increasing attention given to ITIL, the IT Infrastructure Library, to help IT organizations better set service-level agreements and more efficiently meet those SLAs.

As a resource, ITIL is a pure positive. It offers seven libraries of documents to help plan and assist in service management, and also supports training and certification. Although it originated in the late 1980s from the British government as a recommended framework for IT service providers in the U.K., it has become a de facto standard globally, with a rapid rise of interest in the U.S.

However, with the rise of anything good – and the inevitable industry hype that accompanies it – there can also be some potential dangers. Understanding ITIL means taking a realistic look at what it is and what it offers, and also being clear on what it’s not.

The good news is that ITIL’s library of recommendations is scrupulously written for consistent and taxonomic accuracy. ITIL also recognizes the need to define itself and its limitations.

ITIL has kept itself relevant and open to evolution by wisely making the distinction between “underpinning” processes and dictating them. However, EMA is already seeing confusion among vendors and IT shops around this difference – with all kinds of consulting services and software products that claim to be “ITIL-compliant,” but leaving it up to buyers to figure out what such claims do and don’t represent.

In terms of consulting and planning, ITIL guidelines are indeed very useful, and a consulting practice could help you to evolve toward more effective service management by leveraging ITIL process recommendations.

But you, and your consulting service providers, are going to miss the boat if you think that ITIL, or anything like it, can provide a magic formula for success all on its own. If you view IT evolution in terms of three “drivers,” as EMA does – organization, process and technology – then ITIL focuses on only one: process. It treats organizational dynamics and technology issues indirectly for the most part.

The relationship between “technology” and “process” is a complex one, and ITIL is careful to note points of connection without becoming truly involved in technology or architectural issues.

Partly because of this deliberate lack of technology advocacy, software providers – by claiming they’re ITIL-compliant – may mean any number of things. Most often what they mean is someone in their company has spent some time looking at how their products’ features and functions can support ITIL process requirements. In some cases it also means they’ve invested in something called a “Configuration Data Base” – the ITIL Config DB being a central point of context for configuration, topology and business logic in support of service support and much of service delivery. However, it should be noted that the ITIL Config DB is also something of a unique category, one that ITIL treats in terms of objectives to enable process rather than as anything truly architectural. And in fact it seems to be lost on many in the industry that this Config DB is and must be separated from ITIL processes by another layer – one of management applications with the proper analytics and visualization to truly make ITIL process guidelines a success, rather than a bureaucratic nightmare.

It’s certainly worthwhile to go into the ITIL libraries as a starting point for assessing what process categories need to be addressed for a successful approach to service management and, perhaps even more importantly, how those categories interrelate. But ITIL should be viewed as a great departure point, not an endgame. It will be most effective in the hands of enlightened leadership willing to think creatively about their own organizations, cultures and business needs, and also willing to be proactive and innovative in their choice of technology. The winning strategy is one that looks with an open mind at organization/culture, process and technology – and is opportunistic in building from strengths across all three.