We need ITIL more than ever, but it is stopping us from meeting the challenges which will decide whether we have a job in five years from now. James West explains why we must solve the ITIL paradox.
One of the key themes emerging from recent conversations with some of the brightest minds in ITSM (which will soon result in a series of articles tackling the industry’s hot topics. And I mean hot – not lukewarm) is the ITIL paradox.
We appear to have entered a contradictory juncture in ITIL’s life cycle: businesses need ITIL more than ever, but it is also the element which is stopping them from delivering the service the business demands.
Allow me to explain. Service desks in recent years have been forced to accept that break/fix IT support is no longer their primary purpose. The service desk of today must support a broader array of technologies, manage third party relationships with cloud and outsourcing providers, and deliver useful services, not outdated SLAs. Running in parallel to these changing demands, years of over-exposure caused by marketers, consultants and trainers setting unrealistic expectations about what it can offer, has seen ITIL experience a backlash. ITIL 2011 has been criticised for being bloated and out of step with the rapid pace of technology change (a two year rewriting process does inevitably date the material). The drop off in ITIL’s influence is alarming, the industry is not talking about it anymore. ITIL has committed the crime of appearing unsexy.
The problem, and the start of the paradox, is that ITIL 2011 offers strong guidance for many of the challenges outlined above. It looks at supplier management, and has an entire book explaining steps for making service desks into customer-first outfits. It tackles contract management, invaluable in the fragmented cloud-influenced software era, and the basic principles of managing assets and change which have been solidly defined since ITIL version 2 could help define BYOD policies.
In short, ITIL is still of great value to our industry. But it is also holding us back. One of the defining principles of ITIL is control – managing change is the bedrock of ITIL, and its becoming increasingly clear that IT departments must cede some of this control. The lifecycle of IT assets, which in ITIL is based on the idea that technologies are procured by the technology specialists, prepped and fed out to the business, has fundamentally changed because of BYOD. The business demands flexible, agile IT with less safety controls, and service desks are struggling to deliver because such principles contradict ITIL. We need ITIL, but ITIL is killing us. This is the ITIL paradox.
The perceived damage caused by ITIL is gaining credence, with commentators such as Aale Roos suggesting we must ‘unlearn ITIL’ to free our minds from the entrenched thinking the framework has built. While I understand the need for drastic action, I feel unlearning ITIL would not benefit the industry, because the common language and shortcuts it provides are essential for controlling key areas of IT support and management. James Finister tackled the issue on a recent ITSM Rest of the World podcast, stating the problem with ITIL is that too many of those practicing it think it’s just about process. I agree, ITIL is not inherently bad – it is in fact the opposite – but an over-reliance on its teachings, and ITSM tools that push service desks down a pre-defined route, have been damaging.
Let’s be clear about the importance of solving the ITIL paradox: the careers of IT support and service professionals depend on it. Failure to tackle our entrenched thinking about the delivery of technology service will result in the internal IT department becoming increasingly bypassed, as business users – for good or bad – adopt appealingly simple consumer technologies. It is not implausible that the internal IT department in future will be little more than a connector between consumer IT and the corporate network. This would mean a massive reduction in the IT departments power and influence – from guardians of technology to mere gatekeepers in a short space of time.
How do we solve the ITIL paradox? I don’t claim to have a definitive answer and would welcome suggestions and debate on this page and in the wider ITSM community. However it’s clear we must take a more realistic look at ITIL. It is vital that we maintain our interest in ITIL and revisit the latest books for advice on the challenges faced today. Most importantly however, we must re-assess the value and role of ITIL. We should continue to make use of the common language it provides, but remember a core principle of ITIL: it is just a reference guide. Businesses today need IT which listens to their needs and facilitates technology, not prescribes and restricts it. Taking ITIL too literally is the reason why this has been so difficult so far, so by liberating us from the prescriptive, tightly defined mindset which we have unfortunately created, we will be free to react and operate in the real world.
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Wow, ITIL Paradoxon this could be one of a missing words last time on my agenda;)
But let me put some additions to your words about the need of ITIL. Yes we need ITIL more and more because we want to do IT Service Management at all. ITIL is like a catalogue of offers so that companies are able to get some right directions of there special needs. I saw a lot of companies which don’t understand the importance of ITIL because most of them went on Bootcamps (ITIL Expert in some days!!!) to took another certificate on their table or just reading in a self study. This doesn’t work an will be still doesn’t work…. The understanding of ITIL what it is as basis for all other steps needs to be clear starting with the commitment of the Top Management. Looking at possible pitfalls and which are realy best practices building an own model whith reachable goals based on ITIL directions will be work. For example, a lot of companies working already under ITIL but they don’t know that they does:) ITIL isn’t difficult it would be difficult explained sometimes unfortunatelly more often…ITIL has a lot of possibilities besides the best practices and pointed to Critical Success Factors which needs to be more analyse on a deeper and different level. It’s also clear that the Business is the main player because this is the reason why we doing ITIL. In a common sence you need parnter like HR to bring ITIL on the right corner because there is a major part to develop the whole staff not only IT people for a common understanding. So you have to play together and built a basis for bringing up the right points. ITIL can help to push the improtant future needs like Gartner already researched e.g. BYOD, BigData, GreenIT etc..also it should be a light on GreentIT (Green Service Levels), Social Media and Knowledge Management. All these points are important to know how we can support the business of those requirements like this.You’ll find a good method in ITIL but be aware it tooks time. Compare other procedures with ITIL and you can see it tooks years why ITIL is a journey;)
Gosh, where to begin? First all of we need a big dose of honesty about what ITIL is, and about how most organisations (mis)use it. How ever much we tamper with the content ITIL will still just be a set of books and organisations will still fail to “get” ITSM. That is just how it is, and it isn’t an issue specific to the ITSM world – I’ve blogged in the past about the concept of cargo cults and the degree to which ITIL resembles one.
The truth remains that, despite what organizations tell you at conferences, most of them have only scratched the surface of ITIL and most IT departments I come across would be radically transformed for the better if they followed more of the advice that ITIL contains. Especially if they followed the advice that involves real cultural change.
For me the unlearning of ITIL has four elements:
1 Unlearning our misconceptions about what and why ITIL says the things it does
2 Recognizing that ITIL is not the last word on ITSM and that in some areas we would be better off going to sources of real expert advice. You wouldn’t get very far trying to pass an accountancy exam using ITIL as your only reference guide.
3. Going beyond the mechanistic “Do it because ITIL says you should do it” way of thinking to get to the point where you understand the principles behind ITIL and can apply them usefully to novel situations, such as the rise of BYOD
Hopefully those first three are uncontroversial.
The fourth is to recognize that there are elements of ITIL that might actually be wrong, or at least a very long way from being optimal or helpful in the real world.
It is this last type of unlearning that rightly or wrongly is exercising many of us at the moment. My concern is that often what is being suggested instead is no more helpful
By the way, I’m all for process as long as process knows its place in the scheme of things, but process without a proper purpose is waste.
If we accept the paradox, to me it helps us to move on as we then don’t need to either abandon ITIL nor take it all as gospel. To me its always been about using the best bits and keeping this simple, with the focus on people and roles and governance as stated above – it so isn’t just about process. There’s also great benefits that can be achieved.
However somehow the message got and still gets mangled and we’re left constantly on the back foot trying to clarify and justify what ITIL is and what benefit it delivers. We’ve probably failed to really identify the ROI and some clear messages on benefits – and to me we still need to do that. This has also let the (wrong) message get out about ITIL failures – or failed ITIL projects, most of which are due to lack of clarity on objectives and poor project management (neither of which are ITIL issues).
If we can get some good data we can then start to buld some strong and positive messages about the good bits – plus the bits to avoid and whats good in the alternatives. For now however I think step 1 is acceptance of the problem and the paradox is a good clear message around that.
There is no real paradox to ITIL. It is only that first, ITIL is marketed as being the definitive way of delivering something that alone and unadjusted, it simply cannot; and second, our acceptance of that hyperbole. This is no more paradoxical than the claim “This diet will make you thin”. The apparent paradox comes not from the proclamation, but from our misplaced faith in it. Remove from the article the conjecture that “We need ITIL more than ever” and the paradox evaporates and what we’re left with is the problem to solve.
It’s true we need ***something***, to help organise how we deal with the “new” challenges of BYOD, CloudSourcing, the backwards shift from Email to 1980′s-style bulletin boards like Twitter and so on. But that’s not special. We’ve always needed to deal with the New New Thing. But with only three updates to its core philosophy in twenty-five years, ITIL is never going to keep up with the New. The impediment here is that ITIL appears to be definitive – it is the god of IT services management, after all – so our religion causes us to expect that god to deal with anything business may throw up. But this world of the empowered user of social media, pocket computing and the cloud is a million miles away from the roots and authors of ITIL, still stuck in the anachronistic and elitist mindset of corporate, centralised IT, big company, big staff.
Hence the observed outcome of James West’s noted paradox – given ITIL’s underprovision against need, practicality took over. Companies began by “picking and choosing” from ITIL. Then as the world changed, they found there was ever less relevant material to pick – so lately, they are reduced to doing for themselves. They will continue to do that until something new comes along that encapsulates the present, the way that back at the turn of the century, the Service Desk encapsulated the fad for call centres. It seemed a good idea at the time but hey – nobody listens to the Spice Girls anymore. The world has moved on, and old ways of meeting old needs and fashions are unlikely to present new solutions.
I’m sure a more appropriate way of doing things will emerge eventually – such is our heritage and history – but in the meantime, I foresee more of this DIY IT(SM).
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him…
I’m not totally convinced that what ITIL contains is no longer relevant, but my over whelming message when providing QA feedback on v3 was that it no longer communicates with the target audiences. Right messages, basically, but wrong medium. And yes, the medium is the message.
I’ve never been happy with the pick and mix approach to ITIL unless the picking and mixing is being done by someone with genuine insight and understanding. Too often it is another way of saying “let’s leave out the difficult bits that will actually make a difference”
I want to focus on one of James’ comments in a particular because I think it highlights the need for the different modes of unlearning.
“One of the defining principles of ITIL is control ”
You know I don’t think it is. Speaking as an auditor – and if you want to hear me do that I’m speaking at a joint itSMF Ireland/ISACA event in Dublin on October 12th – I don’t think ITIL talks enough about control, but when it does it doesn’t do so with much insight. That is one reason why I prefer COBIT. But in ITIL’s defence I don’t think it says anywhere that the need for IT to be in control of IT trumps genuine changing business need – that seems to be a second hand interpretation of what ITIL says based on how others have interpreted it.
Judging by the contracts I’m asked to sign ITIL is alive and well but seen as a hygiene factor by senior IT management. Where DIY is burgeoning is in finding ways for IT to add visible value.
Sadly whilst the Spice Girls might be less popular there is no end of equally talented acts around and they are the ones that attract the public’s attention Give me Van the Man any day, whatever his flaws.
D
Agree Jim re Van the Man and also the dnagers of pick and mix. I do really think that the presentation is a big part of the problem. The best of the books for me has always been the pocket guide or guides…
One thing about the Spice Girls is that they fragmented into 5 bits, with varous levels of success. The most successful ‘career’ was that which focussed on just doing the essence of what the SGs were about – fashion, glam, etc – ie the Mrs Beckham. Maybe ITIL just needs to have a thinning down and re-focus to just be the framework and guidelines that it is and nothing more…
I think that’s an excellent point Barclay. I think it was Aidan who first highlighted for me that the service lifecycle, whilst valid, isn’t the most accessible model to use to structure the books
I wholeheartedly agree that ITIL is not the issue, but the way in which it is (mis)used. For decades industry veterans have voiced the ‘adopt, adapt, improve’ mantra, yet most people seem to miss that it’s just guidance.
I’ve personally seen countless organisations deploy pretty much the same processes and the same tools, yet deliver results that are poles apart. Those that use the guidance successfully tend to have something in common – tangible evidence of engagement with their business, customers and users – resulting in a thorough understanding of exactly what needs to be improved to make a visible and measurable difference to IT performance and value.
Far too many IT groups miss this vital step and devise their ITSM improvements in complete isolation e.g. building a Service Catalog and presenting it to the customer without ever asking for their input at the outset. If you apply the same logic to almost any profession it seems ludicrous e.g. would a builder/architect start improving a home without clarifying the expected outcome with the owners? Sure there are things we need to do in IT that the customers don’t need (or want) to know about, but all the best practice and standards in the world won’t dramatically increase the business perception of IT, unless they are applied to improve the things our customers care about most.
I like the way Ian Clayton puts it – Service Management needs to be walked out through the back door of IT, and walked in through the front door of the business. That way we can apply proven Service Management concepts to the things that matter most to our customers.
Like many other comments, I really don’t see an ITIL problem (no pun intended). I’ve seen great ITSM implementations, and failed disastrous implementations, and they both refer to the same ITIL body of work. So how can that be?
Well – I’ll give you a clue – it’s those damn meddling ‘people’ again, getting all human and being good or bad at what they do. Good project/implementors/leaders have success. Others, less so.
ITIL is a great set of processes, guidelines and advice which is used to a lesser or greater extend by IT organisations worldwide. Generally, it works as long as people take sensible decisions and apply the pieces that fit their business. It’s not a silver bullet, it never has been.
And you know what, if any Process is too big, slow or complicated, then you can change it. That’s the point. With modern tools it’s super-easy to change the way you work.
They say Guns don’t Kill – People Do. Well, I’ve a new version : ITIL doesn’t change IT. People do.
I tend to agree with most of what has been said above: the “fault” lies not with the tool but the workman.
ITIL is only wrong, outdated, bureaucratic, etc, etc if you suspend all rational thought and believe for one iota that it is possible to write down the answer to everything. Douglas Adams had the solution – 42! And that is just as useful as putting one’s faith in ITIL as the answer to everything. Perhaps “faith” is an apt word, because some people do treat it as a religion. For a while a called myself an “evangelist” – because that is what someone accused me of being after a presentation, having totally misunderstood or not listened to a word I said. Having reminded him that my whole message was about service management & that I had mentioned ITIL only 4 times in the 40 minutes and 2 of the references were warnings about its limitation, I said categorically that I was not an “ITIL fundamentalist”, but if by evangelist he meant someone speaking passionately about a subject that they believe is important, then I was happy to be called a “service management evangelist”.
We must remain focused on the outcomes that we are seeking, not the mechanisms that are used to achieve it.
If the enterprise needs rapid changes with little bureaucracy to inhibit them, then that’s a business choice – as long as there is also an acceptance (preferably documented) that this approach will certainly carry higher risk and may lead to heavy costs if something goes awry.
If the enterprise is happy for people to ask for help & support from any source, then fine, allow it – as long as there is acceptance of the fact that different people might give conflicting advice, it is probably less trustworthy, has an inherent risk and again may lead to extra costs down the line.
Everything depends upon the requirements of the enterprise and each one will be unique – and the requirements of each will change in different ways and at different speeds form any given point in time.
In my humble opinion, “Castle ITIL” (as my kiwi mate the IT Skeptic calls them) bears a lot of responsibility for the issues facing us. Cabinet Office may well own the brand & the copyright on the words/diagrams, but I am extremely sceptical (English spelling!) that they (as an enterprise in a business sense) actually understand service management & how ITIL fits in the jigsaw. They didn’t produce the intellectual content and view it as a solution not a means to assist enterprises towards achieving one.
The official accreditor has a remit that is focused on ITIL – after all that’s all Cab Office can give them; they are purely commercially focused – which means sell as many exams that are as cheap as possible for them to manage; which in turn means multiple guess tests.
This then actively encourages organisations to offer “training courses” that are almost totally fixated on getting people thru the multi-guess tests to the detriment of educating them in the nuances and complexities of service management. I answer “ask the expert” questions on a forum and am staggered by the depth of ignorance displayed in some of the queries from people who have sundry “bits of paper” but clear not a shred of understanding of the basic principles and philosophy of service management.
Enterprises lazily enter into contracts for products and services sprinkling the tender documents with ITIL references without understanding what they really want in the belief that somehow the magic 4 letter incantation will make everything right. (IT WON’T!) But who can blame the vendors for developing solutions that, at least on paper, embrace ITIL at their core – and having done so, have every reason to use this to promote their offering and well as becoming another group with a vested interest.
Over the years, I have heard people criticising ITIL for what it includes; what it doesn’t include; its amount of detail; its lack of detail; its wooliness and lack of prescription; its rigid and bureaucratic approach; etc, etc. In other words, someone will always find fault because they themselves come to the subject with their own pre-conceived ideas, sometimes with their own agenda and vested interests to protect/promote, or just because they are trying to stir up trouble/debate. (YOU CAN’T PLEASE ALL OF THE PEOPLE ALL OF THE TIME!)
Just as service management is an enormous and complex beast, so are the issues raised by this thread. Getting us back onto track requires an enormous effort from a range of stakeholders – but some of them are as likely to evolve as the dinosaurs were.
My Unlearn ITIL shout is really meant for people who are swallowing ITIL without biting. It is meant for those people who are willing to spend a lot of time and money to learn the fine details of ITIL. I am also worried about young students who use ITIL books as a text book in their ITSM research with no other source or a single critical thought. I hope to seed a grain of doubt in their mind.
My point is that there are errors in ITIL and many attempts to to implement it have failed. Therefore there is something wrong with it. I agree with Aidan that it is not possible to write a book with answers to all ITSM problem but disagree with that the fault is with the workman. I wrote somewhere that ITSM needs ITIL like a fish needs a bicycle. With that I specifically mean the Castle ITIL with all these exams and certifications.
Time to move on, collect new best practices and write models for the emerging IT service models.
Aale,
I agree that any talk of unlearning ITIL must be placed in context of training, and the changing needs of the industry. I have high hopes of the MSc courses in ITSM that are gaining in popularity in the UK. These should expose students to a more challenging view of ITIL and encourage a wider understanding of ITSM and a sceptical, evidence based view of what actually is best practice.
I’m not sure that the failure of attempts to implement ITIL can be taken as evidence of errors in ITIL. Whilst I’ve been a bystander in several ITIL car crashes I can’t say any of them have been caused by error within ITIL. What I have seen though is the full benefit of ITIL not being delivered because of a slavish adherence to the mantra of “ITIL says”
ITSM, Service Delivery and Service Desks are all about change. They need to be flexible, adaptable and move with the customers’ needs. The need could be Self-Service one day, cloud computing the next and BYOD after that. The IT tools and processes need to be equally adaptable as well. As many others have said, ITIL alone is not the issue but rather the (poor) implementation of a framework.
I find that most organizations lose focus on what ITIL is at its core…a framework for people to build from. It is not a hard and fast set of rules that describe only one way to manage IT, it is a framework that IS flexible enough to change as the customers need it to change. Process, control and best practices are nice, but realizing that ITIL actually can and should move with the customer is the step that we are missing. Taking ITIL out of the classroom, seeing which pieces fit “as-is” and which ones need evaluation, applying a little Continuous Improvement of our own to make it fit is the way we can show the quick wins and restore the name of ITIL again. This will only come after people understand not only the business they are a part of, but understand the inner workings of ITIL and then make the connection between them.
I think more than anything else, it is the “paper certified” ITIL experts that hurt the good name of ITIL. Armed with book knowledge and certification as their sword and shield, they charge into the business battlefield full of guns and tanks, quickly to be discarded and left to die. We need to re-arm them with the high-powered weapons of experience and lessons learned before we send them out to battle.
I agree businesses need ITIL more than ever. A growing demand to realize value and improve outcomes using IT whilst managing and mitigating costs and risks as IT technologies rapidly evolve , IT demand is exploding and the dependency upon IT increases. Value, Outcomes, costs and Risks?….the definition of a service according to ITIL. However I have asked this question now to more than 5000 people at IT conferences. How many are ‘doing ITIL’? about 85% , how many can tell me the definition of a service according to ITIL? Less than 5%. There lies one of the issues. A total lack of understanding of what we are trying to achieve. We have also conducted ABC (Attitude, behavior and Culture) worst practice surveys world-wide with literally 1000’s of IT organizations. ‘IT has too little understanding of business impact and priority’ and ‘IT is too internally focused’ are still after 10 years! top scoring worst practices chosen, despite the fact that ITIL has ALWAYS been about the customer and service we generally just don’t get it. Many orgs fail to get the value from an ITIL improvement program and blame ITIL. Once again I have asked the same 5000 people at conferences (the 85% doing ITIL ‘how many have read planning to implement IT service management?’ – An ITIL book. Again about 5% of the hands go up, hardly surprising as you don’t even need to read the book to become an ITIL Expert. There lies one of the big issues in ITIL. The way in which we develop the knowledge, skills and capabilities to effectively use it as an instrument. Another top chosen ABC worst practice card is ‘ITIL is the objective not what it should achieve’, and ‘Throwing ITIL solutions over the wall and HOPING people will use them’again hardly surprising if nobody reads the implementation book. Another issue, and top chosen worst practice card is ‘plan, Do, Stop….no continual improvement culture’. We seem to see ITIL as an implementation project rather than adopting CSI as the core capability and embedding it in the line and culture from day 1. If CSI had been adopted as the core capability then organizations could grow and align ITIL to growing and changing business demands.
Solving the problem requires all the stakeholders getting together as has been mentioned earlier. We need the additional ancillary guidance that should have come with ITIL (case studies about using it and how it delivered value in the context of changing technology and business demands), the training and certification to develop the right skills and capabilities, helping people translate theory into practice, the conferences (e.g itSMF) to ensure the right level of case presentations/articles showing how to use ITIL to create business value, and to play a role, perhaps through publications, to produce new relevant guidance and cases. ITIL when used properly, ITIL when used with other frameworks, ITIL when used as a reference can add value and help regain some degree of control.
That’s the end of my evening rant. People keep accusing me of attacking ITIL. I have nothing against ITIL. It is still a valuable tool in the toolkit of IT organizations, But like any tool you have to know how to use it and use it for the right job. It is the way we have misinterpreted and misapplied it that has caused so much damage.