ITIL Product (Version 5): for collaborative product and service professionals
Vickie Gray – lead author, ITIL Product
The modern reality of an integrated product and service lifecycle is central to the new ITIL.
The advanced ITIL Product module is designed to “pull back the curtain” and illuminate the activities, steps, and critical success factors in that unified lifecycle, whether the steps are all performed by one organization or several.
For example, how can service support tickets help backlog refinement and product discovery? And how can product professionals effectively integrate serviceability into product designs to avoid time-consuming rework in product build and transition?
For the first time, the digital product lifecycle has a dedicated place in the ITIL framework. This is more important than ever, as the traditional separation of product and service silos has become a liability for organizations that need to adapt fast without breaking things.
ITIL Product strives to present the often very different approach of product and service cultures, and the surprising similarities and critical differences in how each prioritizes work and measures success across their shared lifecycle.
By explaining product professionals’ specific techniques and approaches, and the key goals and challenges they share with service professionals, the module provides a practical foundation for cross-functional collaboration that can ease bottlenecks, reduce user and consumer friction, and prioritize conflicting demands.
But what factors brought us to this point when developing ITIL (Version 5)?
Extending an invitation to product professionals
In the evolution of technology and IT management, digital product work has often been treated as a specialized, isolated activity.
While ITIL became increasingly about guidance for service-focused teams, advice for product professionals has most often come from product vendors who created their own courses and certifications.
Even within the digital product world, this led to a fractured and siloed landscape. Acquired and configured vendor products had to be integrated and secured across complex platforms and supply chains, and with internal legacy systems.
In parallel, product professionals faced frequent conflicting demands for their time and knowledge that often crossed the boundary between product and service.
This was the impetus to bring product into ITIL; to acknowledge the deeply-entangled product and service lifecycle and speak to product professionals; contributing equally to co-creating value but maybe lacking influence and visibility where it would have the greatest impact.
When listening to people in the product world while developing the ITIL Product module, the refrain I heard most often was: “How do I prioritize the work?” Therefore, this module provides new guidance on how to choose between tasks when everything is a priority for someone and explain the rationale to stakeholders.
ITIL Product: built to use in the real world
The enhanced practicality of the new ITIL starts with Foundation and continues into the advanced modules, including ITIL Product.
Every chapter includes guidance on the activities and steps of the product lifecycle, whether accomplished inside an organization or by partners and suppliers, and in any order. This also helps teams identify who is responsible for a particular step or activity so roadblocks can be quickly resolved, and the quality of inputs and outputs improved.
The guidance also addresses challenges common to every kind of product organization with practical recommendations to address the most common critical success factors and challenges. Suggested metrics link back to the recommendations and can be fed into continual improvement.
Essentially, each part of the ITIL Product module is designed to be put into practice. By seeing product activities in the context of the full product and service lifecycle, professionals can communicate confidently with stakeholders, proactively reduce late-stage rework, and collaborate with service professionals to achieve collective outcomes.
It enables professionals to view the whole lifecycle, recognize the pitfalls and know how to avoid or deal with them.
Taking an AI-native approach
As we were developing the ITIL Product module, organizations worldwide were exploring the adoption of many different forms of AI. This worldwide digital disruption, and professionals’ real-time trial and error, fed the practical guidance in the module.
ITIL Product is designed for people who are trying to obtain value from AI but might be unsure where to start. ITIL provides the guidance needed for this kind of ambiguous, digital shift: cascading complexity, continual change and unclear paths to success.
Adopting the AI-native concepts in ITIL Product will help product professionals tasked with applying AI in their world: starting with customer-defined outcomes and performing work visibly, flexibly, adaptively and securely, with governance in mind.
A role-agnostic certification
While some professionals might look at the digital product and service lifecycle in ITIL (Version 5) and say, “We’re different – we don’t work that way”, in reality, the lifecycle is now mostly a universal model across organizations. Some activities may not occur within your team, department or even organization, but they are happening somewhere. How they are performed will affect your own success.
For this reason, ITIL Product is relevant to product owners, team leads, managers, architects, designers, developers, engineers, and site reliability engineers. Service professionals will be involved throughout the product lifecycle, whether intentionally or in an emergency. This module helps them understand how to get involved proactively and see how product and service management is integrated strategically.
Awareness of product lifecycle activities performed outside the organization can help all professionals negotiate better contracts, create better user experiences, and build trust with loyal customers, all of which hit the bottom line.
And for anyone aspiring to achieve the ITIL Managing Professional designation – ITIL Product is a core element of the learning journey. Having the knowledge to manage people, suppliers, value streams and technology from ‘discover’ through ‘support’ demonstrates the holistic mindset that makes job candidates stand out.
Just as being ambidextrous means you can use both hands, obtaining ITIL Product and Service knowledge enables professionals to work across the lifecycle – and enhances career progress beyond current trends.
ITIL Product: an open door for product professionals
The ITIL Product module is a welcoming place for product professionals: product language and ways of working are at its core and integration with service concepts can spark continual improvement ideas for all product lifecycle stages. And, when service professionals learn about the road to “go live,” embracing collaboration across the boundary between the old silos becomes a little bit easier.
ITIL Product lead author, Vickie Gray, is an ITIL 4 Master, accredited ITIL trainer, and PeopleCert ITIL Ambassador. She teaches and consults in digital strategy, governance, and digital product and service management.
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ITIL Product helps professionals bridge product and service thinking, prioritize what matters, and collaborate across the full lifecycle to deliver real value.