ITIL Version 3.0 and the Recommercialization of ITIL
by Ron Muns, founder & CEO, HDI
There are a number of things happening to the content of ITIL as well as the manner in which OGC develops books, testing, and training. The HDI Strategic Advisory Board is working on a guidance paper as well as presentations to disseminate what we believe will be the impact of changes that are occurring over the next year-plus. I will limit my words primarily to explaining the changes and hold most opinions until they have been vetted by the board.
What is ITIL V3.0?
How will testing change? This has not been announced, but the current method of having independent exam proctors will likely be discontinued. APM Group currently has a contract with the OGC for certification testing for Prince 2, a UK-based project management certification/training program. PRINCE stands for "Projects IN a Controlled Environment" Under this program, it is my understanding that the instructor passes out and collects the exam papers. This will be less costly and likely more profitable for APM Group and the OGC, but without the "control" of an independently proctored exam. Ninety percent of all ITIL certifications cover what has been taught in the ITIL Foundations course. The current examination is based on the content in one of the five new books. Will the Foundations exam expand in scope to cover all five books or will it focus only on the Service Operations book? This is yet to be announced. The current version of ITIL has been around for roughly six years and the "refresh" project, which has been going on for over a year, was originally launched to achieve consistency in writing styles and to make minor updates to the ITIL process framework. The result is that it ended up being a lot more expansive than a "refresh." There are going to be five books in the new series: What we have considered to be the primary ITIL books, Service Support and Service Delivery, are now included in Service Operations. The other four books are largely additional content and represent a significant scope expansion. Without going into a lot of detail, the scope expansion takes the British Government into areas covered by other standards' bodies (i.e., COBIT and Six Sigma). We have generally looked to the OGC for an IT Service Management process framework. The expansive scope could dilute the depth of attention to the process framework. When can we expect to see ITIL V3.0? The official dates have changed a couple of times. The first date for the new books was Q4, 2006; the second was February, 2007; and the latest is April, 2007. We expect that some or all of the books will slip a bit beyond that. A lot of IT organizations provide Foundations certification based on the ITIL books, thus, they are quite interested and will be watching for the next release of publications, courseware, and testing. We expect that new curriculum and testing will not be available until Q1, 2008. There will need to be time for the development of testing strategies, guidance for training organizations, re-certification for trainers/organizations, test development, and testing procedures. The time required for quality control of the new books is hard to predict. We fear that the pressure to meet the April date may impact the depth of reviews. Each of the five books has two authors with most author pairs from vendor organizations. While I am certain they are writing to guidelines, it may be difficult for them to keep a common writing style. All of this makes it hard for us to predict with certainty when the publications will be available. What do you mean "Recommercialization?" The official term is Commercial Activities Recompetition (CAR). Currently, testing is proctored by EXIN (based in the Netherlands) and ISEB (based in the UK, and a part of the British Computing Society). The printing and publishing responsibilities were and remain under contract with The Stationary Office or TSO (UK-private company). The winners of the recompetition for testing and certification of training organizations was APM Group, a small UK company. EXIN and ISEB have rights to do testing through mid-2007, and after that, it is unclear what will happen. Conclusion As indicated earlier, I fear that the scope expansion for ITIL V3.0 will impact quality. The scope expansion plus the CAR will likely cause new competitors to form in the area of ITSM process guidelines and certification testing. It is hard to be an expert at everything, and the OGC has chosen not to focus entirely on process frameworks for IT Service Management. Only time will tell how the IT world will react to the ITIL V3.0 books and new examination processes. The HDI Strategic Advisory Board will be providing extensive guidance over the next few months. A special thanks to the sub-group that has been working so hard to understand the changes and their impact on IT organizations around the world (Laurie Gloge, Brian Johnson, Robert Minicozzi, Jim Ryan, and Sandra Simpson).
