Why ISO 20000 Puts ITIL in Further Peril
The publication of an international generic standard for IT Service Management was always bound to change the landscape. Even ignoring other considerations, the fact that its scope is wide enough to over-arch the different frameworks gives it the higher ground in terms of applicability.
The defining diagram is this one, from ISO 20000 Central:
The key here is that the ITIL block in the triangle is actually INTERCHANGEABLE. It can be another framework such as MOF, or it can be a number of frameworks. It certainly does NOT have to be ITIL.
LONGER TERM
The long term impact of this upon ITIL in particular is likely to be profound. Consider the following: ISO 20000 offers ORGANIZATIONAL certification. This in turn means that it can be a driver for market differentiation, effectively a direct profit driver. The attraction of this to corporates is therefore very clear and obvious.
Now drill down a little deeper. As ISO 20000 can be used to leverage corporate advantage, when corporates are looking to train their ITSM staff and to support INDIVIDUAL level certification, what sort of scheme do you imagine will attract them?
You have got it: an examination/certification scheme that openly embraces ISO 20000 from the bottom up. Is that ITIL? I don't think so.
This is where BCS-ISEB and EXIN may have been extremely cute. Even in their very first joint press release they explicitly mention ISO 20000. When they create their examination and certification process they have the opportunity to fully embrace the new scenario and the new ITSM world. They can link their scheme directly into the corporate objective: directly into ISO 20000. Now that is one hell of a selling point.
This could spell REAL problems for APMG/OGC and their much more contained, inward looking, ITIL scheme. As time progresses, from an executive perspective, this may well begin to look to be a narrow proprietary MOF type diversion. This impression becomes even more acute when instead of seeking ways to open ITIL to the market and to the world, they apparently focus effort on the creation of the hideously titled "Intellectual Property Rights Board".
And whilst they continue to attempt to build these walls around the framework - the relentless tide continues to flow.
3 Comments:
Oh absolutely! itSMF are also climbing on the ISO20000 bandwagon, trying to capture the high ground of certification. They are all at it: they can read the signs.
I have a slightly different spin on swapping ITIL out for other frameworks: I think ISO20000 itself defines it, and it just needs someone to flesh it out with detail on the ISO20000 bones to kill ITIL stone dead. So I think in future the processes at that level wqon't be called ITIl or MOF or anything: they'll be called ISO20000.
As long as ISO is a norm and ITIL (or whatever method)is just a way to comply to a norm, it seems obvious that ITIL is interchangeable. Advice: make use of whatever method necessary to reach the desired norm, period.
Since ITIL has become mainstream and a big business, everybody wants to jumb the bandwagon.
I do beleive that ITIL carries it success in itself and that norms and methods wont be able to unseat the success of it.
The main strength of it being that it describes the WHAT, and that an intelligent implementation depends on the successful definition of the HOW in the context of implementation.
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