Spreading the ITIL Gospel

Many organizations I work with have one or two ITIL enthusiasts who promote its adoption throughout IT. These champions often face indifference, ignorance, or outright resistance. To help them overcome these internal challenges, I encourage the ITIL promoters to start small and focus on ITIL’s tangible benefits.

Industry trends prove that ITIL works and is now the worldwide standard for how IT does business. As a result, unenlightened IT workers and departments ignore ITIL at considerable career and organizational risk.

At a minimum, IT staff at every level should pursue ITIL Foundation certification. This can be achieved with a three-day class. If the time or budget for this isn’t available, however, there is certainly no shortage of ITIL information on the internet. RightStar and BMC Software offer many ITIL-related articles and materials for educational reference. In fact, with all the information out there, the ITIL body of knowledge can quickly become overwhelming.

To make ITIL seem more manageable, I encourage IT departments to start with Roles and Responsibilities. This applies to IT departments of all sizes and helps groups within IT to narrow their focus. Most companies already have many of the ITIL process owner roles formally defined, such as Service Desk (a.k.a. Help Desk) Manager. Most also already know who would be responsible for many of the other roles (Problem Manager, Change Manager, Configuration Manager, Release and Deployment Manager, etc.) even if those people don’t have the actual ITIL titles.

It's also important to note that there are typically distinct and separate roles for process managers and process owners or sponsors. Many managers, especially within small- to medium-sized organizations, will take on more than one role.

Breaking the ITIL framework down into the individual processes and related roles will help IT departments identify their easiest starting points. Focus on the quick wins, and that will pave the way towards eventually adopting the full ITIL lifecycle.