01-2 Describe and explain why ITIL is successful


ITILFND01 Service Management as a Practice

01-2 Describe and explain why ITIL is successful (SS 1.4)

Many believe that ITIL is successful because it provides a practical approach to apply what has worked for other organizations and codifies that “best practice” into a framework that others can apply in their organizations—hopefully to achieve similar or better results. ITIL collects and presents best practices with an aim to solving the core challenge that every business is faced with—delivering value in return for value. The essence of business is to create something of value that others are willing to trade for and to receive a value in return that is greater than your cost of creating value. This is the magic of business where increased value is created from nothing more than some raw materials, a little hard work, and the creative imagination of an entrepreneur. ITIL seeks to introduce this spark of value creation into enterprise IT and to teach technology managers how to run IT as a business which simply means creating more value than you consume for people who desire what you produce.

There are three characteristics of ITIL that are believed to greatly contribute to its success:

  • ITIL is a vendor neutral framework that applies in any industry or to any technology platform. The fact that it is not commercially owned means that a wide number of organizations can adopt it for themselves with minimal cost.
  • ITIL offers a non-prescriptive approach that can be adapted and adopted by any organization of any size whether public or private.
  • ITIL Codifies best practices that best-in-class service providers throughout the world have used to improve their IT operations.

ITIL is successful because it teaches IT organizations to deliver key aspects of business value to the businesses they serve. Some of the key enabling results from adopting ITIL are:

  • The ability to deliver value in the form of services which along with goods is one of only two ways in which economic value can be exchanged
  • The ability to connect IT strategy to business strategy using the concept of services and the market forces that result from having customers purchase services
  • The ability to deliver increasing service value in terms that resonate with the business
  • The ability to manage the IT budget in a manner that more directly connects business value received with the money the business spends
  • The ability to factor risk into the business equation so that it can be properly managed
  • The ability to develop unique tactics—specific combinations of resources and capabilities that produce desired outcomes—in support of service value delivery
  • The ability to standardize IT business practices in a way that builds upon standardization of technology
  • The ability to develop a business value focused where technology focused cultures typically flourish
  • The ability to leverage the economic feedback mechanisms that operate when customers directly purchase the services that they or their agents consume to improve the value exchange
  • The ability to create an economic system within an organization where the distribution of goods and services is optimized in terms of economic value to the organization
  • Create an economic environment that naturally drives high value at minimum cost

The above content was adapted from the ITIL Service Strategy book section 1.4 to meet the ITIL Foundation exam requirement 01-2.