What I learned about ITIL V3 @ itSMF USA convention in Salt Lake City, Utah

The key architect of ITIL v3, Sharon Taylor, presented as the Tuesday afternoon keynote speaker to a full house in the Salt Palace convention center. The move to version 3 from version 2 is a massive project involving thousands of people world-wide over a two-year period. The project solicited input from delivery engineers, consultants, vendors and businesses about what worked, what wasn’t clear and what was missing from the last update 6 years ago. The result is a comprehensive revision, reflecting current best-practices built around 5 new core books, Complimentary (current) topics, and web products.

What I heard about the 5 Core Practices:

Service Strategies
Business strategy and alignment including vertical market examples
Looks at business as an Eco system and focuses on the value chain
It’s an adaptive process for custom services and provides real strategies
Helps the IT organization manage today's computing environments – complexities exist now that V2 didn’t address
Helps to increase the economic life of services by providing real guidance in selecting service strategies
Shows how ITIL supports and integrates with Six Sigma, CobiT, etc.

Service Design
Structure and Architecture
Focuses on the policies, architecture, portfolios and service models
Emphasis on effective technology and process measurement
There are some components of the V2 Capacity and Availability Management
Sections on the process of how to develop an outsource model or develop shared services
Content on “The Service Package” – Utilities, warranties, capabilities and the triggers for redesign

Service Transition
Bringing the developed processes into live practice
How to effectively manage the change, risk and quality assurance
There are new components to Change, Release and Configuration
Sections on Risk and Quality Assurance design
Managing the organizational and cultural change during transition
The development of a Service Management Knowledge System – enables the CMDB to focus more on technology configuration items

Service Operations
The “day-to-day” support and delivery of IT
How to deliver responsive, stable services
Robust, end-to-end operations practices
They have re-engineered Incident and Problem process for clarity
Development of new functions and processes including:
Event, Technology and Request Management
Influencing Strategy, Design, Transition and Implementation
New capabilities focus:
SOA
Virtualization
Adaptive Service
Agile Service
Other operations models

Continual Service Improvement
Ensuring a focus on measurement and reporting to enable improvement
Identifying measures that truly mean something and improvements that work
Business case ROI
Specifies what to measure
Gets past “just talking about it”
Assess the overall health of ITSM in the environment
Portfolio alignment in real-time with business needs
Identification of the growth and maturity of the Service Management practice
How to measure, interpret and then execute based on the results

The Complimentary components will deliver:
Comprehensive process maps
Training guides
Templates
Case studies
Industry specific contributions
And more…

There will be “quality criteria” and standards applied to contributions in this area to maintain a consistent look and feel to the material. The Complimentary component format will permit updating of “Best Practices” while maintaining the core material. The refresh cycle will be dramatically reduced while continuing to deliver the high quality content.

Great news.
My next thought was addressed almost as soon as it came into my mind. When will ITIL V3 be available?

The current timeline:
Mid October 2006
All drafts are expected to be complete
End of October 2006
Editorial review will take place
This should be quick since the current material is being read almost as soon as it is written
The Marketing of the new material will begin
The itSMF attendees we shown the cover artwork for the 5 books – I thought it was OK – best described as “close-ups of nature” – Starfish arms – seed pods are two I remember. Describing here doesn’t do it justice. It’s tasteful, simple and will be easily recognized
October/November 2006
Review by the ITIL Advisory Group
November/December 2006
“Public” review
Individuals will be solicited and asked if they want to participate, what section they feel qualified to review and why. The individual will also need to present their credentials demonstrating their experiance in the desired area.
December 2006/January 2007
Review and “endorsement” by the itSMF Global
April 2007
Publication and launch
Spring 2007
The qualification scheme is completed

Keep in mind that at each review point the content could be edited/modified. Once the content is “final” it takes the publisher about 90-days to deliver a printed copy.

So what does all this mean? That will be the focus of my next post. My flight got me back into Philadelphia @ 1:00 AM so...back to work...