Applicability of the ITIL Lifecycle
Let us look at the five phases of a service lifecycle - service strategy, service design, service transition, service operation and continuous service improvement, as shown below - and assess how IT specific each individual process is. We can differentiate between the ITIL methodologies on one hand (for example process management, roles, RACI matrix) and the objects used by ITIL on the other hand (for example KPI, asset type, resources, skills). The objects are by nature more or less ITIL specific. As ITIL itself does not try to standardise these objects, but remains a framework of Good Practices, the applicability of the ITIL methodology remains wide. However, when the processes strongly depend on the objects upon which they act, the processes can be regarded as "more IT specific". Some obvious examples are capacity management or access management.
Looking at the ITIL process template, split between process control, the actual process and process enablers, one can conclude that the field of enablers are mostly generic and industry specific (in particular resources and skills = capabilities).
The use of ITIL has facilitated the development of a common understanding and common definition of the operations processes and procedures, as well as the set-up of an SLA- and OLA-Management and service desk.
Improvements with ITIL Version 3
The goals of ITIL V3 are to better align IT with the business processes that it supports, and more generally to strengthen the link between IT and the corporate objectives. As a result, the areas of Service Strategy, Continuous Service Improvement - both life-cycle elements are completely new - as well as Service Operation, are the most noticeable additions in ITIL Version 3. Service Strategy and Continuous Service Improvement are described in the ITIL books in a way that makes their generalization for other categories of services possible. In our view, the novelty of ITIL V3 has been to articulate the relationship between IT and the company´s core business, and reinforce the role of IT as business enabler. This approach can also be adopted for other type of (non-IT) services.
The ITIL book on Service Operation does not address Request Fulfilment in much detail. Since the Request Fulfilment process includes standard changes, it may be of significantly greater importance in other industries. This is particularly true in telecoms when you look at the Level 2 and 3 definitions of the eTOM fulfilment process. In the ITIL terminology, almost all of the sub-processes that extend into logistics and field provisioning (think of the provisioning of a DSL connection), fall under Request Fulfilment. That ITIL does not put more emphasis on Request Fulfilment comes from the fact that ITIL still sees the service desk as the central point of the command for the execution of service requests.
The service desk, though not a process but a function, is included in the picture above. As single point of contact for customer, a service desk is in principle always needed. However, its representation in ITIL cannot be easily generalised. A special role is also assigned to the Common Service Operation Activities, sometimes called "Daily Operations". As an unstructured collection of tasks, they seem to be neglected by ITIL. A possible explanation is that these activities (such as making regular backups) are not driven by explicit service requests but are usually provided from a single source in the IT department, without additional process or provider interface. In any case, the Common Service Operation Activities, as described in ITIL, cannot be easily generalized. For example, think of complex processes such as preventive maintenance in telecoms, which fall under this category.
Concerning Continuous Service Improvement, in particular the area of governance, it is important to note that a number of partially competing standards already exist and can be used to evaluate current processes in terms of compliance and maturity. In addition to the ITIL Process Maturity Model (PMM), which is based on Capability Maturity Model CMM, these include COBIT, and the still very new, "CMMI for Services". Furthermore, there are separate standards for IT Security Management (ISO 27001) and for Business Continuity Management (BS 25999).