ITIL - itSMF International

ITIL one year on FEATURE
that need to be considered. This includes a
fundamental attitude shift of how the library is
approached. With previous versions you simply
went to the relevant chapter of the topic you
were interested in. Now that topic is likely to be
liberally spread around the lifecycle stages which
is logical but also frustrating for some people
who find it challenging when they cannot pigeon
hole a process or activity. This is not surprising
as the Foundation level exams (both old and
new) are essentially an exercise in putting
everything in its rightful place: ‘Which process is
responsible for the following task What is the
correct order of the incident stages’
A common question from delegates attending
both Foundation and Managers bridging courses
is ‘Where does that (process/activity/task) live
in the lifecycle’ It is important that people do
not get too hung up about what lives where
as the reality is that processes will feature
throughout the lifecycle stages in several
different manifestations. The application of
a pragmatic and common sense approach to
implementing the lifecycle will greatly assist in
getting the right elements of each process
into the appropriate places.
Service Strategy contains virtually all new
material and is the cause of much diverse
debate. It has been variously described as a
load of mumbo jumbo theory through to an
insightful and useful tool for helping to integrate
the business and IT. It also introduces for the
first time in the classroom a lot of material that
a large number of people have no perceived
direct input to or personal association with.
Many people sitting on a training course will
have a view that they have no influence or
control over the strategy of either the business
or IT and therefore they will never really engage
in the strategy either in the workplace or the
classroom. Strategy does however take on
more relevance for these individuals when they
realise that the other stages of the lifecycle are
all about the execution of that strategy. Another
defining point is that Service Strategy asks the
question ‘Why do we want to do something’
before considering the question ‘How do we do
it’ A long and sorry trail of projects or process
implementations have failed to meet their goals
by the simple failure to follow the sequence of
how those two questions are asked. The Service
Strategy book is likely to be a ‘slow burn’ where
the value and relevance of it will take a little
while to embed itself into the ITIL fraternity.
Although the theme of this piece is ITIL V3
one year on, the vast majority of ITIL V3 training
has still to be released into the market. When
that happens we will get a clearer view of how
organisations position themselves with regard
to training their staff. There has been evidence
of organisations who are currently in the early
days of ITIL adoption, agonising over whether
they should adopt Version 2 or 3. In reality
it is virtually a non-issue. Any organisation
taking on ITIL right now would begin with the
fundamentals, all of which are incorporated in
both versions. It should be viewed as a pick
and mix selection of working with the next
appropriate process irrespective of which version
it originates from. A key point that seems to
have been overlooked is that most of the ‘new’
processes of ITIL V3 were around previously,
they simply were not in the ‘core set’ of Service
Support and Service Delivery which many people
view as the sum of ITIL, overlooking publications
such as Application Management or ICT.
A key element of implementation is training
staff to be able to adapt to the new processes.
It is in this area that organisations will be
presented with an array of options compared
to earlier training programmes. It is going to
be interesting to see which routes individuals
take on their journey to the ITIL expert level.
No doubt different routes will be adopted by
both individuals and organisations based on
their specific plans and objectives. Once they
have arrived at the base camp by successfully
completing the Foundation course, the view up
the mountain shows the summit to be somewhat
higher than it used to be. There are also more
paths which can be followed and the trick will
be working out which path best fits to an
individual’s aspirations and capabilities. For
some people, one or two more steps into a
Lifecycle or Capability course may be sufficient,
while others will doggedly march on up to the
summit, gaining credits along the way. Maybe
in another year’s time we will start to see how
those paths are both defined and used. When
that happens we will get a better understanding
of just how much thing really have changed.”
The industry think-tank.
The Service Futures Group
In January 2008, the Service Futures Group, the
joint venture between The Service Desk Institute
and itSMF UK, published a report looking at ITIL
V3 six months into its life. Although the story has
moved on from that point, it is worth another look
at the report because it highlights and ➤
july 2008 SERVICETALK 17