There is a paradigm shift taking place in American business when it comes to ITIL. A few years back a significant number of CIOs weren’t familiar with the term. While that no longer seems to be the case, we’ve now moved into the age of ITIL procrastination. Today’s CIOs are largely aware of the existence of this powerful set of best practices for IT Service Management (ITSM), and most of those who are aware acknowledge the potential benefits to be had from implementing improved processes. So why aren’t they moving forward? Increasingly, I hear some variation of the following:

“We want to put ITSM in place, but we’re just not ready yet”.

So what leads these IT leaders to become ITIL Procrastinators? Most do so because of perceived lack of organizational maturity. They either feel that the company / IT department “isn’t big enough to need it”, or lacks the capability for a successful implementation.

When it comes to smaller IT organizations, this means missing the opportunity to “design in” great service oriented processes at a relatively early stage, before bad habits and inefficient processes have a chance to become company culture. Moreover, this represents a fundamental misunderstanding of ITIL (perhaps one that has been cultivated by overzealous advocates in the first place). ITIL is descriptive, not prescriptive. This means that it doesn’t set specific rules for how ITSM should be implemented in a given organization, there is a great deal of flexibility there. After all, if there were one “best way” of doing things, everyone would already be doing it!

It would be a rare company indeed that could implement EVERY aspect if IT Service Management according to ITIL. However, no company is too small to benefit from at least part of what ITIL has to offer. A very small IT department could likely make due with a very simple Configuration Management database (CMDB), for example, but that’s not to say that they shouldn’t have one at all.

The same reasoning applies to other areas, too. A small team likely wouldn’t need a 6 person Change Advisory Board, but ITIL based Change and Release Management processes could easily be implemented to dramatically improve the organization’s capacity for change and limit the impact of human error. As another example, even a service desk staff of one should document customer contacts in a consistent manner and attempt to isolate root causes. In fact, a shift from reactive fire fighting to proactive problem management might arguably be of greater benefit to business with fewer resources.

In terms of successful implementation for larger groups, some site a lack of existing infrastructure. For example, last week a CIO told me that his organization really wants to implement ITSM as soon as possible, but can’t because they don’t have a Service Catalog in place yet. I hear this excuse a lot concerning the CMDB as well. This is a bit dangerous in that this type of procrastination can go on indefinitely, due to the “chicken or egg” condition implied. Don’t get me wrong – supporting infrastructure is a critical success factor for most IT projects -- just don’t make it a reason not to begin. Start with the business needs, build the processes and roles to support them, then add the infrastructure and tools. If the organization views the service catalog as mission critical, the service catalog can

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