In the latest versions of ITIL, the framework has succeeded to adapt to some of the new realities in the world today. At the same time, the books have also safeguarded everything that was already there from previous versions. This includes the work on concepts like the Service Desk, Service Level Agreements, the difference between Incident Management and Problem Management, usage of tooling like the Configuration Management Database, ITIL functions, ITIL processes, principles of services and service management.
The way some of these topics were presented in previous versions of ITIL reminded of the ideas of those times, like a particular view on (Total) Quality Management, a strong argument for focus on Customer Satisfaction, and some inspiration on applying a traditional automobile manufacturing plant like cross-functional process model to IT support organizations. All these concepts were kept, but translated to today's language. Managing a "value web" does indeed sound more recognizable than just controlling suppliers. "Continuous Service Improvement" is more than traditional Quality Management. And dynamically optimizing a portfolio of services based on strategic assets and market needs, definitely makes more sense than only negotiating a service level document with the internal customer.
During the same refresh process, new realities from today's world were added to the books. For instance, outsourcing and related sourcing options have become a reality. The way today's service tools can assist in automation, has become relevant. And some processes that seemed to be missing in the previous books like monitoring based activities have been added. On top of the distinction between functions and processes, emphasis on the services view, the lifecycle view, and the service chain view were added. Tens of processes were added, function definitions were filled in, activities and tasks were added that float somewhere between these viewpoints, and all of this was mapped to five core books (rather than two), according to the concept of the lifecycle (rather than decision horizon).
Yet the abstraction level remained, leading to a set of concepts and theories that would require multiple dimensions and complex links to visualize. While it was possible to teach the concepts, relevance and limitations of the previous version of ITIL even to junior IT professionals in a two-day Foundation class, this has become more difficult in the latest version. After a three-day training, some of the participants leave with only slightly more than the awareness of traditional concepts in combination with a suitcase full of specific terminology and some confusion over how all this fits together.
Implementation frameworks for ITIL, like proprietary frameworks within IT Service Provider corporations or the Microsoft Operations Framework from Microsoft have tried to flatten or simplify the theories from ITIL, with varying success. The ISO 20000 standard, generally considered a subset of ITIL suitable for assessing and certifying organizations against, selected only 13 elements out of the hundreds in ITIL, in a single mental tree.
Implementation frameworks for ITIL, like proprietary frameworks within IT Service Provider corporations or the Microsoft Operations Framework from Microsoft have tried to flatten or simplify the theories from ITIL, with varying success. The ISO 20000 standard, generally considered a subset of ITIL suitable for assessing and certifying organizations against, selected only 13 elements out of the hundreds in ITIL, in a single mental tree.