Most IT organizations adopt ITIL with the intention of creating customer value. Yet many become trapped in governance, complexity, process overhead, and organizational immaturity. As a result, ITIL often fails to deliver the value it promises.
The hard lesson is this:
ITIL does not fail because the framework is wrong.
ITIL fails because organizations implement solutions that are too complex for practitioners to apply and too difficult for leaders to manage.
Why ITIL Still Fails
1. ITIL describes an ideal model—not an operational solution.
ITIL provides a comprehensive, well-documented, and valuable reference framework. However, many organizations struggle to translate its guidance into operational practices that are simple, executable, and sustainable.
2. The gap between consultants and operations is too large.
Transformation programs are often designed by people who are too far removed from those responsible for delivering and supporting services.
3. Process and practice adoption becomes the objective.
Organizations begin measuring framework compliance instead of operational performance and customer value.
4. Practitioners are sent on a “mission impossible.”
Teams are expected to execute practices that are overly complex, insufficiently supported, or disconnected from operational reality.
5. Organizational change is underestimated.
Leaders expect practitioners to change their behavior without changing the organizational system in which they work.
In short:
We organize what should be done instead of what can be done.
Despite many valuable improvements, ITIL 5 still does not fundamentally solve this challenge.
The Solution: Reverse the Order
Organizations that truly want to benefit from ITIL and other valuable frameworks need a different, results-oriented implementation approach. An approach in which people, operational reality, and both realized and perceived customer value are the starting point as well as the ultimate outcome.
Instead of trying to make the organization fit the framework, we should build organizational change on the foundation of operational reality.
As I often say:
“An IT organization is as good as it behaves—not as it is designed or managed.”
In This Presentation
Drawing on more than three decades of experience in data-driven, results-oriented organizational transformation, I will explain:
– Why organizations struggle to implement ITIL successfully.
– Where transformation initiatives typically fail.
– How Reversed Service Management (RSM) provides a practical implementation approach.
– Why People First is not a slogan, but a prerequisite for sustainable business improvement.
Two principles underpin this approach:
– Organizational debt precedes technical debt.
– Operational reality precedes successful transformation.
Three Key Takeaways
– Value is created only at the operational level—when users create value by applying services delivered by practitioners.
– Organizational debt precedes technical debt. The digital system is rarely the cause
– Don’t organize what should be done; organize what people are actually capable of doing, and grow from there.
