A Brief History of ITIL

I have looked arround the web a little and was bored with the general ITIL history articles found on the web. There are a few inconsistencies and interesting myths circling around, like the one on the Falklands war and possible general war threat with Argentina, which are denied by the authors of V1.
The fact that Mrs. Thatcher came to power in 1979. and that ICT budget of UK government exceeded 8 bil. UK pounds was probably one of initiators of GITMM (or GITIMM, not sure).

So, here is a short list of important milestones:

1972: IBM starts research on quality service delivery called Information Systems Management Architecture (ISMA).

1980: IBM publishes Volume I of the IBM Management series titled "A management System for the Information Business", first public edition of ISMA.

1986: CCTA authorizes a program to develop a common set of operational guidance with the objective of increasing efficiencies in Government IT.

1988: "Government Infrastructure Management Method (GITMM)", is formalized and issued as 'guidelines' for Government IT operations in the UK focused on Service Level Management. Same year, the development team was expanded and work continued on Cost, Capacity, and Availability.

1989: GITMM title is inadequate. It is not a method, (last M), and it should lose its G letter in order to be marketable out of government. Renamed to ITIL.

1989: First 'ITIL' book published, Service Level Management, then Help Desk (incorporating the concepts of Incident Management), Contingency Planning, and Change Management. Books had 50-70 pages.

1990: Problem Management, Configuration Management and Cost Management for IT Services published.

1991: Published - Software Control & Distribution, on 89 pages.

1992: Availability Management, 69 pages.

1996: (July) First ITIL Service Manager class delivered in US by US company, ITSMI, 16 attended, 10 candidates, nine passes, one distinction, first US company authorized as an ITIL accredited course provider - ITSMI.

1997: Customer focused update to the Service Level Management book, 106 pages.

1997: ITIMF legally becomes what we know today as the IT Service Management Forum (itSMF UK).

2000: Service Support V2 published, 306 pages.

2001: Service Delivery V2 published, 376 pages.

2001: CCTA became a part of the Office of Government Commerce (OGC)

2002: Application Management, 158 pages, Planning to Implement IT Service Management, 208 pages and ICT Infrastructure Management, 283 pages, published.

2003: Software Asset Management, 146 pages, published .

2004: Business Perspective: The IS View on Delivering Services to the Business, published, 180 pages.

2006: (June) ITIL Glossary V2 published

2006: (June) APM Group Limited announced as preferred bidder of ITIL accreditation & certification program, over the itSMF International (expectant winner)

2007: (May) ITIL V3 five core books published.

2011: (July) ITIL 2011 update published.

Let's analyse this timeline a bit:

ITIL V1 was rather similar to IBM's ISMA, especially in support/delivery domain. Core ITIL V2 books did not differ much from ITIL V1. Only a few processes were altered slightly, but the focus and perspective was pretty much unchanged. And this process lasted for some 20 years.

ITIL V3 approximately doubled the scope, almost tripled the number of processes and functions and introduced a few new dimensions and perspectives. We have the first set of core books now, but a lot of time will be needed to develop all the complementary books, to groom and mature the training materials and to polish best implementation practices.

ITIL 2011 books grew 57% in weight and 46% in number of pages due to rewrite and redesign (larger font).

ITIL V2 Mind Maps Free Download

I have took the liberty of posting my ITIL Service Support and Service Delivery mind maps in .mmap form. I have created these while preparing for my ITIL Service Manager exam.
They are simple reference documents with basic bullets per process, but I hope you can use it and upgrade them if you wish while you study.
Documents will be on eSnips for the first time, until I migrate this blog to another domain.
Links to documents can be found in the upper left part of the homepage.
Soon I will post some of my V3 maps and graphs in the same place.

ITIL V3 And The Vacuum

I had a brutally long vacation, as you have maybe noticed from the lack of posts here.

Most of the time I did nothing but enjoyed the sun and the sea, and of course, long reading sessions of new V3 ITIL books. First week I read Strategy, Design and Transition books cover to cover, and couldn't remember much after the first reading. Books are NOT dull and boring like the previous version. Most of the material is well written, but the perspective is new and the flavour is of an acquired taste, especially for an old IT dog accustomed to years of process-based approach to Services. So I read some more and parts of it started clicking in place.

A funny thing happened with this ITIL V3 rollout. Seems like things are getting worse before they will get better. Previous V2 story got a huge and powerful dimension with this new service lifecycle aspect. The result is a vacuum window for all animals in the ITIL food chain. Certification organizations and education companies are waiting for new sylabusses and exams and customers are starving for new trainings. OK, maybe good consulatnts can fish somewhat more in these times of uncertainty.

Best we can do is to try to stay positive and wait for things to happen, hoping for the best.

New Qualification Scheme with nice colourfull explanations and doubtful scoring is published, and now we wait for the sylabusses.

ITIL V3 Foundation exams are out. From what I can see, they last for three days instead of the previous two. Judging by the fact that the scope at least doubled in size, and that Foundation level should have 90% pass rate, I doubt that Foundation material will cover anything more then a well described Glossary. Which is fine by me, at least it will make people read some of the books, and pull their heads from the same old process-based holes in the sand (takes one to know one!).

Nice thing to see is that practitioner layers of qualification scheme are finely granulated to enable a phased approach of candidadtes according to their professional preferences. Score enough points, and move up.

And the whole Scheme has an additional vertical layer. Which is OK, given the size of the newly introduced dimensions.

What bothers me most at a present state: it looks that the change of bottom->top to top->bottom approach has lost it's steam somewhere in the middle, and presently there is a missing link to connect old process-based and the new Service Lifecycle perspective. There is no place with systematically defined new processes and modifications to old ones. It would be the starting point for the new people in the business, trying to build some foundations and systematically start to introduce some order to their hectic IT operations. When you start, you do it from the ground up, you do not build things roof-to-basement. Or am I wrong? What do these people have? A set of five books which are difficult to sell to their management. I'm not worried, it's just that this void, the vacuum window will last for some time, and then things are going to click in place eventually.

All we have to do is wait a while. In the meantime, we could do something, like request the additional complementary material. Or even help to create it. Are the itSMF chapters good candidates for the job? What do you think?