This year, the most serious update of the library for IT process management in eight years is expected — the release of ITIL v4 PDF. I will tell you about the changes.
What is ITIL
ITIL (IT Infrastructure Library) is a methodology describing the life cycle of IT products. It appeared in the 1980s at the request of the British government, which wanted to develop a standard for assessing the quality of IT services. In 2013, the rights to the methodology were obtained by the Axelos organization, which the UK government created together with the company Capita.
ITIL describes several stages in the lifecycle of an application, product, or service: strategy development, design, transformation, operation, continuous improvement. The purpose of the methodology is to establish links between IT departments and customers and improve the quality of services provided. Additionally, it reduces development costs by optimizing the resources used. According to Gartner, several Japanese industrial enterprises with the help of ITIL managed to reduce production costs by 30% in three years.
During the existence of the methodology, three versions of the ITIL standard have been published. The last one was published in 2011. Over the past eight years, the IT industry has accumulated a critical mass of new practices. For this reason, in November 2017 Axelos announced plans to update the library.
Changes in ITIL 4
Axelos does not create the standard alone — more than a hundred IT experts from around the world help the company. At the same time, the project also has an online community of more than two thousand people who express their wishes to the developers. And the following changes will be made in ITIL 4:
- Add integration with other methodologies.
One of the main tasks of the update is to combine the principles of ITIL with modern approaches to software development: Agile, DevOps and Lean.
The requirements of the third version of the library differ in many ways from the principles of the listed approaches to software creation. For example, in ITIL, you need to define all the requirements for a product before you start working on it, and in Agile methodologies, functions change with each iteration cycle, which is often only two to three weeks. The developers hope that the new approach will simplify the implementation of ITIL in IT companies and make this process more understandable.
- Introduce a new certification system.
Axelos not only develops the principles of the ITIL system, but also the training procedure for those who want to become a consultant.
Now the highest rank in the ITIL system is ITIL Expert. In the fourth version of ITIL, this level will be divided into two areas: ITIL Management Professional for IT department managers and ITIL Strategic Leader for non-IT department managers. Plus, there will be a single highest category — ITIL Master. It can be obtained if you complete both courses.
- Rework the terminology.
The third version of ITIL is based on processes - recommendations on how to perform certain tasks at each stage of software or service development. For example, the library describes the processes of incident management, finance, or service availability.
In the ITIL update, they plan to redesign this system and replace "processes" with a more expanded concept — "practices". Practitioners will include skills, roles, and specific positions. This approach should accelerate the implementation of ITIL in companies.
What is expected from the update
Quite often, the ITIL methodology is perceived as a rigid and immutable framework, although in fact the library is just a list of tips. The task of the fourth version is to change the perception of the system and present it as a flexible management methodology.
As one of the authors of ITIL 4, Barclay Rae, noted, since the release of the last update, the world (the IT industry, in particular) has changed significantly. The fourth version will help to adjust ITIL to new IT standards and requirements: automation, DevOps practices, cloud systems.
At the same time, there is an opinion in the IT community that the update will make ITIL more accessible to small companies. Now all knowledge in the system is paid: IT managers are forced to buy books, spend money on training and hope that ITIL will help them in their work. Therefore, it is likely that a kind of "trial version" of ITIL will appear — a small set of best practices for beginners that would help people understand the possibilities of the approach and assess its impact on the company's business processes.
When will the update be released
Axelos will implement the new version gradually. The first part of the update is scheduled for the first quarter of 2019, the second - for the second quarter. Then new training programs and exams for new areas of ITIL Management Professional and ITIL Strategic Leader will be presented. It is expected that the full transition from the third version to the fourth will be completed by July 2020. Until then, the current version of the library will remain up-to-date.