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Today

The most recent version of ITIL, V3 represents an important evolutionary step in the life of Service Management.. The advocates say “ The refresh has transformed the guidance from providing a great service to being the most innovative and best in class¹”. The detractors say “Actually, much of Version 3 is a cry for acceptance at higher levels in the organisation (or a power grab for more of the business, depending on your perspective).”

My opinion having burnt the midnight oil reading the five new books is there is truth in both. I have not yet decided if I am an advocate or a detractor; the proof for me will be in the implementation, which I or anyone else have yet to attempt.

At a high level the changes reflect the way IT Service Management has matured over the past decades.

For example:

Where V2 talked about a Collection of Integrated Processes, V3 emphasises a Holistic Service Management Life cycle
Where V2 talked about Business and IT Alignment, V3 emphasises Business and IT Integration.
Where V2 talked about Incident Management, V3 talks about multi-level Incident Categorization and Request Fulfilment.
Where V2 talked about Value Chain Management, V3 emphasises Value Network Integration.
Where V2 talked about Linear Service Catalogues, V3 emphasises Dynamic Service Portfolios.

In addition there are other significant differences, as the main focus is on the service life-cycle with a secondary focus on process. The ISO/IEC 20000 standard has been aligned to ITIL V2 but ITIL V3 also provides for support in the form of a balanced scorecard for the fulfilment of other compliance requirements such as SOX, Basel II, HIPPA, etc. It utilises The Deming Quality Cycle as the basis for quality management in the Continual Service Improvement Book.

1OGC-Best Management Practice – ITIL v3