Legacy practice frameworks increase costs, complicate automation and are creating an unsustainable mess, sucking the life out of the enterprise with increased training, consulting and tooling costs.
No other practice framework illustrates the new digital caste system more than ITIL, which is already a multi-billion-dollar industry and now firmly owned by a for-profit enterprise. In fact, the global IT training market alone has become part of a vampire squid and will suck $97.6 billion in cash out of the enterprise by 2026[i]. This doesn’t include the costs of tooling or consulting.
ITIL, which already boasts 34 practice areas and a library of books and certification classes, will further increase the costs of training/certification, and will require re-certification in the form of continuing education (which of course costs more money).
Full disclosure, I’m a former ITIL Instructor and Consultant and made a living for years preaching ITIL and other practice frameworks. So of course, I believe there is value in leveraging a practice framework, ITIL or otherwise.
But more than two decades of applying best practice frameworks while business and technology have continued to accelerate has resulted in a complexity that is increasingly unmanageable. The fact is that many deployments suffer from relapse behavior, leading to repeated deployments, and has become part of the practice framework business model.
The irony of this is that this guidance was created by enterprises, who were the original service management communities. However, money has transformed the community to consulting firms, training providers and software companies turning ‘the guidance’ into a blood-sucking vampire squid whose sole aim is to perpetuate the status quo.
So, I’m not really saying farewell to ITIL or other practice guidance. There will be a time and place to copy practices from others.
But today’s world is complex, connected, and fragmented; no organization delivers value on their own anymore. Interoperability across service supply chains and networks — within and between organizations — is needed to optimize control over end-to-end services.
The USM method provides the structure that is critically needed to address cultural change, innovation, and effective governance of transformative change efforts. It also provides a level of interoperability needed for success in today’s complex, multi-provider service ecosystems.
A simple, sustainable management system is service management’s missing link.
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[i] https://www.expertmarketresearch.com/reports/it-training-market