ITIL Refresh v3 - Update

Things seem to be moving along on the ITIL Refresh v3 front according to a communication published on the OGC ITIL website.

All five core titles were delivered by the author teams by mid-October. Since then the Editorial Board has reviewed the books and carried out work to ensure integration and alignment across all titles. IAG members have been asked to nominate their preferred title to review. The review will start on 7 November and end on 27 November after which there will be a period for further integration work and editing, and for authors to make revisions. Public QA is scheduled for mid-January and a call for participants will be made imminently.

I'm looking forward to hearing more about the ITIL refresh at the itSMF 'Theory into Practice' conference from the 13th-15th November. Rest assured that I will be posting my thoughts on what I hear shortly after I return.

ITIL Refresh v3 - Update

Very quickly for those of you who may not have seen it yet, the OGC have published another statement about the Commercial Activities Recompetition (CAR) project, this time focusing on the potential impact on examinations which I've certainly expressed concerns about in a previous entry.

This new statement isn't particularly reassuring to me given that my employer is looking to implement ITIL in the new year (funding permitting). In which case, is it appropriate to go ahead and send people on training courses which will be accredited by a board who may be redundant by July 2007 (unless ISEB and EXIN become Examination Institutes (EIs) licenced by APMG)? Not to mention the refresh itself which I'm sure would mean an opportunity for training providers to run update courses to increase their income. Not good for our small government training budgets.

There's some interesting points raised by the editor over at ITSM Portal.

I do wonder whether APMG will bring ITIL examinations (and consequently those with the qualifications) more credibility or whether it will stifle the community that helps it grow. Only time will tell...

ITIL Refresh v3 - Update

There's a new status update up today regarding the ITIL Refresh.

Also, Sharon Taylor and the ITIL v3 Refresh team published a FAQ a few weeks ago to answer some of the many questions we all have regarding the changes.

It explains the new life cycle approach (using the analogy of building a house) and details the new 'core' titles of the 'service management practice suite' which are more role-oriented:

• Service Strategies
• Service Design
• Service Transition
• Service Operation
• Continual Service Improvement

These core books will be released simultaneously hopefully towards late Spring 2007.

There will also be complementary titles available, focusing on specific issues although the FAQ does not indicate what these may be.

Mention is specifically made of the new focus on knowledge management, although it is not clear to me from the document whether this takes into account the practice of Knowledge Centred Support (KCS) (I'll be very surprised if it doesn't and build on it).

A key difference we finally have an answer to is that service requests will no longer be treated under incident management. They have their own 'Request Management' process which relates to Change Management.

For the full lowdown, download the itSMF PDF version of the ITIL Refresh v3 FAQ.