How can ITIL and agile project management coexist?: An adaptation of the ITIL v.3 life cycle in order to integrate SCRUM

Abstract

A significant proportion of organizations delivering it services follows and combines some it management frameworks. At the organizational level, they often act in accordance with ITIL, the most used it service management (ITSM) framework. At the project management level, a growing part of them are willing to work with agile methods. However, ITIL favours the Waterfall life cycle, such as in PRINCE2 or PMBOK, to the detriment of agile methods. Nevertheless, it is also assumed that ITSM best practices have to be adapted to, e.g., the environment, the kind of it services and the culture of it organizations. So there is a legitimate issue to raise: How can ITIL v.3 and agile project management coexist in an it organization? In this paper, we positively answer to this question by describing how to adapt ITIL v.3 when it is associated with scrum, the most popular agile method. First, we detail the current ITIL structure when a software implementation project is carried out. Then, we identify and explain which are the itil elements to modify in comparison with Waterfallbased project management methodologies. Lastly, we describe and illustrate eight interfaces between ITIL v.3 and scrum.