Uniting Traditional ITIL and IT DevOps to Make Agile ITIL
Staying current when it comes to anything related to technology can require tremendous effort. This has only become more apparent as the ongoing transformation of IT has developed throughout the digital era. Keeping your ITSM efforts in front of the rapid changes, both within and outside of your organization can be even more challenging if you steadfastly hang on to rigid frameworks. In order to adapt to the rapid changes in IT in the digital era, integrating traditional ITIL methodology with IT DevOps can help you transform your traditional ITIL thinking into something more akin to Agile ITIL. At first, it may seem that ITIL and Agile make for strange partners. But given the right approach (an IT DevOps one), they can work very well together to drive your ITSM efforts through the challenges associated with constant change.The Primary Differences Between Traditional ITIL and Agile ITIL
Traditional ITIL relies heavily on processes and tools to deliver a high quality of reliable service. It is rigid in both its conception and application. Traditional ITIL also requires a tremendous amount of documentation and is executed manually with teams working to monitor and report on processes and service levels within the organization as they serve users. Agile, by definition, stands in opposition to much of what ITIL champions, or at least it seems to on the surface. Agile’s four central values, as they are defined, are opposite to the primary values of ITIL. But, that doesn’t mean that they can’t play together and complement one another. Using IT DevOps to bring agile values to play in an ITIL framework – employing a hybrid, Agile ITIL – can add needed flexibility to your ITSM, driving user experience (UX) while keeping in place a framework that you can rely on.The Primary Characteristics of Agile ITIL
Agile ITIL is all about adopting core concepts from IT DevOps and applying them to a hybrid traditional/Agile ITIL framework. What IT DevOps does very well is service creation, implementation, and management. Applying DevOps thinking to traditional ITIL helps to address the central criticism of ITIL, which is that it fails to consider the serious importance of flexibility in managing work in process, and by its very nature is not “lean.” DevOps and Agile can bring a great deal to your ITSM efforts through augmenting your reliance on a traditional ITIL framework. When the core principles of DevOps are coupled with the four central tenets of Agile – the valuation of interactions between individuals over tools and processes, the maintenance of working software services over comprehensive documentation, the utilization of collaboration with users, and responding dynamically to change – the resulting Agile ITIL can be driven by customer needs, flexible by nature, and oriented around a traditional ITIL framework.Agile Communication and Support Services for Users
Agile communication works because it centers support services for users. As automation continues to drive service management through the use of chatbots, location-based tools and processes, social tools, mobile optimization, and many other service value-based initiatives that continuously improve the user's digital experience and satisfaction, Agile ITIL built on the IT DevOps paradigm delivers on the promise of traditional ITIL despite (or even because of) the ever-changing digital landscape. Read more about Agile service management and how it can enable you to scale your service desk.
