In just 20 years ITIL has come to guide the IT service management practices which underpin the performance of successful organisations worldwide. The popularity of ITIL as a framework has much to do with the fact that it is not based on academic dogma – but is a distillation of what has been proven to work effectively.

Not surprisingly those organisations which have not adopted ITIL are looking to do so – and those that have are looking to extend or enhance their ITIL processes.

This article looks at what determines whether an ITIL project succeeds or fails. It draws on the recent and real experiences of organisations which have undertaken an “ITIL journey”. The experiences of more than 10 organisations including Axa UK, Lloyds TSB and the London Ambulance Service, were presented at the 2008 itSMF Conference in Birmingham.

The projects ranged from application of specific ITIL tools such as Service Catalogue through to trans European ITIL adoption by a major financial institution with the goal of achieving ISO/IEC 20000.