ITIL4 didn’t miss the mark, despite what some may think – after all, what was the mark?. Certainly, it took time to gather traction, but, for example, the ever-expanding group of ITIL4 Masters (a significant investment of time and money) proves that it is a train people wish to be on.

ITIL4 did what was needed by bringing forward Value Chains and integrating a looser, more adaptable structure in line with Agile and DevOps.  It aligned with current thinking and, in many cases, with what was being done in our world. 

There is a perception that because ITIL v3 still delivers value and works, this somehow degrades the impact of ITIL 4. Quite the opposite, in fact, it demonstrates to all the naysayers of ITIL v3, that the framework still has merit NINETEEN YEARS after its release! It was never ‘bad’ as is evidenced by the above (yet ‘it wasnt as good as ITIL v2’ according to many – I see a pattern here!).

ITIL 4 shouldn’t be seen as a ‘fix’ as nothing was broken.  In the same way, there is no need to throw an iPhone 16 in the bin because 17 arrives, and an iPhone 15 still works, albeit not to the same level as a 16 or 17.  Our industry trend is towards the magpie approach or ‘the next shiny thing’.

Inevitably, people are now screaming about AI in relation to ITIL. AI may be ‘the thing’ right now, but it’s not ‘a thing’. It’s a million different things to a million different people, and much like new IT over the years, it has gained pace with everyone, with precious few knowing how to run it, maintain it, or govern it.

Service Management has always been technology agnostic, or at least it should be. AI is technology, not People or Process and therefore largely only one side of the triangle. We had Incidents before it, and we will undoubtedly always have them after it.  A fool with a tool is still a fool even if that tool has a cute chatbot attached.

The real issue with ITIL has never been the content but the context. In a market where people continually recycle old news as ‘The New Thing’, ITIL falls foul of being considered in the same marketing bracket.

A look at this year’s major trends, ‘humans matter’ and ‘customer experience is the most important measure’, being sold as revolutionary, shows how little we learn. I agree with both statements, but to sell them, including training courses and copious material like a revelation, is cynical – the reality is this has always been the case for both.

The real problems with ITIL are the ‘sellers’ who sell ITIL as:

• A silver bullet. 
  It isn’t. 
  
• ‘You must do all of it’. 
  You don’t have to. 
  
• ‘Here is the new, throw out the old’
  Nonsense. It’s a collection of wisdom by some of the brightest and most experienced minds in the industry. 

The main thrust of the post was ‘what do I expect from ITIL 5?’

The answer is the same as I expected from those before it.

• Revised content based on the way the industry has moved since the last release
  
• Concepts built upon all of the good elements of the past, removing those that no longer apply and adding in the good stuff that’s happening now and its latest forms. This could include new content on AI, XLA, SIAM, ESM, SRE, etc etc.
  
• A decent proofread before publication 🙂

It won’t shake the world, nor should it. 99% of the IT organisations on the planet don’t run on the bleeding edge; they want solid, reliable, available, secure systems to empower and protect their businesses. If ITIL continues to do that, along with many other systems, then it will have hit its mark.

If people are waiting for ITIL 5, 6, 7, etc. to ‘fix’ their environment, they have misunderstood the question. If they are running a solid service management organisation and always looking to improve, that’s the people we want to speak to!