People who does not understand how to use ITIL best practices in line with the needs of the business that the IT organization is there to support will experience the following list of potential problems and mistakes with using ITIL:

1. The introduction can take a long time and require significant effort, and may require a change of culture in the organization. An overambitious introduction can lead to frustration because the objectives are never met.
2. If process structures become an objective in themselves, the service quality may be adversely affected. In this scenario, unnecessary or over-engineered procedures are seen as bureaucratic obstacles that are to be avoided where possible.
3. There is no improvement in IT services due to a fundamental lack of understanding about what the relevant processes should provide, what the appropriate performance indicators are, and how process can be controlled.
4. Improvement in the provision of services and cost reductions are insufficiently visible, because no baseline data was available for comparison and/or the wrong targets were identified.
5. A successful implementation requires the involvement and commitment of personnel at all levels in the organization. Leaving the development of the process structures to a specialist department may isolate that department in the organization and it may set a direction that is not accepted by other departments.
6. If there is insufficient investment in appropriate training and support tools, justice will not be done to the processes and the service will not be improved. Additional resources and personnel may be needed in the short term if the organization is already overloaded by routine IT Service Management activities which may not be using “best practices”.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 16th, 2008 at 4:47 pm and is filed under ITIL.