ITIL Articles

Illustration of a bearded man looking puzzled beside a large number 5 and question marks, representing the ITIL 5 naming debate

ITIL 5, ITIL v5, or ITIL (Version 5)? What Are People Actually Calling It?

PeopleCert calls it ITIL (Version 5), but Stephen Mann ran a LinkedIn poll to see what ITSM practitioners really call it, and the official name came in third. ITIL 5 took 41% of the vote, ITIL v5 pulled 26%, and the branded name only 22%. Stephen looks at why the shortcuts are winning, and why the official name probably won’t catch up.
Two grain silos on a farm, each displaying a portrait, representing silos in IT service management

Simplicity, Service, and the Discipline of Asking Why

Christian Nissen spent four decades in IT service management and helped shape ITIL along the way. In his Conversations with Giants episode, he makes the case that the industry keeps isolating capabilities it should be reintegrating, that it has swapped service for product, and that the skills worth learning are older and plainer than newcomers expect. Here are the ideas practitioners can use now.
Colored padlocks representing Security Stories used to design secure services in ITIL (Version 5)

Designing Security into the Product & Service Lifecycle with Security Stories (ITIL (Version 5) & Agile)

Most teams still bolt security on at the end, then act surprised when the audit goes badly. Alex Harding makes the case for Security Stories, negative “what if” scenarios written from the attacker’s viewpoint and dropped straight into the backlog, so security gets designed in rather than retrofitted. A practical look at how the technique maps onto ITIL (Version 5) and where it fits into the design stage.
Why service management keeps outliving its ITSM is dead obituaries

ITSM is Dead? Why Service Management Keeps Outliving Its Obituaries

Somebody announces the death of service management every few years, and they’ve been doing it for 35 years now. Barclay Rae has heard every version and thinks they all miss the same thing: the job at the heart of service management is human, not technological. That’s why no new wave of tech has managed to kill it, and AI has made the case for it stronger.
AI, Transformation, and What Comes First

AI, Transformation, and What Comes First

Every few years, the IT industry settles on a new savior. Agile. Then DevOps. Now AI. Kaimar Karu argues organizations adopt each one without first knowing what they want from it, then act surprised when results don’t live up to the hype. In this episode of Roman Jouravlev’s Conversations with Giants series, Kaimar covers why AI should never be the goal in itself and the skills technology won’t replace.
Are You Delivering Value?

Are You Doing Service Management, or Delivering Value?

Value is what the customer decides it is, not what the IT department or a framework says. It’s the test Stuart Rance has applied across a thirty-year career: would anyone on the receiving end say your work created value for them? In episode three of Conversations with Giants he explains why he hates tool replacement projects, and why using agentic AI to cut headcount is the wrong use of the technology.
When ITIL Meets Developer Culture

When ITIL Meets Developer Culture: Why ITIL Fails Without Shared Understanding

When Askar Aituov joined as a Developer Experience consultant at one of Kazakhstan’s largest banks, with 700-plus engineers, he expected the usual challenges: stakeholder alignment, change resistance, legacy tooling. What he didn’t expect was to watch a mature ITIL 4 implementation quietly fail to deliver what it was supposed to. This article walks through what went wrong, and why.
The ITSM Industry’s Repeating Failure Pattern

The ITSM Industry’s Repeating Failure Pattern

For over 20 years, ITSM has repeated the same failures. Through the ABC cards, Paul Wilkinson has spent decades tracing how culture, leadership, and behavior consistently derail success, not tools or frameworks. AI is now the latest shiny thing being sold to organizations that haven’t fixed the underlying pattern. This article looks at why the industry still hasn’t learned, and what it would take.
Illustrated figure in a hat and jacket labelled ITSM Guide facing a server room representing the ITIL guiding principles

ITIL (Version 5) Guiding Principles: A Practical Guide for ITSM Leaders

ITIL (Version 5) describes the guiding principles as “recommendations that can guide an organization in all circumstances, regardless of changes in its goals, strategies, type of work, or management structure.” This article walks through what the principles are, how they’ve evolved from ITIL 4, and how ITSM leaders can put them to use today.
ITSM Benchmarking

ITSM Benchmarking – Your Chance to Get Involved

How would you rate your organization’s ITSM or ITIL adoption? Not just in terms of process or practice adoption, but in serving the parent business. PeopleCert has built an ITIL Performance Benchmarking Model with defined ways to calculate the key metrics. This article covers how the model works and how ITSM teams can get involved.
Illustrated checklist with colorful crayons representing the key ITIL (Version 5) changes from ITIL 4

ITIL (Version 5) Changes Explained: 20 Important Changes from ITIL 4

The release of the ITIL (Version 5) Foundation publication has brought new interest in what changed from ITIL 4. This article walks through 20 changes in ITIL (Version 5) compared to ITIL 4, including updates to the Value System, the new certification paths, AI governance, and how the framework now handles the practices practitioners already know.
ITIL 4 Service Value System Explained

ITIL 4 and ITIL 5 Service Value Systems (SVSs) Explained: Guiding Principles, Practices, and Service Value Chain

Much changed in ITIL 4, and there’s a lot to get your head around. This article explains what the ITIL 4 service value system is and what it contains: the guiding principles, governance, service value chain, management practices, and continual improvement. It also covers how the SVS evolves in ITIL (Version 5) and what practitioners should watch for.
Illustrated ITIL control tower rising above a digital landscape representing the ITIL (Version 5) framework

ITIL (Version 5) Explained: What’s New, What’s Changed, and Why It Matters

ITIL (Version 5) is here, and the questions from practitioners have started. This article works through the most common ones: what has changed, what has stayed the same, and what the key differences from ITIL 4 are. Roman Jouravlev, editor of ITIL and creator of the Conversations with Giants series, walks through the practical implications for anyone already running ITIL 4.
2026 ITSM Trends

2026 ITSM Trends: What the Community Actually Wants Help With

Every year we ask the ITSM community what topics they want help with, and the 2026 results are in. This article covers what the community is asking for, how priorities have changed over six years, and what it all means. Spoiler: GenAI has fallen off a cliff and nobody wants to talk about people anymore.
ITIL Version 5 logo in neon blue and purple representing the ITIL v5 framework launch

ITIL (Version 5): What’s Known about ITIL Version 5

An impartial early look at ITIL (Version 5): why it exists, what’s changed, the new certification paths, AI governance, and how practitioners have reacted so far. More detail will follow as PeopleCert releases the full publication, but this is the easy-to-read snapshot of what’s known now and what still needs pinning down.