I guess I should have expected this (but alas I didn’t) – the Capita ITIL, the IT service management best practice framework, joint venture with the UK government wasn’t big news. If anything, the story made ripples rather than waves; and from a UK government “finances” rather than IT service management (ITSM) best practice perspective.

It’s interesting to consider why – particularly when enterprises are so adamant on requesting ITIL-alignment in ITSM tool selection RFPs. But first a few links:

One thing that I probably didn’t make explicit in my blog is that while it is indeed an opportunity to boost the success of ITIL from a revenue generation perspective, it is also an opportunity to boost success from an execution POV. We often talk of “cradle-to-grave” in ITSM, e.g. processes or services, but what about ITIL from cradle-to-grave? That is ensuring that ITIL isn’t just another set of books on the shelf and another qualification on CVs. That ITIL is something used in anger to deliver better IT services to internal or external customers.

So it got me thinking – what is important to the people out there with real jobs in IT-service-delivery-land?

The “analyst inquiry” POV

I’ve used my inquiry stats before in a blog but looking at them through an “ITIL-conversation” lens I have very few inquiries actually related to ITIL. And that ITSM tool inquiries outweigh ITSM/ITIL inquiries 3-to-1 – but I guess I am an IT industry analyst and people want to talk IT.

These non-tool-related inquiries are mostly around: metrics, improving IT’s image (and value), consolidating service desks, etc. And when ITIL is brought up it is often a client looking for advice on its applicability for a particular use case, such as: ITIL in small organizations, ITIL for digital services, or ITIL for shared services. The other main one is how to get started with ITIL.

What I don’t get is “how can we use more of the ITIL framework to improve …?” Maybe this is left to consultancies to step in on the back of maturity assessments, risk assessments, or gap analyses?

The “blog read” POV

Firstly remember that popular doesn’t mean best; and that a read doesn’t necessarily mean that the blog has actually been read. But here is a top-10-list of what’s been read most since I started blogging at Forrester in June 2011.

  1. “We Do A Great Job In IT, Our Metrics Dashboard Is A Sea Of Green.” Really?
  2. Top 10 IT Service Management Challenges For 2012: More Emphasis On The “Service” And The “Management”  
  3. Top 20 (OK, 50) ITIL Adoption Mistakes
  4. 12 Pieces Of Advice For IT Service Desks – From A Customer!
  5. “We Need To Talk About ITIL”
  6. BMC To Acquire Numara Software: A Few Thoughts From Your Favorite ITSM Analyst  
  7. The Top 10 IT Service Management Challenges For 2013 — But What Did You Achieve In 2012? (an update of #2)
  8. Where Is All The Incident Classification Best Practice?
  9. IT Service Management Metrics: Advice And 10 Top Tips
  10. ITIL Adoption: 5 Steps That Can Help With Success

All of which have over 8,000 reads and all of which have something in common – they are focused on “now.” I’d like to say that they are also all “practical” but alas in the main they don’t constitute stuff that can be “picked up and run with.”

As with the inquiries there are common themes:

  • Metrics
  • Improving perceptions of IT
  • Starting with ITIL
  • Service desk operations.

With the odd-one-out being the BMC-Numara blog.

My point?

Maybe Capita (OK, all of us) can learn from these; or, more importantly and better still, from talking to real IT service delivery people to better understand how ITIL and all the parties generating revenue from the IP can be better positioned to help with execution over exam success. What's needed to help with the challenges of “now” and what needs to be considered to future-proof us for the challenges of “next”?

As always your thoughts and comments are appreciated.