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Category: ITIL

  • Will There Be a Fast Path to ITIL V4?

    Will There Be a Fast Path to ITIL V4?

    The Feb. 28 release of the ITIL Foundation ITIL 4 Edition book illustrates that big changes are coming to ITIL, bringing fear, uncertainty and doubt to those who have invested in ITIL and achieved certifications.

    It all comes down to how far along someone is in the ITIL V3 certification process. For those that have achieved a level of ITIL V3 Expert, the fast path to ITIL V4 may consist of simply taking the ITIL Managing Professional Transition class (once it is released) and then passing the associated MP exam. However, both the class and the exam may not be available until the third quarter of 2019.

    Under ITIL v3, candidates garner two credits for passing the ITIL V3 Foundation exam. Continuing on a certification track means taking intermediate classes to earn more credits. However, the ITIL v3 intermediate tracks are divided into two different paths, Lifecycle and Capability. The Lifecycle track addresses the readiness aspects of adopting ITIL, while the Capability track focuses on actual ITIL processes. Lifecycle classes reward candidates with three credits and capability classes are four credits. A candidate must take a combination of classes and pass the associated exams to earn the prerequisite 17 credits before taking the Managing Across the Lifecycle (MALC) exam to become a recognized ITIL Expert.

    ITIL V4 uses a different scheme when it comes to certification, which introduces some confusion into the certification situation. ITIL V4 starts with ITIL V4 Foundation, but the tracks change to ITIL Managing Professional (MP) and ITIL Strategic Leader (SL) paths. However, very little information has been released regarding these tracts or the associated courses.

    How much of a rush, then, should certification candidates be in to garner a ITIL V4 certification? Should they continue on their ITIL V3 certification path and then transition to V4 after they have become a V3 expert? Or should those candidates put everything on hold until more of the V4 training and exams come to light?

    Currently, as far as ITIL V4 is concerned, the only class and exam available in the near future is for ITIL V4 Foundation, so those who are on the V3 Intermediate track may have to wait and see what training and exams become available. Some ITIL pundits are recommending that those who already have achieved V3 foundation certification and earned six or more credits on the ITIL V3 Intermediate path stay the course and continue to take ITIL v3 Intermediate classes until earning at least 17 credits. Once that accomplishment is achieved, candidates should move on to taking the Managing Professional Transition module.

    Nancy Van Elsacker Louisnord, president of TOPdesk USA, offered some sage advice: “There are several changes introduced in ITIL V4, all of which impact the core guiding principles. Learning skills such as how to focus on value, adopt collaboration, improve iterative progression and working holistically will be critical for fully understanding ITIL V4. Embracing those changes and leveraging new educational resources as they become available will become the key to moving forward on any ITIL journey.”

    While there is still much uncertainty around when additional ITIL V4 training and certifications will become available, one thing is certain, and that is change. ITIL practitioners will want to get ahead of that change to maintain their skill sets and increase their market value, while also acquiring the skills to work in a world that is quickly becoming more agile and DevOps-orientated.

    — Frank Ohlhorst

  • ITIL V4 Foundation Embraces the Agile Manifesto with Teamwork as a Core Value

    ITIL V4 Foundation Embraces the Agile Manifesto with Teamwork as a Core Value

    The Feb. 28 release of the ITIL Foundation ITIL 4 Edition book is proof positive that other service management frameworks have impressed the folks who brought the latest iteration of ITIL to fruition.

    ITIL V4 proves to be significantly different than previous generations of ITIL and embraces many of the core values found in frameworks including Lean, Agile and DevOps. Ideologies such as embracing value, fostering collaboration and adopting what ITIL V4 specifies as a four-dimension model bring a holistic approach to service management. The four dimensions are classified as people, products, partners and processes.

    Perhaps the biggest challenge in creating ITIL V4 was moving from traditional process-led delivery advocated in ITIL V3, to a best practices approach of focusing on co-creating value collaboratively between the organization and stakeholders. A change that potentially impacts ITSM, development, operations, business relationships and governance.

    “We worked with 12 lead architects, 61 authors and reviewers and hundreds of practitioners from the wider IT industry,” said Mark Basham, CEO at AXELOS, the organization responsible for ITIL. “In addition, our ITIL Development Group has more than 2,000 members from all over the world. This huge collaboration has now produced a framework that will support practitioners and organizations, to meet the challenges that come with the Fourth Industrial Revolution.”

    At first blush, ITIL V4 seems to reiterate what many other frameworks already espouse. However, ITIL V4 does bring some other ideologies into play.

    “One big change with ITIL V4 is the focus on value, where value is more than just a desired outcome but also something that is co-created by all involved. That ideology fuels collaboration and breaks down silos. The shift to focus more on the customer experience demonstrates achieving value, establishing the value chain as a foundation,” said Nancy Van Elsacker Louisnord, President of TOPdesk USA, an Orlando, Florida-based developer of service management software. “ITIL V4 actively embraces some great concepts out of Agile and DevOps, exemplified by the guiding principle of progress iteratively with feedback. The ITIL4 service value chain looks very similar to what we see in DevOps and actively encourages an iterative approach.”

    However, with ITIL V4 seeming to borrow from other ideologies, one may wonder how much value remains in the ITIL framework.

    “Partners and suppliers have been added as a fourth dimension, next to organizations and people, processes and value streams, and information and technology. It is an addition that accounts for the reality of increased outsourcing, and the challenges that come with that,” said Van Elsacker Louisnord. “The dimensions play an important role in the 34 ITIL practices that have replaced ITIL V3’s 26 processes. While in essence they haven’t changed much, ITIL V4 takes those four dimensions into account in every practice, making practices much more practical than the processes of the past,”

    While many questions still remain around ITIL V4, the writing is on the wall that Agile ideologies are becoming the norm, and DevOps-orientated development brings forth certain advantages. ITIL V4 must co-exist with other frameworks to bring value into best practices and adaptable frameworks. More importantly, ITIL V4 is being set up as a framework that can enhance other ideologies, while helping to preserve the investment that hundreds of thousands of IT professionals have made in ITIL.  

    — Frank Ohlhorst

  • Will ITIL V4 Bring Order to a DevOps World?

    Will ITIL V4 Bring Order to a DevOps World?

    It is difficult to dispute the importance that the ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) approach has had on the world of ITSM (IT service management). After all, the best practices established by ITIL V3 have come to be the accepted way ITSM providers conduct business—so much so that many other IT processes have come to look to the ITIL framework to bring order and control to complex processes.

    Yet, ideologies such as DevOps have struggled to adapt to the somewhat rigid doctrine of ITIL V3, instead favoring Agile methodologies to meet the rapid deployment of updates and the iterative cycle of software development. Perhaps, the Agile-versus-ITIL differences can be attributed to how life cycles should be managed and how the management of those life cycles impact both development and operations in the IT space. Nevertheless, change is coming to the world of ITIL, which may help to make the framework more suitable for DevOps practices, and perhaps make ITIL and Agile symbiotic in the field.

    The ITIL V4 framework is scheduled to be released in Q1 2019, some two years after it was announced by AXELOS at the Fusion 2017 conference. “ITIL is the most firmly entrenched ITSM framework in the infrastructure of large, complex organizations, with many—if not most—Fortune 500 companies using it,” said Cathy Kirch, president of itSMF USA, the organizer of FUSION 2017 and the leading independent professional forum for IT Service Management professionals in the United States. “Currently, ITIL and complementary practices, such as DevOps, Agile and Lean, are used successfully in conjunction with each other; however the next evolution of ITIL will promote and underpin dynamic collaboration.”

    The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same

    ITIL V4 doesn’t propose to completely rewrite the ITIL V3 narrative; in fact, the core elements are expected to remain the same. ITIL V4 will simply include new material on integration with additional best practices aimed at mitigating some of the biggest criticisms around ITIL V3, the less-than-ideal relationship with the ITSM community and failure to keep up with recent trends in software development and IT operations.

    In essence, ITIL V4 will address those criticisms by shifting V4 to a community-driven initiative and integrating other practices such as Agile, DevOps and Lean into traditional ITIL best practices. That means ITIL may become complimentary to those other frameworks and begin to embrace other services management best practices in the context of new technologies, such as serverless, containers, microservices and multi-cloud.

    With the DevOps community picking up steam, the Agile Manifesto and Lean development displacing ITIL V3 in some practices, it will be interesting to see what impact ITIL V4 will have on the IT industry as a whole. While it is far from ITIL’s last gasp, ITIL V4 will face significant challenges in a DevOps world that is constantly changing. However, with more than a million ITIL V3 certificate holders worldwide, ITIL V4 will definitely garner a great deal of interest when it hits the streets on Feb. 28.

    — Frank Ohlhorst