ITIL 4 – changes and implications
ITIL 4 – changes and implications
28. August 2020
Reading time: 4 minutes
ITIL has long since become a quasi-standard in IT service management and is firmly anchored in many organizations and IT departments. ITIL 4 was published at the beginning of last year.
After having dealt with the topic extensively in the past weeks and months (e.g. through the ITIL 4 Service Manager and ITIL 4 Managing Professional certificate), we would like to give you an overview of what has changed compared to ITIL v3 and whether – or rather for whom – the switch to ITIL 4 is worthwhile.
Throwback: Core elements of ITIL v3
As a collection of predefined processes, functions and roles for IT Service Management, ITIL v3 is divided into five phases:Service Strategy
Service Design
Service Transition
Service Operation
Continual Process Improvement
The last phase is to be understood as a superordinate process for improving the individual phases, processes and services.
All in all, ITIL v3 is a very process-oriented framework, which starts with the wording and continues throughout the overall picture. All activities are defined and described as a process, even if this does not make sense in practice and thus cannot be implemented accordingly in all areas.
Novelties through ITIL 4
With ITIL 4, the framework has taken a big step forward and addresses gaps in previous releases with modern solutions. The digital transformation calls for this change; the revised edition aims to help organizations find the balance between agility and stability to respond more quickly to changing business and environmental requirements. For this purpose, phases and processes known from ITIL v3 have been broken down. Instead, ITIL 4 works almost exclusively with “practices”, making the implementation of the principles more practical and easier to understand.In essence, the most important innovations can be summarized as follows:
ITIL 4 puts more focus on the customer than this was the case with v3. It focuses on the customer experience (utility and warranty) and adds new topics such as Lean, Agile and DevOps to its framework, enabling it to react more quickly to changing requirements around the digital transformation.
The core element of ITIL 4 is the "newly created" Value Chain, which is shown in the illustration above. It describes the most important activity groups on an organizational level, which are necessary to create added value for the customer. The Value Streams, on the other hand, describe all resources, activities and dependencies that are necessary specifically on an individual level to create value. They are a combination of activities, which may be implemented by different roles, and resources (e.g. products, information or services) with the aim of creating value for the customer. While the approach is a step in the right direction, it is only rudimentarily described in the literature and leaves many question marks over its implementation in everyday operations.
The "newly" created Customer Journey is designed to expand the Business Relationship Management previously neglected in ITIL v3. Its objective is to involve the customer or user from the initial interest, through the definition of the requirements, the service delivery and the joint creation of value, all the way to its decommissioning. However, this model has so far also been kept relatively general; effective implications for practice are not yet clear from the framework. Here we see added value primarily for organizations that provide their services to external customers. Nevertheless, internal IT organizations can certainly benefit from this approach.
Since ITIL 4, innovation is an integral part of the overall concept. This is demonstrated by the integration of Design Thinking, which is intended to improve innovation with a focus on the user.
In our opinion, many of the newly added practices such as project management, risk management and organizational change management (OCM) give a good overview and thus may create considerable added value particularly for smaller companies, as the model covers all relevant areas. However, these practices are certainly too generic and broadly defined for medium-sized and larger companies. Here, the corresponding specific methods and frameworks (e.g. Scrum, Prince2 or PMBOK in relation to project management and Prosci as well as ADKAR for OCM) are more mature than the corresponding ITIL 4 practices
Overall, we are positive about the direction that ITIL 4 is taking. Although this is not an independent element, the revised framework makes strong reference to environmental variables that need to be taken into account, such as the human factor and the social component, legal or economic changes. Especially in times of Corona, a framework that takes external factors into account and allows companies to react to changing requirements in an agile and customer-oriented manner is extremely valuable.
In many places, however, new ideas are not yet mature enough to be transferred directly from the textbook into practice, which makes it difficult to make the switch based on ITIL 4 alone. Here we see a need to catch up; in order to anchor the principles sustainably in the company, more concrete procedures with practical examples are needed.
When changing conditions are a continuous challenge and day-to-day business is strongly affected by technological innovations, agile measures are required. In our opinion, these can be met better with ITIL 4 than with ITIL v3, so it makes perfectly sense for persons responsible for IT service management to study the new iteration. We recommend mainly the "Foundation" to develop a grasp of the overall picture and the terminology, while "Expert" and specific modules are more worthwhile when there is a specific need for a concrete topic.
If your goal is to focus on agility and increase customer focus, we recommend that you examine which elements from the ITIL 4 framework can be transferred to your organization. We would be happy to accompany you in answering this question specifically for your company and in developing a suitable pragmatic approach.
The "newly" created Customer Journey is designed to expand the Business Relationship Management previously neglected in ITIL v3. Its objective is to involve the customer or user from the initial interest, through the definition of the requirements, the service delivery and the joint creation of value, all the way to its decommissioning. However, this model has so far also been kept relatively general; effective implications for practice are not yet clear from the framework. Here we see added value primarily for organizations that provide their services to external customers. Nevertheless, internal IT organizations can certainly benefit from this approach.
Since ITIL 4, innovation is an integral part of the overall concept. This is demonstrated by the integration of Design Thinking, which is intended to improve innovation with a focus on the user.
In our opinion, many of the newly added practices such as project management, risk management and organizational change management (OCM) give a good overview and thus may create considerable added value particularly for smaller companies, as the model covers all relevant areas. However, these practices are certainly too generic and broadly defined for medium-sized and larger companies. Here, the corresponding specific methods and frameworks (e.g. Scrum, Prince2 or PMBOK in relation to project management and Prosci as well as ADKAR for OCM) are more mature than the corresponding ITIL 4 practices
Overall, we are positive about the direction that ITIL 4 is taking. Although this is not an independent element, the revised framework makes strong reference to environmental variables that need to be taken into account, such as the human factor and the social component, legal or economic changes. Especially in times of Corona, a framework that takes external factors into account and allows companies to react to changing requirements in an agile and customer-oriented manner is extremely valuable.
In many places, however, new ideas are not yet mature enough to be transferred directly from the textbook into practice, which makes it difficult to make the switch based on ITIL 4 alone. Here we see a need to catch up; in order to anchor the principles sustainably in the company, more concrete procedures with practical examples are needed.
Is the switch to ITIL 4 worthwhile?
The question you should ask yourself instead is: What are the requirements for your company and your IT infrastructure?When changing conditions are a continuous challenge and day-to-day business is strongly affected by technological innovations, agile measures are required. In our opinion, these can be met better with ITIL 4 than with ITIL v3, so it makes perfectly sense for persons responsible for IT service management to study the new iteration. We recommend mainly the "Foundation" to develop a grasp of the overall picture and the terminology, while "Expert" and specific modules are more worthwhile when there is a specific need for a concrete topic.
If your goal is to focus on agility and increase customer focus, we recommend that you examine which elements from the ITIL 4 framework can be transferred to your organization. We would be happy to accompany you in answering this question specifically for your company and in developing a suitable pragmatic approach.
Author
Thomas Scherzinger
Thomas' consultancy focus lies on the introduction and improvement of IT service management, IT project management and the implementation and continuous improvement of sustainable new services for a modern workplace.
Thomas Scherzinger
Thomas' consultancy focus lies on the introduction and improvement of IT service management, IT project management and the implementation and continuous improvement of sustainable new services for a modern workplace.
