Precursors
Many of the concepts did not originate within the original UK Government's Central Computer and Telecommunications Agency (CCTA) project to develop ITIL. According to IBM:
“ In the early 1980s, IBM documented the original Systems Management concepts in a four-volume series called A Management System for Information Systems. These widely accepted “yellow books,” ... were key inputs to the original set of ITIL books."[2][3] ”
The primary author of the IBM yellow books was Edward A. Van Schaik, who compiled them into the 1985 book A Management System for the Information Business[4] (since updated with a 2006 re-issue by Red Swan Publishing[5]). In the 1985 work, Van Schaik in turn references a 1974 Richard L. Nolan work, Managing the Data Resource Function[6] which may be the earliest known systematic English-language treatment of the topic of large scale IT management (as opposed to technological implementation).
[edit] Development
What is now called ITIL version 1, developed under the auspices of the Central Computer and Telecommunications Agency (CCTA), was titled "Government Information Technology Infrastructure Management Methodology" (GITMM) and over several years eventually expanded to 31 volumes in a project initially directed by Peter Skinner and John Stewart at the CCTA. The publications were retitled primarily as a result of the desire (by Roy Dibble of CCTA) that the publications be seen as guidance and not as a formal method and as a result of growing interest from outside of the UK Government.
During the late 1980s the CCTA was under sustained attack, both from IT companies who wanted to take over the central Government consultancy service it provided and from other Government departments who wanted to break free of its oversight.[citation needed] Eventually CCTA succumbed and the concept of a central driving IT authority for the UK Government was lost. This meant that adoption of CCTA guidance such as ITIL was delayed, as various other departments fought to take over new responsibilities.
In some cases this guidance was lost permanently. The CCTA IT Security and Privacy group, for instance, provided the CCTA IT Security Library input to GITMM, but when CCTA was broken up the security service appropriated this work and suppressed it as part of their turf war over security responsibilities.
Though ITIL was developed during the 1980s, it was not widely adopted until the mid 1990s for the reasons mentioned above. This wider adoption and awareness has led to a number of standards, including ISO/IEC 20000 which is an international standard covering the IT Service Management elements of ITIL. ITIL is often considered alongside other best practice frameworks such as the Information Services Procurement Library (ISPL), the Application Services Library (ASL), Dynamic Systems Development Method (DSDM), the Capability Maturity Model (CMM/CMMI), and is often linked with IT governance through Control Objectives for Information and related Technology (COBIT).
In December 2005, the OGC issued notice of an ITIL refresh [7], commonly known as ITIL v3, which became available in May 2007. ITIL v3 initially includes five core texts:
1. Service Strategy
2. Service Design
3. Service Transition
4. Service Operation
5. Continual Service Improvement
These publications update much of the current v2 and extend the scope of ITIL in the domain of service management.
