Over the past few years, I've been hearing more and more people say that ITIL is dead. The justification is almost always the same: we now live in a world of Agile, DevOps, and SRE, and "those old frameworks don't work anymore." Whenever I hear that, I stop and think: is ITIL Has it really lost value? Or was it us, IT professionals, who started using ITIL the wrong way?
In my view, the answer is simple: ITIL is not dead. In fact, it remains more relevant than ever. What happens is that, in many companies, it has been misinterpreted, transformed into cumbersome processes, full of unnecessary approvals, endless reports, and massive workflows. It's easy to point the finger and say ITIL gets in the way. But, if we're honest, the problem isn't the framework itself, it's how we apply it.
ITIL was never meant to be a list of rigid rules. From the outset, it has been a set of best practices. And the purpose has always been simple: to support IT operations, bringing discipline, reliability, and governance. Anyone who has lived in an environment without incident management knows what I'm talking about. Chaos is inevitable. However, when processes are well-structured, you have visibility, can prioritize what matters, and instill confidence in the business. This is the heart of ITIL.
The curious thing is that, when applied maturely, ITIL becomes so natural that many people don't even realize they're using it. Categorizing calls, prioritizing incidents, escalating correctly, analyzing root causes… all of this has become part of our daily IT routines. But guess where it came from? ITIL. But now it's so ingrained that it seems "normal," and precisely for this reason, some people think ITIL is obsolete.
Another point I like to emphasize is that ITIL doesn't compete with Agile, DevOps, or SRE. That's a myth that's been floating around. There's no such thing as "you either use ITIL or you're agile." In practice, they complement each other. ITIL provides governance, predictability, and traceability. Agile and DevOps bring speed and collaboration. Without a solid process foundation, innovation gets lost along the way. I've seen super agile teams delivering incredible features, but without any control over cloud costs or ensuring minimal security. The result: dissatisfied customers and management.
complaining about the cloud bill that exploded. If there had been a solid ITIL foundation behind it, this could have been avoided.
Speaking of the cloud, I think this is a perfect example of how relevant ITIL remains. Today, almost everyone is migrating or has already migrated workloads to the cloud. And what happens? Invoices become a monster, difficult to understand and even harder to control. That's where governance comes in. Frameworks like FinOps help a lot, but without structured processes...
service and change management, things don't hold up. ITIL remains the foundation for providing visibility and discipline, and enabling other practices to take effect.
And it's not just in a cloud. Looking to the future, artificial intelligence promises to be the next big disruptor. The technology is already here, and it will increasingly influence how we make decisions and operate IT. But with it come serious questions: who is accountable for a decision made by AI? How can we ensure its use is ethical and safe? It is precisely in this type of discussion that governance frameworks like ITIL will play a fundamental role. It doesn't dictate trends, but absorbs and consolidates what the market has already tested and validated.
This is how ITIL 4 emerged, bringing concepts of co-creation of value and alignment with agile practices, and it will be the same with AI.
I also see great value in integrating ITIL with other areas, such as project management. I've participated in initiatives where incidents were monitored in real time on project dashboards, and this provided a much clearer view of quality. After all, when a delivery goes live without generating any calls, that's the best indicator that it was successful. This combination of operational governance and project vision demonstrates how ITIL can and should be connected to the rest of the ecosystem.
At the end of the day, when someone insists that ITIL is dead, I return the provocation: is it really dead, or is it just us who insist on applying it bureaucratically and aimlessly? ITIL only becomes burdensome when misused. If applied sensibly, proportionate to the risk, and with a focus on generating value, it becomes invisible, and that's precisely where its strength lies.
What needs to die is not ITIL, but the old mindset of seeing ITIL as a list of processes to "check the box." What we need is to see it as an ally. A set of flexible principles that support innovation rather than hinder it. ITIL is not a brake, it is a foundation. It doesn't compete with Agile or DevOps; it prepares them for sustainable growth.
So, make no mistake: ITIL isn't dead, nor will it be any time soon. If anything is outdated, it's the way we still try to apply it in many companies. It's time to change our mindset, not to discard the framework. Because, at the end of the day, ITIL remains what it always was: the foundation that ensures governance, trust, and stability in an increasingly complex IT world.
This article was produced by Miguel Ferro, ITAM Specialist at 4MATT.
