Don’t throw away ITIL just because of 'new' challenges

Obsessive arguing about ITIL and best practice definitions has caused the IT industry to lose sight of much bigger and more pressing problems.  That was the view put forward in an article on ServiceDesk360 which urges us to stop arguing the fine details of ITSM and collaborate to improve the bigger picture.  

It’s a good point; becoming too distracted and blinkered by minutiae is a valid problem which can be applied to any industry, but saying that IT has no time to study and debate precise principles and definitions is short sighted.  IT management and support is implicitly about control, ensuring multiple moving parts collaborate intelligently, and managing inevitable change.  In short, IT needs fine detail and constant tuning to make it work.  

We shouldn’t forget that ITIL was created because government departments were trying to achieve the same goals when building IT services, and rather than individual departments and businesses wasting time and effort reaching this destination, ITIL pulled together established methods and provided a common sense for solving technology problems.  

ITIL became so popular because the common sense methods it described are applicable to almost all businesses in any sector and any country in the world.  This core of logical information hasn’t suddenly been made redundant because the challenges have changed.

Cloud, SaaS and user devices do present their own challenges, but we already have tools such as ITIL and Lean which help us get the basics right and inform our strategy when approaching these entities.  We need a balance between referencing the experience we already have and developing new ideas.  ITIL was created so we don’t have to reinvent the wheel, and while the challenges may look new and daunting, much of what we have collectively learnt over the years already provides us answers.