ITIL Articles

Colored padlocks representing Security Stories used to design secure services in ITIL (Version 5)

Designing Security into the Product & Service Lifecycle with Security Stories (ITIL (Version 5) & Agile)

Most teams still bolt security on at the end, then act surprised when the audit goes badly. Alex Harding makes the case for Security Stories, negative “what if” scenarios written from the attacker’s viewpoint and dropped straight into the backlog, so security gets designed in rather than retrofitted. A practical look at how the technique maps onto ITIL (Version 5) and where it earns its keep in the design stage.
Why service management keeps outliving its ITSM is dead obituaries

ITSM is Dead? Why Service Management Keeps Outliving Its Obituaries

Somebody announces the death of service management every few years, and they’ve been doing it for 35. Barclay Rae has heard every version and thinks they all miss the same thing: the job at the heart of service management is human, not technological, which is exactly why no new wave of tech has managed to kill it. If anything, AI has made the case for it stronger.
AI, Transformation, and What Comes First

AI, Transformation, and What Comes First

Every few years, the IT industry settles on a new savior. Agile. Then DevOps. Now AI. The pattern, as Kaimar Karu sees it, is that organizations adopt each one without first knowing what they want from it, and then act surprised when the results don’t live up to the hype. In this episode of Roman Jouravlev’s Conversations with Giants series, Kaimar covers the iron curtain still sitting between ITIL and DevOps, why the ITIL guiding principles are a net rather than a recipe, why AI should never be the goal in itself, and the skills technology won’t easily replace.
Are You Delivering Value?

Are You Doing Service Management, or Delivering Value?

Value is what the customer decides it is, not what the IT department or a framework says. It’s the test Stuart Rance has applied across a thirty-year career: would anyone on the receiving end say your work created value for them? In episode three of Conversations with Giants he explains why he hates tool replacement projects, why the guiding principles were ITIL Practitioner’s most important contribution, and why using agentic AI to cut headcount is the wrong use of the technology.
When ITIL Meets Developer Culture

When ITIL Meets Developer Culture: Why ITIL Fails Without Shared Understanding

When Askar joined as a Developer Experience (DevRel) consultant at one of Kazakhstan’s largest banks with 700+ engineers, he expected the usual challenges: stakeholder alignment, change resistance, legacy tooling. What he didn’t expect was to watch a mature ITIL 4 implementation quietly fail to deliver what it promised.
The ITSM Industry’s Repeating Failure Pattern

The ITSM Industry’s Repeating Failure Pattern

For over 20 years, ITSM has repeated the same failures. Through ABC cards, Paul Wilkinson reveals how culture, leadership, and behavior – not tools or frameworks – consistently derail success. As AI becomes the latest “shiny new thing,” the question remains: why hasn’t the industry learned?
ITIL Version 5 Guiding Principles

ITIL (Version 5) Guiding Principles: A Practical Guide for ITSM Leaders

ITIL (Version 5) describes the ITIL guiding principles as: “Recommendations that can guide an organization in all circumstances, regardless of changes in its goals, strategies, type of work, or management structure.” This article explains more.
ITSM Benchmarking

ITSM Benchmarking – Your Chance to Get Involved

How would you rate your organization’s ITSM or ITIL-adoption success? Not just in terms of process or practice adoption, but in serving your parent business. To help, PeopleCert has created an ITIL Performance Benchmarking Model. Helped by defined ways for calculating key metrics.
ITIL (Version 5) Changes Explained

ITIL (Version 5) Changes Explained: 20 Important Changes from ITIL 4

The release of the ITIL (Version 5) Foundation publication brings with it interest in what has changed from ITIL 4. This article shares 20 changes in ITIL (Version 5) compared to ITIL 4, including updates to the Value System, certifications, and AI governance.
ITIL 4 Service Value System Explained

ITIL 4 and ITIL 5 Service Value Systems (SVSs) Explained: Guiding Principles, Practices, and Service Value Chain

Much has changed in ITIL 4 and thus there’s a lot to get one’s head around! This article quickly explains what the ITIL 4 service value system is and what it contains: the guiding principles, governance, service value chain, management practices, and continual improvement.
ITIL (Version 5) Explained

ITIL (Version 5) Explained: What’s New, What’s Changed, and Why It Matters

ITIL (Version 5) is here, and many questions are being asked. This article answers some of the most frequently asked questions. Including wht ITIL changed and what the key differences from ITIL 4 are.
2026 ITSM Trends

2026 ITSM Trends: What the Community Actually Wants Help With

Each year we ask the ITSM community what topics they want help with. Here are the 2026 results, how priorities have changed over six years, and what it all means. Spoiler: GenAI has fallen off a cliff and nobody wants to talk about people anymore.
ITIL Version 5 Management Practices Explained

ITIL Version 5 Management Practices Explained: Complete List and Definitions

This article shares all 34 of the ITIL Version 5 management practices and their ITIL glossary definitions. Five management practices have also changed their “location” between ITIL 4 and ITIL (Version 5) to now sit in the product and service management practices grouping.
The 34 ITIL 4 Management Practices

ITIL 4 Management Practices Explained: Full List and Purposes

A lot changed in ITIL 4. Not only the move from ITSM processes to service management practices, but also the latter are described. This article shares all of ITIL 4’s 34 management practices and their purposes.
ITIL 4 explained

ITIL 4 Explained: Framework, Practices, and Key Changes

Here Akshay Anand – Lead Architect for the ITIL update – gives the lowdown on the new ITIL 4, including the new service value system, the ‘four dimensions’, the updated guiding principles (originally found in ITIL Practitioner), and the change of processes to practices. ITSM changed with ITIL 4 and will conntinue to change.