For its advocates, the ITIL framework is the bedrock of a modern enterprise IT infrastructure, providing the blueprint for delivering a consistent service that remains in step with business goals.

Developers of the standards say they constantly refine them, consulting with peers, experts and users to ensure that they deliver as well with the IT teams at which they are pitched.

Not everyone is convinced. Critics argue that while there is much to recommend in ITIL, firms should be wary of trying to codify IT through a checklist measurement of adherence to standards, ITIL and other best practice frameworks. In isolation, best practice frameworks can overlook the importance of the human aspect of technology programmes, a common cause of project failure.

We asked two experts to give their contrasting views.

Alistair Russell, development director at networking organisation CIO Connect

For all manner of enterprises, adherence to the ITIL framework has delivered unquestionable benefits, says Russell. It provides the basis for a smoothly efficient IT operation and empowers the IT team, he says.

“Many organisations take pride in the fact that their staff are ITIL trained. It is important to them. ITIL is really strong in the area of service management, especially when you think about best practices and methodological approaches to delivery,” he says.

“By adopting best practice you can be safe in the knowledge that you are doing things in the right way. The IT department can be sure that when it engages with its peers it can be seen to be leading technology, and making sure that it happens correctly. Because of this, an intelligent and high-performing IT team is of equal importance to standards.”

Adherence ­ or at least reference ­ to the standards can help companies and IT service teams tackle all sorts of issues because, by their very nature, they provide examples of industry best practice and as a result can give an impression of a firm’s standing and technological maturity in any given area.

“For IT departments these standards mean simplicity,” says Russell. “They keep you up to date with what is happening in the industry and they offer a combination of methodological formulas that can be translated and developed into what is needed by your own users.

“They offer process models for change management that can be used to help firms understand their own requirements. With something such as ITIL you take what it offers and interpret it for your own needs. The value of ITIL and similar frameworks is in knowing that you are doing the right things in the right way.”

Russell says that firms should use guidance as a starting point to any activity. “It is about leadership style and culture. The IT team has to look at some quite generic statements and bring them to life. There are no fast rules, but users must instead interpret the standards’ advice before translating what they mean at their own firm. Once this is done, there is evidence that you have already benchmarked and are up to scratch with the rest of the industry,” he says.

Any adherence to standards is a good thing in Russell’s opinion, because they can be used to mitigate errors and cut down on costly, late-in-the-day revisions to current and planned technologies.

“IT teams have to follow procedures because you need to get things right, and they have to run properly 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” he says. “Computers are unforgiving of even the smallest mistakes and we become increasingly dependent on our technology.”

Peter Wheatcroft, principal consultant at service management consultancy Partners in IT

One of enterprise computing’s great failures to date has been the lack of appreciation over how people interact with technology, says Wheatcroft. And yet it is people who make standards work, and they are the most important element in any IT service delivery.

“It is the people who deliver service. What standards provide are sets of best practices for these people to follow so that they can make a service consistent,” he says.

Even when there is a need for a best practice example, adherence for a long period of time sounds unlikely to Wheatcroft, who suggests that the IT team will learn more from its own experiences than from any external documents that it receives.

“ITIL needs interpretation. While the various publications document a range of best practices, these have to be adopted by the people who deliver IT services and so without prescriptive procedures and tools, it is unlikely that those best practices will be used consistently,” he says.

Wheatcroft says guidance documents that work are the exception to the norm, making the selection of which one is best to follow a difficult task.

“Using process enforcement templates, or blueprints, that take the ITIL process definitions and turn them into enforceable work instructions backed up by role profiles and task descriptions is the only effective way to get the true value from ITIL,” he says.

“Such blueprints exist, although they are rare. What is needed to get the full design intent out of ITIL is a systems-enforced blueprint backed up by a toolset which allows the skilled people using it to manage the customer and not worry about procedure. Knowledgeable people are key to service satisfaction.”

Examples of the relative success of projects built on standards are also rare, says Wheatcroft. “If we look at governance frameworks, the contribution made by processes in the effective delivery of customer service is 14 per cent,” he says. “That feels about right in IT service management, too.”

A reliance on frameworks and standards becomes even more convoluted when considering alternative approaches to best practice.

The ISO/IEC 20000 standards do not “mandate prescriptive adherence to ITIL. Rather, they require adherence to their constituent clauses which can be evidenced ­ and standards such as ISO/IEC 27001 are not ITIL-based,” says Wheatcroft.