Have you heard the news? ITIL framework is evolving and a new version, ITIL 4, will be released throughout 2019 and 2020. Here are a few insights about ITIL and some answers about its new version.
ITIL and GÉANT Community
ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) is a widely accepted and used approach for IT Service management (ITSM). Withing the GÉANT community, it has been particulary helpful and instrumental to the development and adoption of common standards and practices of service management and product lifecycle management. As a practice, it is essential for coordinating steps and actions across multiple stakeholders involved in the development, release and support of services and products within our community.
GÉANT Community has a long standing history with ITIL. The Learning and Development task of GÉANT project has been running organised courses for over 5 years covering all specializaitions within the framework, and that is on top of the hap hazard training history during the earlier stages of the project. In 2018 alone, GLAD organised 3 ITIL events that hosted 36 participants leading to their industry qualifications.
What is new in ITIL 4?
According to ILEARN, the following features are new in ITIL 4:
- Holistic approach
ITIL 4 takes an ‘integrated’ service management approach. It blends ITSM, development, operations, business relationships and governance ensuring that all functions across the organisation are working towards common objectives. - Service value system
ITIL has evolved beyond the delivery of services to providing end-to-end value delivery. The focus is now on the co-creation of value through service relationship, which in the new verson is called a service value system (SVS). - Service value chain
Incorporated within the SVS is the service value chain (SVC). The service value chain is the set of interconnected activities that provides an operating model for the creation, delivery, and continual improvement of services. - ITIL practices
ITIL process will expand their architecture to include other elements such as roles, skills, people and resources. These will be referred to as ITIL practices in ITIL 4. - Integration with other practices and new ways of working
ITIL 4 will reflect on the recent trends and new ways of working such as Agile, DevOps, Lean, IT governance and leadership. It will provide the so much needed flexibility to adopt and adapt. - Guiding principles
The ITIL guiding principles will become the core of ITIL 4 providing guidance to organizations in their work as they adopt a service management approach. - Four dimensions
To reflect its holistic approach, ITIL also defines four dimensions that are collectively critical to the effective and efficient development and release of products and services. The four dimensions represent perspectives which are relevant to the whole service value system.
When will the updates be available?
- ITIL Foundation – available, released in February, 2019
- ITIL Specialist modules – from November 2019
- ITIL Strategist – November 2019
- ITIL Leader – H2 2019
- ITIL Master – details to be released at a later date.
What does it mean for me?
What does it mean for GÉANT community?
If you have already reached ITIL 3 certification and don’t want to loose them, there will be a possiblity to transition to ITIL 4. However, ITIL 3 Foundation will not be a part of the transition group due to a great deal of changes in content. It is recommended to take ITIL 4 Foundations module.
There are several options for transitioning from ITIL 3 to ITIL 4 and they depend on the number of obtained ITIL 3 credits. The system is rather cumbersome, and one can easily get confused. For these reasons we have opted for a webinar with an expert to explain the process and answer the questions. As we are currently, working on the time and date of the webinar, you can ensure your participation by expressing an interest here. We will send a direct invitation and various ITIL related updated to all those who registered their interest with us. Alternatively, you can also watch events updates on GLAD’s calendar, the webinar will definitely be displayed there.
Lastly, if you would like to give it a try yourself and learn more about possible transition scenarios, we recommend you to read this post.
