Does the ITIL® Framework Need a Facelift?

Malcolm believes the framework is an excellent tool, and his comments are not meant to be a criticism but an encouragement to improve.

Relevance

The eternal problem for the ITIL framework has always been to remain relevant mainly because of the speed of change. For example, few of those involved with the ITIL framework would have had a tablet when the framework was last refreshed in 2011. The iPhone® and iPad® devices came to consumers in June 2007 and April 2010, but who could have predicted, rather than guessed, the impact these technologies would have on consumers? Relevancy could be achieved by having a subscription and issuing updates in the form of new and supplementary segments or by using online technology services. This will always be an issue but can be minimised if approached constructively.

Risk management

Every day technology penetrates further into the fabric of our lives and businesses with IT providing services direct to customers and subscribers. This is not just changing the parameters of our lives but is setting new parameters. For example, in the UK, online betting services are now a prime sponsor of sports, especially football, while genealogy is now an online pastime, whereas DVD stores are disappearing, and book stores are struggling. Welcome to the new world. The problem is, the more dependent an organisation is on IT, the greater the risk of outages; yet risk management does not exist as a separate management component in the ITIL framework and lacks cohesion and presence. Risk management will become more and more pervasive and needs its own management function in the framework.

Governance management and best practises

The business world, and indeed our personal worlds, is being affected by demand for rules and regulations under the guise of governance. We live in an increasingly regulated world. There are even those imposing rules to make sure we don’t hurt ourselves. In the UK, these people are known as ‘elf and safety,’ but there are good reasons why we need governance. Often, governance is achieved by imposing best practices. If you look at the ITIL and COBIT® frameworks, you can see how one supplies the practices while the other, the controls. Best practices and governance are necessary to combat ever increasing threats of computer fraud, which is why we need more controls. The ITIL framework needs to address this need with a supplementary publication.

BYOD

There is a school of thought that claims Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) is a recent phenomenon. In fact, it has existed for many years, but there does seem to be some confusion as to whether bringing your device to the office is BYOD. If so, what about if you work from home but use your own device? Is that BYOD or Use Your Own Device (UYOD)? The figures for home workers do not denote that workers are using BYOD but clearly show the trend for remote working, which is increasing at an accelerated rate, which probably means that BYOD is doing the same. Managing BYOD technologies and services are not supported well by the ITIL framework. They are facing the same problem we are – keeping abreast of the trend. Maybe the publication of a yearly update supplement would fit the bill here.

By Malcolm Fry