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To ITIL® V3 and Beyond: Travels with Rob Stroud
March 2008 - Posts
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Is the “IT” Label Limiting?
The IT Skeptic recently wrote a blog entitled “Perhaps one day Service Management will become a universal discipline: ITIL 4?” It starts, “Who left the IT in itSMF? What a shame we have kept our focus narrow.”
Some of you may be thinking that’s absurd, of course there should be an “IT” in “itSMF.” But I can tell you that as part of the COBIT v4.1 discussions, we seriously considered the relevance of “IT” and the possibility of removing those letters. Something that many people forget is that the “IT” in COBIT is actually “information and related technology”, not “Information Technology” as many assume.
As the COBIT “IT” represents that the information we manage, and how we manage it, are key, we decided to keep it, excuse the pun. COBIT V4.1 provides an appendix on mapping Business goals to IT goals and IT processes. I don’t believe we went that far in Service Strategy in V3, although good guidance on driving the IT strategy from the business strategy and constraints is well documented. So the “IT” in COBIT is fair, but what about ITIL….
IT and the business are becoming more integrated and dependent on each other. As the skills required by our IT professionals incorporate more business knowledge, the line between what is IT and what is not will become increasingly blurred.
In the Governance space, we have already seen the adoption of Project and Portfolio Management (PPM) processes, historically employed for IT, adopted by the business for new business initiatives. The same is true in the Service Desk area. I recall a recent visit with at an organization that is using its Service Desk product to track and manage not only IT incidents but also calls from external customers about products purchased at the organization’s website—clearly a business function.
Of course, “IT” will always be a must in certain applications, for example, the t-shirt sold by the IT Skeptic that declares “If IT ain’t broke don’t fix it.” We’ll table that discussion for the time being, but the question as to when to label something “IT”--be it a process, a practice, or an organization--will be raised with increasing frequency.
I must order one of the IT Skeptic’s t-shirts soon.
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