A brief history of IT Service Management terms and definitions

One of the principal benefits of ITIL is the definition of key terms pertaining to IT Service Management, and the adoption by concensus of these terms - amongst IT Service organizations, the editors of Service Management tools, and by national and international standards organizations.

The principal source of definitions is ITIL itself, with its glossaries of terms in the appendixes. The definitions in these glossaries tend to be encyclopedic in approach, giving verbose summaries of the term and its semantic environment. We hoped that ITIL ver. 3 would make these definitions more concise, pithy and grammatical, but our hopes were dashed.

itSMF has published A Dictionary of IT SERVICE MANAGEMENT Terms, Acronyms and Abbreviations (November 2001). This small volume is similar in style to the ITIL volume glossaries, adding many other terms which are not formally defined by ITIL and which, therefore, are informed opinions of the authors of this volume rather than authoritative definitions (albeit the authors have made seminal contributions to ITIL).

The release of ITIL ver. 3 has resulted in the deprecation of certain terms, in changes in definition of certain terms and in the introduction of many new terms. It also introduced confusion in authoritative definitions, as there are now the definitions in a baseline document of May 2006, the definitions in the glossaries of the ITIL core volumes, and the definitions internal to the core volumes themselves.

The examination authorities, ISEB and EXIN, both deliver examinations which have implicit definitions of terms. This is worth mentioning for ITIL ver. 2, because the "correct" answers to certain questions are clearly in conflict with the formal ITIL definitions. See, for example, the EXIN sample ITIL Foundation examination (2004) question 18, and the bizarre definition of "Service Request" in the ITIL ver. 2 glossaries. The basis for the ITIL ver. 3 examinations is the baseline glossary, which is not 100% in agreement with the ITIL core volumes, either in terms of the authoritative list or in terms of the definitions themselves.

Finally, there are translations of examinations into other languages. The translations used by the examination authorities for ITIL ver. 2 are based on their internal organization, and have neither been published, nor are they validated by any other body. The translations used for ITIL ver. 3 were originally produced based on the baseline glossary. However, the National chapters of itSMF national chapters have created their own translations of the ITIL terms which, in our opinion, should be authoritative. We hope that the examination authorities will align themselves with these translations. Follow this link for the latest information on languages and availability.

The update to ITIL ver. 3 (called by some "ITIL ver. 3.1") is expected during July 2011. Part of this update is a new version of the glossary, which is supposed to ensure better coherency between the glossary definitions and the use of the terminology within the ITIL core volumes.

Interactive IT Service Management Dictionary

To this day, there are no published bilingual ITIL glossaries, although Concentric Circle Consulting does offer an English-French bilingual glossary in the context of its training. We intend to provide here an interactive dictionary of IT Service Management terms at some time in the future.