Comparison between ITIL V3 and ITIL V2 - The Main Changes
From IT Process Wiki
Comparison and Changes between ITIL V3 and ITIL V2 in General
Most importantly, a detailed comparison between ITIL V3 and V2 reveals that all the main processes known from ITIL V2 are still there, with only few substantial changes. In many instances, however, ITIL V3 offers revised and enhanced process descriptions.
New ITIL Structure: The ITIL V3 Service Lifecycle
The main difference between ITIL V3 and V2 is the new ITIL V3 Service Lifecycle structure: ITIL V3 is best understood as seeking to implement feedback-loops by arranging processes in a circular way.
This means the old structure of Service Support and Service Delivery was replaced by a new one consisting of the five ITIL V3 core disciplines:
- Service Strategy determines which types of services should be offered to which customers or markets
- Service Design identifies service requirements and devises new service offerings as well as changes and improvements to existing ones
- Service Transition builds and deploys new or modified services
- Service Operation carries out operational tasks
- Continual Service Improvement learns from past successes and failures and continually improves the effectiveness and efficiency of services and processes.
ITIL V3 complements the processes known from ITIL V2 with a number of new processes and puts more emphasis on producing value for the business.
Modifications to Process Interfaces in ITIL V3
Due to the new Service Lifecycle structure, all interfaces between the ITIL processes were changed in order to reflect the new ITIL V3 process structure; so even if processes in ITIL V3 and V2 are broadly identical, their interfaces have changed. Example: The Incident Management process must now link to the Service Design processes, although a comparison between Incident Management in ITIL V2 and V3 reveals that the process itself did not change substantially.
Comparison and Changes between ITIL V3 and ITIL V2 in Detail
Service Strategy
Service Portfolio Management
- Managing services as a portfolio is a new concept in ITIL V3
- ITIL V3 takes this concept further, introducing strategic thinking about how the Service Portfolio should be developed in the future
Financial Management
- Essentially, the activities and process objectives of the Financial Management process are identical in ITIL V2 and V3
- Financial Management was part of Service Delivery in ITIL V2
Service Design
Service Catalogue Management
- Service Catalogue Management was added as a new process in ITIL V3
- In ITIL V2, the Service Level Management process mentioned the concept of a Service Catalogue
- ITIL V3 takes this concept further, introducing a dedicated process to ensure that the Service Catalogue is up-to-date and contains reliable information
- ITIL V3 introduces a clear distinction in the Service Catalogue between Business Services (services visible to the customer, defined by SLAs), Supporting Services (services visible only inside the IT organization, defined by OLAs or UCs)
Service Level Management
- Essentially, the activities and process objectives of the Service Level Management process are identical in ITIL V2 and V3
- In ITIL V3, the Service Review activities are part of Continual Service Improvement
Risk Management
- Risks are addressed within several processes in ITIL V2 and ITIL V3; there is, however, no dedicated Risk Management process
- ITIL V3 calls for “coordinated risk assessment exercises”, so at IT Process Maps we decided to assign clear responsibilities for managing risks, which meant introducing a specific Risk Management process as part of the ITIL® Process Map V3
- Having a basic Risk Management process in place will provide a good starting point for introducing best-practice Risk Management frameworks like M_o_R (as recommended in the ITIL V3 books)
Capacity Management
- No major differences between ITIL V2 and ITIL V3
Availability Management
- No major differences between ITIL V2 and ITIL V3
IT Service Continuity Management
- No major differences between ITIL V2 and ITIL V3
Information Security Management
- ITIL V2 provided guidance on Security Management in a separate book
- ITIL V3 treats Information Security Management as part of the Service Design core volume, resulting in a better integration of this process into the Service Lifecycle
- The process was updated to account for new security concerns
Compliance Management
- Compliance issues are addressed within several processes in ITIL V2 and ITIL V3; there is, however, no dedicated Compliance Management process
- Compliance is an increasingly important topic for IT organizations, so at IT Process Maps we decided to assign clear responsibilities for ensuring compliance, which meant introducing a specific Compliance Management process as part of the ITIL® Process Map V3
Architecture Management
- Architecture Management was covered within Application Management in ITIL V2
- ITIL V3 provides guidance on IT architecture issues as part of a chapter on "technology-related activities"
- Having a well-defined architecture blueprint in place is very important for IT organizations, so at IT Process Maps we decided to assign clear responsibilities for managing the enterprise architecture, which meant introducing a specific Architecture Management process as part of the ITIL® Process Map V3
Supplier Management
- Supplier Management was covered within ICT Infrastructure Management in ITIL V2
- In ITIL V3, Supplier Management is part of the Service Design process to allow for a better integration into the Service Lifecycle
Service Transition
Change Management
- Essentially, the activities and process objectives of the Change Management process are identical in ITIL V2 and V3
- ITIL V3 introduces "Change Models", putting more emphasis on defining different types of Changes and how they are to be handled
- Emergency Changes in ITIL V3 are authorized by the Emergency Change Advisory Board (ECAB), which was known as the Emergency Committee (EC) in ITIL V2
Project Management (Transition Planning and Support)
- Transition Planning and Support is a new process in ITIL V3; ITIL V2 covered some aspects of this process within Release Management but ITIL V3 provides considerably enhanced guidance
- Transition Planning and Support in ITIL V3 is actually about managing service transition projects, so at IT Process Maps we decided to make this clear by slightly changing its name to "Project Management (Transition Planning and Support)"
- ITIL V3 does not provide a detailed explanation of all aspects of Project Management but highlights the most important activities and assists in identifying interfaces with the other Service Management processes. However, having a basic Project Management process defined will provide a good starting point for introducing best-practice Project Management frameworks like PRINCE2 or PMBOK (as recommended in the ITIL V3 books)
Release and Deployment Management
- Essentially, the activities and process objectives of the Release and Deployment Management process in ITIL V3 are identical to Release Management in ITIL V2
- ITIL V3 provides considerably more details in the areas of Release planning and testing; this led to the addition of two dedicated processes in ITIL V3 which were subsumed under Release Management in the previous ITIL version:
- Project Management (Transition Planning and Support)
- Service Validation and Testing
Service Validation and Testing
- Service Validation and Testing is new process in ITIL V3; ITIL V2 covered some aspects of Release testing within Release Management but ITIL V3 provides considerably enhanced guidance
- Major additions in ITIL V3 are details on the various testing stages during Service Transition and descriptions of the corresponding testing approaches
Application Development and Customization
- Application Development is barely mentioned in the ITIL V3 books, as ITIL V3 focuses on different topics like service design and rollout
- At IT Process Maps we decided to eliminate that gap by introducing an Application Development process which takes care of the actual application coding and the customization of standard software packages
- Even if Application Development is generally regarded a field of its own, we think an Application Management process must be included in any ITIL V3 process structure to make sure that there are clearly defined interfaces between the design, development and rollout stages of a service
Service Asset and Configuration Management
- Activities and process objectives of the Service Asset and Configuration Management process are broadly identical in ITIL V3 and V2.
- ITIL V3 introduces the "Configuration Management System (CMS)" as a logical data model, encompassing several Configuration Management Databases (CMDB).
Knowledge Management
- Knowledge Management was added as a new process in ITIL V3
- Many aspects of Knowledge Management were covered by various processes in ITIL V2 - for example, Problem Management was (and in ITIL V3 still is) responsible for managing the Known Error Database
- ITIL V3, however, defines Knowledge Management as the one central process responsible for providing knowledge to all other IT Service Management processes
Service Operation
Event Management
- Event Management was part of ICT Infrastructure Management in ITIL V2
- Activities and process objectives of the Event Management process are broadly identical in ITIL V2 and V3
- ITIL V3 sees Event Management as an important trigger of the Incident and Problem Management processes
Incident Management
- Essentially, the activities and process objectives of the Incident Management process are identical in ITIL V2 and V3
- ITIL V3 distinguishes between Incidents (Service Interruptions) and Service Requests (standard requests from users, e.g. password resets)
- Service Requests are no longer fulfilled by Incident Management; instead there is a new process called Request Fulfilment
- There is a dedicated process now for dealing with emergencies ("Major Incidents")
- A process interface was added between Event Management and Incident Management. Significant Events are now triggering the creation of an Incident
Request Fulfilment
- Request Fulfilment was added as a new process to ITIL V3 with the aim to have a dedicated process dealing with Service Requests
- This was motivated by a clear distinction in ITIL V3 between Incidents (Service Interruptions) and Service Requests (standard requests from users, e.g. password resets)
- In ITIL V2, Service Requests were fulfilled by the Incident Management process
Access Management
- Access Management was added as a new process to ITIL V3
- The decision to include this dedicated process was motivated by IT security reasons, as granting access to IT services and applications only to authorized users is of high importance from an IT Security viewpoint
Problem Management
- Essentially, the activities and process objectives of the Problem Management process are identical in ITIL V2 and ITIL V3
- A new sub-process "Major Problem Review" was introduced to review the solution history of major Problems in order to prevent a recurrence and learn lessons for the future
IT Operations Management
- IT Operations Management is part of ICT Infrastructure Management in ITIL V2
- Some operational aspects were described in more detail in ITIL V2 as in the new ITIL V3 books
Facilities Management
- Facilities Management is part of ICT Infrastructure Management in ITIL V2
- Some aspects of managing facilities were described in more detail in ITIL V2 as in the new ITIL V3 books
Continual Service Improvement
- ITIL V2 contained some Continual Service Improvement activities within the Service Level Management process, for example holding Service Reviews and managing a Service Improvement Plan
- ITIL V3 expands this into a whole new book, introducing dedicated processes for service and process evaluation and improvement.
ITIL V3 2011 Edition
- Comparison and Changes between ITIL V3 (2007) and ITIL 2011: → Details: ITIL 2011 Upgrade
- Detailed ITIL Process Descriptions: → ITIL 2011 Processes
Note: The new edition of ITIL 4 was published in February 2019. In our YaSM Service Management Wiki we provide a detailed comparison between the latest edition of ITIL 4 and ITIL V3 2011.
[ Infobox ]
| Link to this page: | https://wiki.en.it-processmaps.com/index.php/Comparison_between_ITIL_V3_and_ITIL_V2_-_The_Main_Changes |
| Languages: | English | Deutsch | español |
| Author: | Andrea Kempter, IT Process Maps  |
