Information Technology Infrastructure Library

Main article: Information Technology Infrastructure Library

IT Service Management is often equated with the Information Technology Infrastructure Library, (ITIL) an official publication of the Cabinet Office in the United Kingdom. However, while a version of ITSM is a component of ITIL, ITIL also covers a number of related but distinct disciplines and the two are not synonymous. The ownership of ITIL has transferred from the Office of Government Commerce (OGC) to the Cabinet Office, following the move of OGC into the Cabinet Office.

The current version of the ITIL framework is the 2011 edition. The 2011 edition, published in July 2011, is a revision of the previous edition known as ITIL version 3 (published in June 2007).It was a major upgrade from version 2 (2001). Whereas version 2 was process oriented (split in 2 groups: service support and service delivery), version 3 is service oriented. Since ITIL V3, the various ITIL processes are grouped into 5 stages of the service lifecycle: service strategy, service design, service transition, service operation and Continual service improvement (or CSI). The use of the term "Service Management" is interpreted by many in the world as ITSM, but again, there are other frameworks, and conversely, the entire ITIL library might be seen as IT Service Management in a larger sense.

Other frameworks and concern with the overhead.

Analogous to debates in software engineering between agile and prescriptive methods, there is debate between lightweight versus heavyweight approaches to IT service management. Lighter weight ITSM approaches include:

• ITIL Small-scale Implementation^[5] colloquially called “ITIL Lite” is an official part of the ITIL framework.^[6]
• FITS^[7] was developed for UK schools. It is a simplification of ITIL.
• CoPr or "copper^[8] calls for limiting Best Practice to areas where there is a business case for it, and in other areas just doing the minimum necessary.
• OpenSDLC.org is a Creative Commons ITSM/SDLC Framework Wiki.
• MOF 4^[9] (Microsoft Operations Framework) covers the IT service management lifecycle with a practical focus.