ITIL Overview ITIL was introduced in the UK in the 1980's and remains under the control of the Office of Government Commerce (OGC). Mid 2007 saw the launch of the new version of ITIL (Version 3) as it continued to keep in touch with the fast pace of technological developments and the demands of all businesses.
At present most organisations are working to "Version 2" of ITIL, as "Version 3" takes time to become established. It was expected that ITIL Version 2 will be retired as a recognised set of processes by November 2008 but the training program for Version 2 has been extended to November 2010.
One of the great features of ITIL is that being in the public domain; it can be adopted by any organisation. Like PRINCE2 for project management, ITIL has become the standard in IT Service Management.
Version 2 of ITIL is split into two distinct subjects:
Version 3 of ITIL is split into five distinct subjects:
Each of these subjects are split into a number of processes and whilst these are designed to interact with each other, some processes can be omitted whilst others can be implemented as single elements. That really sums up the flexibility ITIL!
The good news about Version 3 is that whilst new subject names have been created, the underlying processes remain the same (with a number of new processes being added and a few modifications to the existing processes). The key difference between the two versions, its that whilst Version 2 traditionally focuses on the live and operational state of services, Version 3 looks at the whole service lifecycle from concept and design through to retirement. The introduction of "Service Strategy" also give's thought to the whole approach towards service management.
For more information about the elements that make up both the Version 2 and Version 3 processes, follow the links off of the navigation menu on the right hand side.