For organisations looking at best practice IT management, ITIL4 is an opportunity to access the latest thinking and recommendations from practitioners and industry professionals. Following ITIL requires commitment of time and resources; for those invested in ITIL3, there are inevitably questions about the benefits of moving to ITIL4.
Why ITIL4?
Service and improvement
The decision to update ITIL was driven primarily by a recognition that the digital economy is outpacing many organisations’ ability to respond quickly and competitively to customer requirements. The procedures in ITIL3 are still valid, however, the guiding principles in v4 have transformed to reflect a shift in focus towards service-led organisations. Fixed ‘processes’ have given way to flexible ‘practices’, which are open to change and improvement. In short, ITIL4 reinforces the need to adopt a continuous service improvement approach to technology.
Collaboration produces better outcomes
One unintended consequence of ITIL3 was the creation of siloed support teams along operational service process lines such as incident, problem, and change. This gives rise to teams that in isolation perform well and meet or exceed targets, but are not so effective at collaborating across process lines. In many cases, the hand-off from one IT department to another frustrates an organisations’ ability to effectively solve IT problems and fulfil business opportunities.
Harnessing the relentless advance of technology
Assuming that we maintain the same rate of technological growth and innovation witnessed over the past 100 years, then the next 100 years will feel like the equivalent of 20,000 years. If you think technology is moving fast, you haven’t seen anything yet and the beneficiaries of the new digital economy are those who can quickly mobilise people and technology to meet opportunities that can appear at any time.
What’s new in ITIL4?
A cohesive approach
The authors are clear that the benefits of ITIL3 are real and achievable, and they are the first to caution against undoing any investment made in ITIL 3 training. What has changed is the need for technology teams to work together better, but more importantly, to become integrated with the business.
Easier to adopt
ITIL 3, with more than 2,000 pages of reading material is inaccessible to most people outside IT, and in many cases misunderstood. Conversely, the first ITIL 4 book is a more reader-friendly 200 pages. ITIL training course material has moved on and embraced the millennial style of information transfer by using stories and videos to convey concepts that people find easier to consume and recall.
Focussed on meaningful outcomes
A core theme when discussing ITIL 4 is that anything an organisation does must start with a customer-led demand or opportunity, and must end with value creation. This and everything that happens in between is known as the “value stream” and service is considered as being the co-creation of value i.e., varied IT and business people working together within the value stream to achieve an outcome that has some meaning. If there is no demand or no value, then there is no meaning to the activity.
Agile
Demand can be led by customers, or it can be led by internal staff recognising the need or opportunity to fulfil customer requirements. ITIL4 recognise that organisations, especially large ones, tend to move slowly. However, in today’s digital economy, they have to move fast. Very fast. ITIL4 is about re-organising and repurposing your technology and human resources to ready the business to reduce the impact of external disruptors and take advantage of the opportunities in the customer-led digital economy.
People-centric
The digital economy makes extensive use of automation, which is key to improving service quality. However, with automation now accessible to all, it is the value added by humans that creates real competitive advantage, and success depends upon communication. ITIL4’s guiding principles are designed to liberate people to apply their technical expertise to assist the whole organisation in achieving its goals.
Is my current ITIL investment still valid?
Those organisations that have made a significant investment in ITIL3 are advised to look into ITIL4, put some key staff through training, work out which parts are relevant to the organisation and train to those needs. For those organisations not already ITIL invested, the modern-day guiding principles and practices of V4 will enable them to affirm they have the right business IT strategies in place, and identify opportunities for improvement.
It’s generally easier to retain existing customers than find new ones and key to maintaining relationships is the quality of service that customers receive. Organisations need to integrate customer service and fulfilment in everything that IT does for the business; the practises of ITIL 4 will help organisations to achieve this very important goal.
Employee retention is as important as keeping customers. With staff being so well connected outside their employing organisation, it’s easy for them to make the move to competitors. In the same way that you need to make your products and services attractive to customers, you need to ensure that your working environment attracts and retains the best people. Employee services are critical to this. IT, Facilities, Finance, HR – they all have a role to play in ensuring employees are looked after.
Is ITIL4 for me?
There is a lot of technology out there with great potential; it just needs to be used properly. ITIL is about how to help people apply the technology that is available to them. Those companies that recognise they need help to focus IT resources more effectively will almost certainly benefit from following ITIL4. The ITIL framework is very broad; a good start point is to familiarise yourself with an ITIL4 overview and identify which parts are relevant to your organisation.
For ITIL4 to work, the whole organisation needs to embrace it, not just IT. For many, this is the biggest challenge. ITIL4 is more business focussed that ITIL3, and in that respect, it should be easier to encourage C-level management to sign up for it. But avoid the pitfalls of following best practises in isolation whereby one part of the organisation outperforms the rest of it; individual achievement doesn’t equate to business success!