Responding to growing dependence on IT, the UK Government's Central Computer and Telecommunications Agency (CCTA) in the 1980s developed a set of recommendations. It recognized that, without standard practices, government agencies and private sector contracts had started independently creating their own IT management practices.
The IT Infrastructure Library originated as a collection of books, each covering a specific practice within IT service management. ITIL was built around a process model-based view of controlling and managing operations often credited to W. Edwards Deming and his plan-do-check-act (PDCA) cycle.
After the initial publication in 1989–96, the number of books quickly grew within ITIL v1 to more than 30 volumes.
In 2000/2001, to make ITIL more accessible (and affordable), ITIL v2 consolidated the publications into nine logical "sets" that grouped related process-guidelines to match different aspects of IT management, applications and services. The Service Management sets (Service Support and Service Delivery) were by far the most widely used, circulated, and understood of the ITIL v2 publications.[citation needed]
In April 2001, the CCTA was merged into the OGC, an office of the UK Treasury.
In 2006, the ITIL v2 glossary was published.
In May 2007, this organization issued version 3 of ITIL (also known as the ITIL Refresh Project) consisting of 26 processes and functions, now grouped into only 5 volumes, arranged around the concept of Service lifecycle structure. Version 3 is now known as ITIL 2007 Edition.
In 2009, the OGC officially announced that ITIL v2 certification would be withdrawn and launched a major consultation as per how to proceed.[3]
In July 2011, the 2011 edition of ITIL was published, providing an update to the version published in 2007. The OGC is no longer listed as the owner of ITIL, following the consolidation of OGC into the Cabinet Office. The 2011 edition is owned by HM Government.
Overview of ITIL 2007 edition
ITIL 2007 edition (previously known as version 3) is an extension of ITIL v2 and fully replaced it following the completion of the withdrawal period on 30 June 2011.[4] ITIL 2007 provides a more holistic perspective on the full life cycle of services, covering the entire IT organization and all supporting components needed to deliver services to the customer, whereas v2 focused on specific activities directly related to service delivery and support. Most of the v2 activities remained untouched in 2007, but some significant changes in terminology were introduced in order to facilitate the expansion.
Changes and characteristics of the 2011 edition of ITIL
A summary of changes has been published by HM Government. In line with the 2007 edition, the 2011 edition consists of five core publications – Service Strategy, Service Design, Service Transition, Service Operation, and Continual Service Improvement. ITIL 2011 is an update to the ITIL framework that addresses significant additional guidance with the definition of formal processes which were previously implied but not identified, as well as correction of errors and inconsistencies.
Twenty-six processes are listed in ITIL 2011 edition and described below, along with which core publication provides the main content for each process.
ITIL 2007 has five volumes, published in May 2007, and updated in July 2011 as ITIL 2011 for consistency:
The Five Volumes :
ITIL Service Strategy: understands organizational objectives and customer needs.
ITIL Service Design: turns the service strategy into a plan for delivering the business objectives.
ITIL Service Transition: develops and improves capabilities for introducing new services into supported environments.
ITIL Service Operation: manages services in supported environments.
ITIL Continual Service Improvement: achieves services incremental and large-scale improvements.
Due to the similarity between ITIL v3 of 2007 and ITIL 2011, no bridge examinations for ITIL v3 certification holders were created or made available for ITIL 2011 certification.