ITSM Articles

Service Management Maturity Models: A Practical, Evidence-Based Approach

Service Management Maturity Models: A Practical, Evidence-Based Approach (Pros, Cons, & Framework)

This article explores the role of maturity models in Service Management and ITSM – what they do well and where they often fall short – and introduces a more practical approach your organization can adapt to drive meaningful improvement.
Shadow AI in IT Support

Shadow AI in IT Support: When Employees Fix Problems Outside the Service Desk

It’s 9am and a sales manager hits a VPN error before a client call. Rather than wait on a service desk ticket, she pastes the error into an AI tool and gets a fix in seconds. Problem solved, but no incident recorded. Judin Joan Soundarya S of ManageEngine looks at what shadow AI costs problem management and security operations, and how ITSM platforms can regain visibility.
Agentic ITSM

Agentic ITSM: Understanding the 4 Levels of AI Maturity in IT Service Management

Everyone is selling agentic AI, but the gap between the weakest and strongest versions is enormous. Manish Sharma of Rezolve.ai sets out a four-stage maturity model for AI in ITSM, from legacy retrieval through reactive assistants and process agents to true agentic systems that reason, act across connected systems, and catch problems nobody asked. He also gives you the questions to put to any vendor claiming agentic AI.
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 the ABC cards, Paul Wilkinson has spent decades tracing how culture, leadership, and behavior consistently derail success, not tools or frameworks. AI is now the latest shiny thing being sold to organizations that haven’t fixed the underlying pattern. This article looks at why the industry still hasn’t learned, and what it would take.
ITSM Tool Migration

ITSM Tool Migration: Common Mistakes Teams Make (and How to Avoid Them)

ITSM tool migration is inevitable. The ITSM tool landscape is constantly shifting. Products are sunsetted, licensing models change, companies merge and consolidate platforms, and organizations simply outgrow their ITSM tools. At some point, you’ll migrate ITSM tool, whether you planned to or not. This article will help you!
Where Did ITSM Evangelists Go?

Where Did ITSM Evangelists Go? And Why the Industry Needs Them Back in 2026

What happened to ITSM evangelists? Explore why they disappeared, the value they brought, and why the ITSM industry needs them more than ever in 2026.
Value, Silos, and Why You Need to Think Before You Build

Value, Silos, and Why You Need to Think Before You Build

The mismatch between producer effort and user value is something Mark Smalley, IT Paradigmologist and author of nine books on digital and service management, has been thinking about for decades. In this article on the first episode of Roman Jouravlev’s Conversations with Giants series, Mark covers several ideas that have held up across four decades in ITSM.
Ending the L1 vs L2 Escalation Wars

Ending the L1 vs L2 Escalation Wars: Rethinking IT Support Tiers

A ticket gets escalated, comes back marked “add notes before escalation,” gets reassigned, then returns with “should have been resolved at L1.” Meanwhile the end-user is still waiting. Eusoph Simba argues the ticket ping-pong between support tiers isn’t an escalation problem but a problem with how we frame support levels. He makes the case for treating every ticket as an issue to solve, escalating on capability rather than hierarchy, and a simple standard format that breaks the loop.
Neurodivergence in ITSM

Neurodivergence in ITSM: Why Being Called a “Legend” Feels Uncomfortable

This article by Daniel Breston is about neurodivergence in ITSM and was sparked (pardon the pun) by his attendance – and what he did and didn’t feel – at the Service Desk Institute (SDI) SPARK26 event.
Illustrated figure in a hat and jacket labelled ITSM Guide facing a server room representing the ITIL guiding principles

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

ITIL (Version 5) describes the 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 walks through what the principles are, how they’ve evolved from ITIL 4, and how ITSM leaders can put them to use today.
AI Readiness: Is Your Organization Ready for AI?

AI Readiness: Is Your Organization Ready for AI? It Depends

AI is already here. The level of AI inclusion in ITSM tools and platforms is remarkable when you look at it closely. The question isn’t whether to engage with AI, it’s whether your organization has the right foundations to make it work. Trust, governance, and a clear reason for adopting it in the first place separate the organizations getting results from those that aren’t.
ITSM Benchmarking

ITSM Benchmarking – Your Chance to Get Involved

How would you rate your organization’s ITSM or ITIL adoption? Not just in terms of process or practice adoption, but in serving the parent business. PeopleCert has built an ITIL Performance Benchmarking Model with defined ways to calculate the key metrics. This article covers how the model works and how ITSM teams can get involved.
What I Learned from SDI SPARK26

Superheroes, Service Desks, and Chaos Monkeys – What I Learned from SDI SPARK26

The Service Desk Institute held its annual SPARK conference in Birmingham in March. Vawns Murphy captures her pick of the best sessions, the presenters worth listening to a second time, and the practical takeaways that stood out over three days of talks. This article is her selected version of the event for anyone who couldn’t get there in person.
Break the 1–3x ITSM Implementation Cost Rule

How AI Will Break the 1–3x ITSM Implementation Cost Rule

The rule of thumb in ITSM has long been that implementation costs one to three times the software license. Richard Mendis of Bytemethod.ai makes the case that agentic AI finally breaks this calculation, by taking on the configuration, documentation, and maintenance work that consumes the bulk of an implementation budget. The article explains where the savings show up first.
AI Help Desk Software

AI Help Desk Software: How LLMs, AI Agents & Chatbots Are Transforming IT Support

AI help desks powered by LLMs and AI agents are being rolled out to automate IT support, reduce Tier 1 tickets, cut operational costs, and scale support operations without adding headcount. Jeff Hume looks at where these systems are already delivering, what the current limitations look like, and how to think about them if you’re evaluating options for your own service desk.