ITIL Refresh Project / ITIL Version 3

A six month project was launched by the 'owners of ITIL', Office of Government Commerce (OGC) based in the UK, on the 8th November 2004, to define the scope of and development plans for a refreshed version of ITIL best practice guidance. The OGC from January through to March 2005 consulted and collected opinions from ITIL users, educationalists and vendors from around the world. Having analysed the feedback the subsequent scope of the ITIL Refresh project was founded based upon areas where high degrees of consensus were found.

The development stages started in August 2005 and are planned to be completed in December 2006, with the publication of the 'core' intended for February 2007.

The 'core' represents the generic principles of ITIL guidance, but has been expanded to incorporate the life-cycle stages of Service Management. In addition to the 'core' publications will be 'complementary guidance' and 'value added products to assist organizations in the context of:

* Business environments
* Economic conditions
* Organizational strategies

Five volumes will comprise of the 'core' publications:

* Service Strategy (SS)
* Service Design (SD)
* Service Transition (ST)
* Service Operation (SO)
* Continual Service Improvement (CSI)

The January to March 2005 consultation identified the following finding, which have moulded and shaped ITIL Version 3:

* Consistent structure and navigation
* Preserve key concepts - no radical changes to Service Support and Service Delivery
* Reflect the service life cycle - strategic to operational as a Service Management framework
* Organizational structures and models for Service Management
* Dealing with cultural issues
* Refer to other best practices
* Business case examples, case studies, templates, implementation work packages
* ITIL in multi-sourced environments
* Alignment to other frameworks
* Scalability
* Remain non prescriptive
* Return on investment
* Quality of authoring
* Improved standard terms and definitions
* Address IT governance
* Executive-level awareness and marketing
* Evaluation guidance for tools
* Key performance metrics
* Improved self-assessment
* Reduce the core and increase ancillary guidance
* Integrated process model
* Quick wins in each process


ITIL Version 2
Service Support
Service Desk
Incident Management
Problem Management
Change Management
Release Management
Configuration Management
Service Delivery
Service Level Management
Availability Management
Capacity Management
Financial Management
IT Service Continuity Management
ITIL Version 3
Core Publications

Service Strategy (SS)
Financial Management
Service Design (SD)
Service Level Management
Capacity Management
Availability Management
IT Service Continuity Management
Service Transition (ST)
Change Management
Configuration Management
Release Management
Incident Management
Problem Management
Service Operation (SO)
Change Management
Configuration Management
Release Management
Service Desk
Incident Management
Problem Management
Capacity Management
Availaibility Management
Financial Management
IT Service Continuity Management
Continual Service Improvement (CSI)