ITIL V3, LEAN and Consultation

A week ago I made a quick post related to the fact that ITIL should already be LEAN, and this got me thinking about the evolution of ITIL and whether it has taken a wrong turn.

In the early days of IT management there was no standard way of running IT, everyone did it differently but some did it with more success, it was these successful methods that formed the foundation of ITIL.

ITIL V2 built upon these into a wildly successful framework that has become the de-facto IT operations standard.

ITIL V3 is an update to V2, It was written by experienced ITIL professionals - ones with intimate knowledge of the holes in V2 and where it needs to be extended.

This is a valuable place to get some insight, however, ITIL was a success because it looked outside itself to see where others were running their IT organization using better practice; it took the worlds best IT organizations and showed us how they worked.

There are organizations that have taken non-ITIL paths to success, LEAN, 6Sigma etc; what have they learned? are we embracing innovation and evolution?

The challenge for V3 is the success of V2

The innovation in IT management is not only in the adoption of ITIL but will also come from elsewhere, ITIL needs to be open to success OUTSIDE the ITIL framework and bring this into the fold.

"Best practice" is an endless quest, ITIL needs to ensure that it embraces developments in the Service (and IT) managmement field, that it dosen't get caught in a cycle of perfecting the processes it built in the 1980s while the industry moves on.