The value and ROI of ITIL? It is not what you may think.
Years ago* I wrote "The Emperor has no clothes. Where is the evidence for ITIL?" and I said "I would like to see some solid scientific research on quantified cost/benefit analyses". I think I can point us towards the answer and we may not like it.
ITIL is not a method or an approach. ITIL is a reference framework, a benchmark of what ITSM would look like in the perfect world with infinite time and money. What consenting organisations do with ITIL in the privacy of their projects is their business, and it could be anything their wild imaginations devise.
More recently I wrote "Do you need to do ITIL?" In that post I said:
How does one distinguish ITIL process improvement from process improvement? I reckon you could use astrology as your framework for process review and improvement and you'd still show a significant result.
What framework you use for that transformation is of less importance than what experts you get in to help, what cultural change methodology you use, what executive support you get, how real the project is, and so on. All those decisions will help determine whether ITIL is useful or not in your case... and all those contributions are not from ITIL per se.
Recently on Stephen Mann's blog (again!) he asked what constitutes ITIL success? Several folk answered "Wrong question". John Clark said
I see ITIL as an input, not a process or output, to what an IT org, internal or commercial, is trying to accomplish. So the success factor, and measurement, should be around; Did we make the customer experience better or more efficient? Did we save the money we said we would? Did we avoid a compliance penalty by leveraging bits where applicable? and then asking REALLY? REALLY?
ITIL is a tool for improving ITSM like a hammer is a tool for building a house.
An ITIL implementation project is as daft as a hammer implementation project.
And measuring the ROI of ITIL is as daft as measuring the ROI of a hammer.
Here's how you implement ITIL: "Attention everybody! As of today ITIL is our benchmark framework for ITSM, now get back to work".
So, the ROI of ITIL? The returns on ITIL are:
- the value of a framework in guiding our IT initiatives versus the costs of inventing our own framework or standard
- the value of "out of the box" descriptions as a starting point or input to our own descriptions
- the value of having some independent source of definitions to reduce argument
So the only value of ITIL is the contribution it makes in injecting IP into the design of improvements we make in our organisation. You can't ascribe to ITIL the benefits of the wider project of which it formed a part. ITIL saved us inventing descriptions from scratch. ITIL pointed the way, saving us making some mistakes. ITIL gave us some commonality of terms (though many are still debated). That is the value of ITIL and that's it.
To get the ROI, weigh that against the costs, of training, consulting, books etc. I think you usually come out ahead but only if you spend carefully and not by as much as some might have you believe because the direct value of ITIL is quite small relative to the overall initiatives of which it forms a part.
*On the internet five-and-a-half years ago is, like, a lifetime.
Made in New Zealand 
Comments
The view from the ivory tower of ISO Standards
Dear Skeptic
Could not resist commenting on this post. "So the only value of ITIL is the contribution it makes in injecting IP into the design of improvements we make in our organisation. You can't ascribe to ITIL the benefits of the wider project of which it formed a part. ITIL saved us inventing descriptions from scratch. ITIL pointed the way, saving us making some mistakes. ITIL gave us some commonality of terms (though many are still debated). That is the value of ITIL and that's it"....
Bang on the money....
I want to dig a hole I am not going to get a project together to design a spade or a digger I wil buy or rent one then measure it effectiveness by the size of my hole. but jeeps I am gonna dig a hole. if I get consultants in to tell me how to dig the hole I want to be able to use a common language to describe the hole. So these 'hole experts' can get my vision. If however I am going to use a team of my own 'hole' experts I want a common set of definitions and terms to describe the vision of my hole to them.
Alright the jokes wearing thin. But think of this another way, the latest iteration of the ISO SMS standards (20000-27000) have just had a load of definitive updates carried out on them to 'align' them more with the standard service management language. ITIL has been yet again shoe-horned into it by the ladle full to make life easier for ... well noone really... if you want to call your incidents 'cabbages' and you service catalogue the 'book of doom' then go ahead all your doing is calling common sense things by other (possibly more groovy) names. you will of course find that going forward when you want to talk about your cabbages causing multiple issues in your book of doom you might get some queer glances from any third parties you work with in providing your services (or pink hairy fairies or whatever you call them) because they won't have a scooby about what your talking about so at worst you take a hit on interoperability (mind you thats never bothered Big Blue) . We get a plethora of dogma with ITIL and some simple basic common sense precepts dressed up as highly intellectual garbage!
ITIL has done its job admirably as a bible of mostly apocraphal stories of success interposed with the odd little gem of common sense buried in its self aggrandising doggeral. The quickest way to sort the wheat from the chaff and look for the common sense stuff is to ignore the pompous drivel spouted by many a SM consultant and in some cases a lot of the ITIL authors and actually focus on the objective of each process set. it does not take a genius to work out that all the reams of toss that have grown up around ITIL have been based on 1000's of people collective knowledge. Some good, some bad, some practical, some laughable...
I have been in the Service Management industry for nearly 20 years and in that time have been most surprised when people have actually applied Occams razor to a problem and discovered the magical truth that the most simple answer is usually the most 'right'. I work at the British Standards Insititution as its Service Management SME and I still laugh my bits off every time someone comes up and asks how do they 'implement' ITIL to become compliant with a standard? my answers are usually unprintable.
Look at a set of ISO standards they are usually less than 30 pages long, make definitive statements about what you do and don't need to do to be compliant and then work out if you need to read another 2000 pages of consultative verbal masturbation before diving in and having a go yourself by taking little bits of applied common sense and mixing it with your own experience.
ITIL is just words to describe in a very long winded way the spade to dig your hole... its overblown, over complex, over quoted, and well just plain over.... OK the processes themselves less so, but the zealous claptrap spouted by some of its snake oil salesmen (consultants and ITIL experts... eugh!) is juts a load of old guff.
Infinite time and money would provide a panacea friendly environment... when have you ever seen a firman reading the process on how to beat the flames out that are burning his backside? Never, he will be thrashing wildly a rolling around like a lunatic (or using the manual to physically quench the fire) but you can be sure he will be doing his absolute best to beat out the flames, and will, all things being equal, eventually succeed. It may not be pretty, and he may get a little singed but probably less than if he sat on his afformentioned backside reading the manual then having a go. to take that analogy (excuse the pun) one stage further he has probably seen one of his mates rolling around with his tailfeathers on fire enough times to know the right way to puit them out anyway!
ITIL is not dead but if it were an old faithful labrador it would be on the porch getting its last Bonio before getting both barrels betwixt its drooping ears and joining the Choir eternal!
....Common Sense 1, ITIL Service Manglement dogma bureau-3.... and counting)....
Jack Robertson-Worsfold, Service Manager for the British Standards Institution
Voted off the ITIL island...
Jack - well put, and I mean well put. Here I sit, an ex-pat Brit imported into supposedly sunny San Diego, staring out (again) at a dismal grey rainy day, a view more commonly attributed to Seattle or someplace way north of here. Feeling a bit down I was hesitant to do my promised Sunday chore of contributing to worldwide blogs, linkedin groups and Skeps site - but I did - and I'm so glad I stumbled across your rant. Thoroughly enjoyed the luxurious language, and the points made.
Those who know me might view my comments on ITIL differently today if they ever took away the point you and Skep make so bluntly. Its not ITIL stupid - its the result. I think my presentation at itSMF USA in 2005 was titled something like that "ITIL Doesn't Matter - Results Do". Not well received by the 'establishment'...
ITIL lacks a proper marketing program. It needs to be repositioned as Skep outlined it - as a reference for helping you form your ITSM ambitions. Then we need ITSM to be better described as a way of thinking and managing an IT organization so it can, or because it must, be performance managed as a service provider organization. ITSM should mean service management concepts and methods applied to the challenges of IT. Not something IT has invented. Yes I feel a minor rant coming on. because service management was borne out of product management and service marketing thinking of the 1970s... (Levitt, Normann, Chase, Lovelock etc).
ITIL has value, its just not where folks look or expect. Again I agree with Skep, its in providing pre-cooked language, a lexicon, and some framing for IT to exploit (dare I say adopt and adapt), not IMPLEMENT, into an existing or burgeoning ambition. Starting with ITIL will mean you will fail your executive and your customer. But its better than starting with ITIL and thinking you will end with it.
Having been thoroughly whipped and beaten with a wet copy of Strategy behind the "we love ITIL" woodshed for many years, placed in the ITIL village stocks and pelted with best practices, and voted off the ITIL island more times than I recall, I finally feel folks are getting it - its not ITIL.... I am not bitching at ITIL... I like ITIL... what I am bitching at are those who misuse, misunderstand, and generally piss in the well of service management. Leave the IT room, do your research, discover the books that exist on the topic written by non-IT people that predate ITIL's 1980s birth, it will make ITIL so much easier to exploit, it will also make many of its gaps and navel musing so much easier to recognize....
Oh well, my voluntary work is done here, back to the grey day...