A few days ago I was talking with my director and he described that ITIL V3 was just too complicated and essentially boiled it down to “V2 keeps it simple with two books, one how to deliver the services and the other how to support them. V3 breaks everything up into five books, which this organization isn’t ready for.” With this statement and all the other posts/discussions about the validity and practicality of V3, I’ve finally come up with my own opinion and it’s that V3 should really be V4. Now I understand there’s a lot of inconsistencies and criticisms of the texts and that’s a reason a “refresh” is being published, but I’m simply going on my own opinion as someone that started my training in V3 and hasn’t had any V2 training (I did purchase and read the books since I hate feeling like I could be missing something).  V3 really does make sense to me.  It’s aim is to, as completely as possible, describe a framework on how to deliver services using a complete life-cycle approach.  This means working through when a new service is required by the business, through it’s development and testing, to when it’s deployed and eventually enters standard operations.  All this is meant to have improvements continually taking place in order to allow the service to dynamically change with the business so when it’s deployed it can provide maximum value.  This sounds wonderful!  Except I can’t think of any organizations that are built this way.  Most already have services and CI’s in the environment and I’m sure they already have some kind of development process in place.  So when I think about how V3 is going to fit into my current workplace, I can’t but help feel overwhelmed and think it’s impossible.  This is why I say V3 should really be V4.  To me at least, it seems too far out in the future to make sense by most companies.  I can definitely see value in certain parts of V3, such as making Request Fulfillment a specific process and including Access Management, but the practicality of trying to completely implement ITIL V3 is not realistic for where I work.  I do think that the concepts of V3 are where IT Service Management Best Practices need to go, but it just feels like an in-between standard is missing.  This may be why things like ITIL lite and MOF are gaining popularity.  They just seem practical.  Ultimately, do I like V3?  Yes!  Do I like it better than V2?  Again, yes.  In its entirety is it practical for where I work?  No.  I think someone needs to publish ITIL V2.5 so there’s a stepping stone between V2 and V3.

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Started working in IT in 1999 as a support desk analyst as a way to help pay for food during college. Studied Electrical Engineering for two years before realizing biochemistry was more fun than differential equations, and so ultimately graduated with a Biology degree in 2006. Having (reluctantly) failed at getting accepted into dental school, embraced working in IT and has gone broke becoming an ITIL Expert. Likes to jog, sing camp songs, quote Mel Brooks movie lines and make dumb jokes and loves working for an Israeli tech company where December 25th is a regular work day.