Demolishing the Myths

You cannot adopt ITIL just by running a few finite implementation projects, Kenilian's Briscoe says. The simple fact is, ITIL is not an easy solution, whatever the myths and misconceptions surrounding it, he says.

Rather, the initial project is always just the starting point. Adoption will fail if you do not follow up with continuous improvement, the assignment of process owners and regular reviews. "In no way is ITIL a 'set and forget' implementation," he says.

Nor is there, or should there be, any such thing as the hands-off process owner. If ITIL is to succeed it is essential that process owners "walk the talk": working with each team in turn to help them adopt the process and fine-tune it.

Likewise, ITIL simply will not work by dictate, Briscoe says. "Just because senior IT management or the CIO dictate ITIL doesn't mean IT staff will adopt it. It needs to be sold in the sense that IT staff must see the benefits to themselves of using it. Again — process owners need to do this on a team-by-team basis rather than just waffle on with platitudes."

He says a common mistake is to forget that for most IT staff, their primary day-to-day job is doing something in IT, not being an ITIL expert. "The various ITIL disciplines need to impact them but to be unobtrusive: that is, just a normal part of business as usual, not a major hindrance to them doing their basic job."

Quality Methodology Needed

"The groups who want to do ITIL fall into several camps," says George Spafford, principal consultant, ITIL service manager, Pepperweed Consulting. "Usually they want to do it as cheaply as possible so they go out and buy some books and they try to do it and then wonder why they don't get the great results that everybody talks about. In other cases, the CIO gets the ITIL bug and sets everybody off to ITIL foundations training and they come back and say: Okay, let's do it," Spafford says.

Spafford is in no doubt Australian organizations are by and large significantly further along the adoption cycle than those in the US. Even so, he warns, the abundance of hype around ITIL risks turning it into a fad. There is a lot more to ITIL that just buying some books or attending a few classes, he says.

"What people need to recognize with ITIL is that you're really talking about a quality methodology for IT," he says. "If you say: 'I'm going to look at how to do change management', or 'I'm going to learn how to do configurations', you're missing the point. The power of ITIL lies in the fact that it's a systemic approach towards delivering services to customer requirements."

To really get a handle on ITIL you should read the books and attend the classes — Spafford was lucky enough to take a class under distinguished ITIL practitioner Ivor Evans, who offered a wealth of useful anecdotes — but also get involved with local interest groups where you can exchange notes, and look at hiring experienced talent.

"The whole point is there is a very distinct learning curve there. If you have the time, the patience and the fortitude to learn, and slowly evolve it yourself, [that's] great. But you're talking about organizational change and too often management says: 'Today you are going to learn how to do IT service management'. So you study everything you can, you take all the classes that you can, and then you put together something that looks fantastic on paper, and you start to roll it out.

"And you start to have problems: You have a political issue here, you didn't realize there was a little nuance over there. Pretty soon people start losing their excitement for having something new and great. And pretty soon ITIL starts getting a black eye, you start getting bruises all over you from people complaining."

He says by this time cynicism about ITIL may be so strong than any attempt to resurrect the effort is likely to fail, because of embedded cultural resistance.