ITIL vs DevOps

DevOps in an ITIL world

When one looks at the principles of DevOps which for example are iterative, incremental, collaborative, experimental and lean/agile and combine with the requirement from business of IT which is speed to market, it is easy to see how the DevOps concept is becoming increasingly required by many IT organisations.

The strength of DevOps is in its ability to get the Development world and the Operations world to work together in developing new applications that are fit for purpose and fit for use according to the business requirements. Why not then look at using these concepts during the design of new services for business and thus meeting the business requirements more successfully and quickly. This would be ideal during the Service Design and Service Transition phases of the ITIL Lifecycle.

This close collaboration between Development and Operations will encourage an open exchange and transparency of vital information such as infrastructure and application data. Such information can be useful for processes like event management, enabling event management to effectively make sense of any events that have been identified within the environment.

ITIL’s strengths on the other hand are process, procedure and documentation based and to some extent, waterfall by nature. It is therefore plain to see that IT organisations can’t go without using these concepts for the basis of most of their operations. One just needs to look at the value Incident Management brings to the business, by restoring incidents as quickly as possible.

ITIL provides stability and a structured way of delivery and support. Through ITIL, business is assured that the services will be delivered and supported as per their requirements.

The question being asked today is then…

Does ITIL fit within a DevOps world, or DevOps fit within and ITIL world?

The answer is not that simple, but it is fair to say that the idea of using one approach for an IT organisation in the age when Business wants IT to be more Agile, would be, counterproductive and deliver no value to Business.

Perhaps the answer lies in rather integrating the frameworks and using the best concepts out of each and adapting them accordingly. Practitioners will need to work in a more Agile way, this is probably why the ITIL Practitioner, Certified Agile Service Manager (CASM) and Integrated Service Management courses have been introduced to the market in the hope that they can assist in addressing these issues.