ITIL: after two decades of use and abuse, what next?

Brian Johnson, one of the original architects of ITIL and worldwide practice manager for CA Services, charts the history of ITIL, takes stock of its impact and asks where to next?

It was back in 1986 that the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL), a concept that has now become one of the most widely accepted approaches to IT service management (ITSM) worldwide, was started in the UK by John Stewart. It was based on the idea that spending on IT infrastructure management in government was too high and that a method to establish best practice processes for IT service management would be of benefit. The underpinning concept was that people would become ‘portable’ in the sense that everyone would manage the infrastructure in the same way and streamline processes, thereby increasing efficiency and (eventually) driving down cost.

Where ITIL all began

What is ironic is that a simple concept, that is now a multi billion pound industry, was initially pitched to HM Treasury and laughed straight out the room. By 1987, with the backing from Peter Skinner, another believer in the concept, ITIL was piloted across a small number of government departments as the Government IT Infrastructure Management Method (GITTIM) wholly developed by John and his team at the Central Computer and Telecommunications Agency (CCTA). CCTA was eventually absorbed by the Office of Government Commerce (OGC) in 2000. The name of the method was changed from GITIMM to ITIL, on the basis that nobody would buy anything with the word ‘government’ in the title. The ITIL approach proved to be a success throughout the initial development work with the selected government departments, for example in support of the National Savings Certificate automation programme.

With a team of eight, including myself and John Stewart, the programme director, the CCTA set about developing a set of books (for some curious reason we called them ‘modules’ back then) to create a compendium of good IT management practices and eventually to create an ITIL user group.

The innovative Dutch were the first, and are still the biggest champions of the ITIL concept, and it was the small vendors in Holland such as the original Pink Elephant and Quint, as well as the Examination Institute of the Netherlands (EXIN) that accelerated uptake. In the UK, thanks to companies such as Ultracomp and the growth of the users group driven in those days by people such as David Wheeldon, Mick Brown, Ivor Evans, Ivor Macfarlane and others, the realisation of the potential of ITIL spread, and one of the next big projects was the Ministry of Defence, which led one of the longest ever ITIL projects.

Creating an ITIL user group

One of the defining moments in the history of ITIL was the creation of the user group, the IT Service Management Forum (itSMF), originally called the IT Infrastructure Management Forum, in 1991. For a few years only the UK and Dutch groups existed and over time other countries (in particular English speaking ones) began adopting the approach. By 1995, ITIL had already been adopted in around 40 countries; however, user representation through the itSMF user group was still based solely in the UK and Holland.

Gradually itSMF became the name in which all the participants worked to and ITIL the underpinning method (even though, strictly speaking, ITIL did not really cover all of the issues in IT Service Management). The increasing world-wide recognition and use meant that eventually itSMF became an international professional body – currently represented in more than 50 countries and with sales across another 30-40 countries worldwide. In the US it is interesting to see that some ‘Local Interest Groups’ are bigger than some countrywide groups. Once a foothold was established in North America, ITIL became a worldwide phenomenon. Globally, the itSMF now boasts over 6,000 member organisations, blue chip enterprises and public sector bodies alike, covering in excess of 40,000 individuals spread over more than 50 groups. Each group is a separate legal entity and is largely autonomous.

Version 1

In 1989 the first book in Version 1 came out. Over the next eight to nine years the books came out at irregular intervals. This period for ITIL was much more about evolution than structure and design. It was a new concept to all the IT professionals involved and the publication of the new versions and the level of coherence across them tended to reflect this.

By 1997 there were in excess of 50 ITIL books. This figure is dependent on what each individual perceives as an ‘ITIL book’, for example, the books published when EXIN led the project in the late nineties are included in that figure, as well as books in the Environmental Infrastructure set and the Business and IT excellence – all labelled ITIL and in my opinion quite correctly – but others may well disagree and it all comes down to opinion. The range of concepts covered seems bewildering sometimes, for example there is an ITIL book on Managing Acoustic Noise!

It was in the late nineties that John Stewart agreed that there was a need for change. The programme had developed without an overall detailed structure – Charles Darwin could have based his Theory of Evolution of the Species on ITIL. A process model was needed to help IT professionals focus on the future development of the books and in particular how they fitted together to encourage understanding and ease of use; it was agreed that the CCTA and Pink Elephant would work together on a joint venture to create a coalition of interested parties that would drive a refresh of ITIL. Ironically, it was never really a ‘Version 2’, the concept was and is that the body of knowledge would be expanded where appropriate and new materials be included.

Version 2

Despite what many people thought at the time, Version 2 was much more of a refresh, than a completely new approach. Version 2 came out between 2000 and 2006, and what was meant to be five comprehensive books ended up being nine. The books aimed to illustrate how the processes were connected (or often how they should have been connected) and to compile good practice guides about how the detailed Version 1 ‘modules’ had been used. Today you can find many organisations that continue to use the Version 1 books for detailed information.

What eventually became ‘Version 2’ were the books focused on service support and service delivery. The service support book, otherwise known as the ‘Blue Book’, focused on incidents, problems, changes, configuration management and release management effectively, ‘joining the dots’ of the individual processes discussed in the Version 1 books. The emphasis on continual improvement was also a feature of Version 2 with each book having an Appendix to cover the use of the Deming cycle in improvement.

For IT Service Delivery, the ‘Red book’ focused on business capacity management, business continuity, service level management, availability management and the financial aspects of ITSM – again it aimed to ’unify’ the books from Version 1.

Version 2 was intended to shift focus to service delivery, to encourage organisations to focus on the ITIL support for the provision of services and move the focus away from fire fighting incidents in service support. The reality was that the majority of organisations continued to focus on service support and inevitably the ‘Blue Book’ was the big success from Version 2. It is more than likely that the Blue and Red Book sales exceeded the combined sales of the other seven – certainly large numbers of people are unaware that a total of nine books exist in that series.

Commercial contracts and further developments

Increasingly the publisher of the ITIL books The Stationery Office (TSO) had more influence over the creation and content of the books. When Version 3 was in the planning stages a number of commercial contracts for contributions were secured. This change in tack could account for the increased commercial interest on the more recent editions in comparison to Version 2 which was amalgamated from voluntary contributions. Version 3 was first published in 2007 with the aim to focus on IT service design. The common perception and review of Version 3 was that it was very different from Version 1 and Version 2. In fact, Version 3 was roughly seventy percent the same as 1 and 2, but had refined, condensed and restructured the content to fit five books.

Over the last twenty years ITIL has transformed IT Service Management and IT Service Delivery. Part of this transformation was the creation of an international standard for service management, the ISO 20000 standard that was based on the British Standard (BS15000) created in the mid 1990s.

ISO 20000 is commonly accepted worldwide as the standard for IT service management. Although ITIL is not a standard, it is invaluable to organisations that set out to comply with ISO 20000, as it provides the guidance for putting the processes in place to meet the standard. If it was not for ITIL, no one would have bothered to create a standard – or been able to do so. Letters of thanks should go to John Stewart!

In 2010, CA was awarded the ISO 20000 standard for service management – a measure of the growth of ITIL and of the need to demonstrate excellence through standards.

What next for ITIL?

Looking ahead for ITIL there will soon be a new edition of Version 3 that will address the teething issues. I think the biggest space to watch is ITIL’s development in foreign markets and how quickly new versions can be translated and provided to the ever expanding communities. Questions will also be raised about automation versus people versus processes. Furthermore, it is possible that ISO could soon become even more important than ITIL and become a central part of a well run IT organisation. Ultimately, whatever the future holds by prioritising business requirements ahead of technical considerations, ITIL enables organizations to provide IT services that are better understood, more easily maintained and more cost-effective.