ITIL Version 3 - ANSWERS STRAIGHT FROM THE OCG

Everything you wanted to know about V3 and how it affects you.

This is the first in a series of communications being prepared by the Chief Architect of ITIL, the Refresh Project team and the authors themselves. It will help to inform you, coming first hand from the team inside V3.

The ITIL refresh project will soon produce a new version of ITIL (V3) in the form of a core set of five publications and a suite of complementary products. Together they will replace the current library of ITIL publications. Think of V3 as an extension to the V2 set of best practice encyclopedias.

Regardless of where you are in your adoption and use of ITIL today, V3 will have some impact on your use of IT service management (ITSM) best practices. The good news is that the extensions to ITIL should make it easier to adopt, adapt, improve and use ITIL best practices.

Now that work on the core practice set is close to being available, the OCG has offered deeper insights into what is in V3 and answers some questions. Below are some of the frequently asked questions the OCG has answered about V3.

If you have questions that do not appear below, please “click here” and join the KEDARit Knowledge Forum and submit your questions. I look forward to hearing from you and to continuing to offer information as we prepare to deliver ITIL V3.

Frequently Asked Questions

Will Version 3 replace Version 2?

Yes.

ITIL V3 is part of a process to enhance and improve the ITIL best practices. This is the essence of "current best practice" - defining the frontiers of industry practices, which continuously shift as organizations compete to meet the evolving demands of customers. ITIL V3 will help service providers remain competitive and effective in providing value to their customers. A significant portion of ITIL V2 content will be refined and included in ITIL V3.

Are there different target audiences for the different ITIL books?

Yes.

Think about the progression of any IT service from its inception to retirement that you have seen. This is the life-cycle of service management. There are many different individuals and parts of an organization involved in the life of a service. From planning, design, build, test, release, operate, improve, etc. Different levels of the organization and different roles carry out the decision making, the development and delivery of services.

The V3 Library reflects the life of services and so appeals to a broad spectrum of people who carry out roles at various service life stages. It is important to know that even though the prime target audience may not be where you are currently in your organization, you will be likely to influence the target audience and so we strongly suggest that everyone read the entire V3 core library.

Core Practice Books
Title	Description	Main Target Audience	Main Influencers
Service Strategies	Will appeal to those who have the need to understand strategic analysis, planning, positioning, and implementation with respect to service models, strategies, and strategic objectives. It provides guidance on how to leverage service management capabilities that can effectively deliver value to customers and capture value for service providers. Decisions about service portfolios, capability development, operational effectiveness, organization models and the importance of knowledge assets are some of what Service Strategies will provide guidance on.	Senior leadership of customers and service providers	Service managers and operations managers
Service Design	Translates strategic plans and objectives and creates the designs and specifications for execution through service transition and operations. Appealing to those whose role is to bring together the infrastructure, applications, systems, and processes, along with partners and suppliers, to make feasible a superior service offering.	Service managers and providers	IT operational staff, service owners, service providers, vendors
Service Transition	Will ensure that the design will deliver the intended strategy and that it can be operated and maintained effectively.	IT service managers, service owners, operational staff	customers, service owners, support staff
Service Operation	Will manage a service through its production life of day-to-day management.	service owners, operational staff, vendors and service providers	customers, end users, business and IT management
Continual Service Improvement	Will ensure that a service delivers the maximum benefit and measure its performance through its life, suggesting improvements along the way.	service planners, service designers, business and IT leaders, IT service managers, service owners, operational staff	business leaders, IT leaders, customers and users, service owners, quality and conformance managers
Complementary titles	V3 will offer a range of complementary guidance that supports the practices in the core books. These will have specific target audiences to offer greater detailed guidance to particular market sectors, IT providers and customers.	Each target audience and main influencer will vary according to the main topic of each book or product.	Each target audience and main influencer will vary according to the main topic of each book or product.

Will V3 be published all at once or will the books come out separately?

V3 will be released in stages.

The core books (Strategies, Design, Transition, Operation and Improvement) will be published together in the late spring of 2007.  Releasing them together as a set of best practices since they form a life-cycle management approach and each book complements the rest and is meant to form a single ITSM practice suite. Also, as IT services are more closely aligned and integrated with the business, V3 helps bring a business management approach and discipline to IT service management. From that perspective, the five volumes of the ITIL V3 core emphasize the complementary aspects of running IT like a business.

Will the new ITIL address knowledge management?

Yes.

One of the key improvements to V3 is the introduction of the Service Management Knowledge System. The SMKS incorporates the former knowledge bases we are familiar with from V2 such as known error, and CMDB, but expands on this to be much broader in scope.

All books in the core will have guidance on knowledge management and introduce the principles of moving from simple data collection to extracting information from data, deriving knowledge from information and wisdom from knowledge, as in the concepts of knowledge management. This is far more synergistic to the concepts in practice today for knowledge management and those predicted by knowledge management thought leaders for the future of knowledge management. It is also the direction that enables growth from reactive to proactive service management.

Will I need to read all the ITIL V3 books to get guidance to help me do my job?

You should.

The books in the V3 core library complement each other to maximize the benefits for readers. Depending on what your job is in ITSM, you may need to pay attention to one volume more immediately than to others. That volume may provide a deeper level of guidance with respect to your specific role. But it is very important to understand the deeper guidance in the wider context of the service lifecycle.

Example: You are the change manager in your organization. The Service Transition book will contain the detailed guidance of the change management process and your source of expert best practice.

The Service Design book establishes the design and service package elements that must be in place to deliver the desired business benefit of that change, and the Service Operation book establishes how to operate and maintain it, so you should have a good comprehension of the Service Design and Service Operation concepts in order to help you apply Service Transition concepts with ease and agility and gain the maximum advantage of best practice in action.

Just as with ITIL V2, it is imperative not only to know what you are doing, but why you are doing it. In this way, it is critical to understand the service life-cycle, the role you play in it and how you influence the outcome of value to the business.

Will our software support tool support an ITIL V3 organization?

The main functional elements of most ITSM type tools will still be required for V3 since the main process elements from V2 remain a part of V3. We do expect, however, that tool vendors will want to make enhancements to ITSM tools to capture the additional power of new processes and functions that V3 will introduce.

Many may introduce new functionality that aligns with V3 as part of their product improvement strategy and delivery cycles. Others may choose to bring new choices to market soon after V3 is launched.

The main thing is that the choice is yours. You can continue to use V2-based tools and practices until YOU are ready to make improvements. We encourage you to take this approach in your ITSM practice.

Will I have to recertify either at the Foundation, Practitioner or Service Manager level?

No.

All current achieved ITIL certifications will continue to be valid under V3. There will, however, be changes to the certifications to align with V3 and leverage the opportunity to make improvements to qualifications, so you will be able to take advantage of this if you wish.

Specific details of changes to certifications are not yet available as they are still in development at this time.

Our organization is currently part way through implementing ITIL processes. Should we complete our ITIL journey against the V2 processes before considering the life-cycle approach that we hear V3 will adopt?

Whether you choose to continue along your current implementation path or transition to the V3 life-cycle approach, rest assured that the processes you are working with today from V2 will continue to be a part of V3.

What is different about V3 is that the former Service Support (SS) and Service Delivery (SD) processes will be integrated into a service life-cycle. The content of V3 in this regard will better reflect how service management is applied in every day practice and so your implementation of them is likely to become easier.

There are some key areas within the former SS and SD processes that are different in V3 and that you should be aware of as you move along your implementation path.

Example:

Incident Management - Service Requests:

In V2, service requests were included as part of the incident management life cycle. In V3 they are not. Service request will now be a function included as part of 'request management' on its own that ties to the change management process. The need to log service requests through a single point of contact as you would today in V2 is still there, however, you may choose to manage them in a different way, perhaps as a part of an enhanced change model that deals with service requests as standard changes.