IT teams have been key strategic partners for global businesses for many years now, supporting both customer-facing and internal needs.

As the IT function matured in the 1980s, so did the need to evolve and apply best practices within the function. The collection of best practices called the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL), begun in the 1980s, continues to provide IT professionals with an important, standardized framework to effectively support the business, and continue to address its evolving needs.

So how exactly did the ITIL methodology get started? The British government created ITIL back in the 1980s to improve IT performance at scale. And over the last four decades, ITIL has become increasingly popular as businesses look to leverage new technologies, with AI being only the latest trend. The latest version of ITIL was released in 2019 by Axelos, which now owns ITIL.

More than half (53%) of all companies have either already adopted ITIL, are adopting parts of it, or are planning to adopt parts of it in the near future, according to a study by ITSM Tools.

ITIL is designed to benefit any organization that provides ITSM services or products, no matter the organization’s size and/or industry. ITIL 4, for instance, has been widely adopted across various industries and sectors around the world, including by:

• Educational institutions and universities
• Local, state, and national governments
• Non-governmental organizations/NGOs

Music streaming company Spotify, for example, recently adopted ITIL 4, and has leveraged it to create a more efficient, responsive IT service model for its internal and external users, one that drives and optimizes value for Spotify's business.

The ITIL framework is based on 7 principles which provide a solid (but also highly adaptable) foundation of widely-accepted best practices for organizations to align their IT services with their business needs and extract value from IT investments. 

Here are the guiding principles of ITIL 4:

• Create business value.

  You don’t “do IT” for the sake of IT, but to support and create value for the overall business. This first ITIL principle focuses on (1) understanding the specific business needs of an organization and (2) meeting those business needs by ensuring that every IT activity contributes to the overall value of the business entity. In short, IT and value creation for the business should be moving in lockstep.

• Start from where you are.

  IT organizations can’t blow up the assets they’re currently deploying and start from ground zero. Business continuity is an imperative, now and always. So IT teams should start the change management process by: (1) assessing their current state and (2) build upon their existing assets and practices to drive ongoing improvement. This “iteration” principle encourages a practical, realistic approach to operational improvement, one that works within the unique context of each IT team and its organization.

• Make progress step-by-step.

  If something isn’t working, you need to measure and improve it over time. If something is working, consider doing more of it. ITIL takes an iterative approach to improvement, one that uses data to fuel a continual feedback loop of performance improvement. This 3rd principle recognizes that IT must adapt, because not only will business demands evolve, but so will IT capabilities.

• Work well with others.

  Improvement of the IT function is a team sport that requires collaboration within the IT team, as well as with stakeholders outside the IT team (including other functional areas of the business, such as finance, sales, and marketing). ITIL calls for clear and consistent communication and collaboration among teams to build a culture of shared responsibility and continual IT service improvement that adds more and more business value.

• See and act upon "the big picture."

  Businesses are interconnected, living organisms where changes in one area can have outsized impacts on the entire organization. Again, IT doesn’t exist to “do IT,” but to create value for and across the whole business – meaning IT should consider the “bigger picture” of its impact.

• Keep it simple, silly.

  Occam’s Razor is a scientific principle that assumes that the most simple and straightforward solution or explanation is typically better than the more complex one. Often referred to as the K-I-S-S principle, this guiding principle of ITIL 4 encourages IT to prioritize simple and practical solutions over more complex ones.

• Optimize and automate.

  All IT teams feel the need to “do more with less.” When you can streamline processes by reducing steps (i.e., optimizing an operational process) and/or reduce time-consuming, error-prone manual processes, you save the business time and money.

The ITIL methodology supports businesses by giving them a stable and scalable framework of best practices for IT service management. Key benefits of ITIL 4 include:

• Agility:

  ITIL 4 encourages flexibility and collaboration within IT teams and in how IT teams work with other teams across the business. This adaptability is vital as organizations adopt agile approaches and evolve new ways of working, such as DevOps and increased AI deployment.

• Strategic alignment:

  ITIL processes focus on ensuring that IT services are strategically aligned with business goals and help drive the success of the entire business. IT can never work in a silo but needs to connect across the organization to drive business value.

• Resource optimization: 

  ITIL best practices push organizations to better measure the true cost of IT within the constraints of department resources. The basic idea is that you can’t optimize what you don’t measure.

• A simplified structure:

  ITIL provides a framework for managing IT services which facilitates improved efficiency in IT service delivery. Having a leaner, more efficient structure in place helps improve overall delivery of IT services.

The whole idea of an ITIL methodology is not to create strict rules and processes, but to provide guidelines that can be adapted to your IT team’s evolving needs. It’s more of a change management and culture change project than a technological one. You and your team should begin by evaluating the ITIL framework, practices, and guidelines and implement the parts of it that work for your needs. Remember IT principle # 2: “start where you are.” You can find more information from Axelos about implementing ITIL.

By the way, organizations can also leverage LogMeIn Resolve as part of adopting ITIL. Our platform supports IT teams in adopting all of the 7 ITIL principles, allowing you to continuously improve service delivery, collaborate across your team and the entire organization, and contribute real, provable value to the business.