People are at the heart of ITIL (Version 5)

Rob van der Burg - beta tester for ITIL (Version 5)

ITIL has long been in my toolkit.

When I took my first Foundation course, the world was made up of mainframes and floppy disks. Now it’s all about the cloud and software.

Today, ITIL (Version 5) is distinctly different in the way that it reflects the pace of technological change and the speed at which new things can be introduced to a company’s digital products and services.

The new ITIL is often positioned as ‘AI-native’, and while that is relevant given current AI adoption trends, that framing is too narrow. The real value of the update is not AI itself, but the way it strengthens a people-and-value-focused approach to introducing change. In that sense, the latest version provides a clearer structure for managing the adoption of new technologies in general, not just AI.

The product and service lifecycle model is also more aligned with the agile ways companies work today. It encourages iterative development and delivery and is more supportive of the different phases or stages companies will go through.

ITIL (Version 5) has also evolved to better reflect how digital service and product delivery are intertwined. And, previously, some people might have found that using PRINCE2 Project Management and previous versions of ITIL together felt like trying to fit a round peg in a square hole. Now it feels more complementary.

A modular approach

I think the way ITIL has evolved will help people who are already organized around the three concepts of transformation: technology, people and process to achieve more. If you’ve already started on some form of implementation, you won’t need to start again. The current version will still support you.

Now you will be able to introduce modular approaches, where best practice is repeated and speed is accelerated because practices and processes are well established, documented, and/or automated. Certainly, the days of more traditional governance cycles that take forever to reach operational sign-off are numbered.

Apart from that, teams can put the right checks and balances in place and ensure aspects like security are built into the design without creating friction. That’s important in a world where it takes just minutes to pick and choose component parts for a cloud solution and set it live, without having any fundamental knowledge of what you are doing.

I think the latest version also encourages a more collaborative approach across functions, with greater attention paid to helping people understand their individual roles in delivering a better outcome. It should help overcome the desire for big, structural reorganization, complex structures, and onerous governance. For instance, developers (or any given role in that area) and operations (or any given role in that area) can become better aligned.

Technology changes are easier to make than people changes

The importance of culture is much improved in ITIL (Version 5), and it’s where I think it can have the biggest impact on an organization.

Mostly, people don’t like change, and they need to be helped to see the value of doing something differently, and when you do, it’s a good thing. However, the latest version addresses this by how it integrates with the roles in an organization.

Critically, it provides the tools to support people through change and realize the benefits that will come from it. I think this version will help people initiating or supporting change constructively move colleagues out of their comfort zone, offer a broad view as to why change matters, and set out ways of working to help people adjust and behave differently.

An example of such a change is the introduction of AI in a person’s day-to-day life. People see this automation as a direct threat to their job security. What’s interesting is that this reaction is similar to that which happened when industry moved away from mainframes to cloud, or from Excel to ERP applications. As we know from those scenarios, things evolve and though new technologies provoke concern when they are introduced, humans are still needed.

Outcomes matter; how you get there, less so

Outcome-based change is very important and fundamental to ITIL (Version 5). But how you get to the outcome can be designed according to the circumstances you face, the world you operate in, the skills you have, the money available, and so on.

I like to think of it as a playing field. With the new ITIL, you can select any combination of tools and activities and any path to get from one side of the pitch to the other. It also provides a framework within which implementation can be adapted to an organization's constraints, with guardrails in case you touch the edges of the playing field or go beyond the boundary.

This gives people freedom to experiment and innovate, yet still have a structure to follow and the appropriate support in place. It can be especially helpful for getting different teams pulling in the same direction, with tangible results to show for their efforts and therefore a willingness to adapt to change in the future.