The new ITIL (Version 5) was released in February 2026, in-line with the standard time for a major ITIL version upgrade. The evolution of ITIL over the almost 40 years since its inception, and more than 25 years since its first popular version (ITIL v2), is similar to other comparable frameworks such as COBIT, the PMBOK, BABOK. Beginning with a rather narrow scope, be it project management, business analysis or IT service management, the framework grows ever larger addressing more aspects of the organization, most notably its strategic aspects. This is accompanied by an inclusion in the new ITIL of “soft” issues such as organizational culture, critical thinking, creativity, and even stress management.
This standard scope increase (or creep) notwithstanding, the authors of the new ITIL have an important point to make. Most organizations today, from tiny to large, have or should have a digital strategy. Whether they like it or not, the reliance on digital is of the utmost importance to their survival.
The new ITIL crosses the Rubicon from IT to Digital; proposes a unified lifecycle model for digital products and digital services; enlarges the scope of the user and customer experience introduced in ITIL 4 to the so-called Service Journey; and adds the now unavoidable aspects of AI capabilities and governance.
In this article, we will shortly describe each of these aspects. For simplicity, in the rest of this article, we will refer to the new ITIL as ITIL v5.
digital, products, services
Whereas you might still think that ITIL means IT Infrastructure Library, ITIL v5 claims that this is passé, that ITIL has been just a name without a meaning for over 10 years, actually beginning with ITIL v3. This may explain why the term Digital has gradually replaced IT. Where ITIL 4 only touched the subject, ITIL v5 embraces it completely, referring systematically to digital products and digital services in the context of digital transformation.
It can be understood from ITIL v5 that digital transformation is the complete overhaul of organizations of all kinds, shapes and sizes due to the introduction of computer technology. As a result, ITIL v5 expands to territories such as organizational strategy, culture, and relationships.
The building stones of this transformation are the digital product and digital service. ITIL has always strived to give prominence to the concept of Service. The product existed as a necessary building block of the service. ITIL 4 reintroduced Product as a primary concept, but still subservient to the notion of service. ITIL v5 elevates the concept of product to the equal of service. For example, the well-known model introduced in ITIL 4 called the “Four dimensions of service management” has been renamed in ITIL v5 “The ITIL Four Dimensions of Product and Service Management.” So now the four dimensions of (1) organizations and people, (2) information and technology, (3) partners and suppliers, (4) value streams and processes, apply the enablement of both products and services.
ITIL v5 explains the rationale behind this equal treatment of product and services, as the need to avoid the silos that may exist between product management and service management in organizations, thus unifying their management with the “Unified digital product and digital service lifecycle.” This comprises the following eight activities: Discover, Design, Acquire, Build, Transition, Operate, Deliver, Support. ITIL states that this, so-called lifecycle, can also dually be seen as a value chain. The treatment of the lifecycle as a value chain means that each activity creates the outputs for the next one, discover feeds design, which feeds acquire etc. There are, however, obvious parallelism between the activities in the chain as well as loops and jumps. ITIL recognizes this and proposes a model called stepping stones.
The eight activities of the unified lifecycle: Discover → Design → Acquire → Build → Transition → Operate → Deliver → Support
The lifecycle view is not a complete cradle to grave sequence. It misses the crucial activity of Decommissioning. Decommissioning is mentioned in passing in the Transition activity, but, at least for now, is not explicit in the lifecycle. This all the more curious given the inclusion of the sustainability dimension in the service-level agreement as we will see below.
Another issue that has been swept under the rug, so to speak, is the duality of product and service. The definitions of product and service, already present and unchanged from ITIL 4, show little difference between the two if one only dives into the meaning of the underlying concepts. It is a bit misleading to assume that there is a clear dichotomy between product and service.
Despite these slight shortcomings, these changes enable IT departments to use the same methods and tools interchangeably between products and services. Conversely, it comforts IT departments that not everything is a service. We still have products and are allowed to not apply the service view to all our activities.
journey and experience
Since its inception, the notion of service has been used by ITIL to shift the focus of IT departments from “just implementing and maybe supporting IT products” to a deep reflection about the outcomes and value expected by users and customers. With the concomitant rise of service science, this has resulted in the definition of a service as the co-creation of value. Co-creation was initially meant to include the active involvement of the customer, without whom the service will not be consumed and therefore will not generate value.
A bit overlooked for a while, maybe because it is too obvious, was the need for the service provider to also create and offer the service.
This is why the overall quality of a service is consigned in a document called a service-level agreement (SLA), in which both parties agree on the service to be provided and consumed. The SLA has traditionally included the dimensions of Utility and Warranty. This was expanded in ITIL v5 to include two additional dimensions, Sustainability and Experience.
It is this inclusion of experience in the overall quality of the service that underpins the unified product and service lifecycle we have reviewed above. With respect to the previous versions of ITIL, we can see an evolution toward a global coherence between the bits and pieces of service provision, e.g., SLA, Service Quality, Service Experience, Product and Service lifecycle.
ITIL 4 introduced the most obvious “experiences” prevalent in the digital discourse, namely user experience, customer experience and employee experience. ITIL now expands this service experience with the concept of “service journey”, the sum total of all the experiences an organization is going through. It may be the novelty of this concept that makes it stand out instead of being fully integrated. It could have been defined on top of the concept of service experience, which it is not, and it could have been defined as the 4th dimension in the SLA, which it is not either. These two, after all, slight changes would have resulted in a total integration of all dimensions. We will probably need to wait for a new “new ITIL” to see this total integration.
AI capabilities and governance
ITIL could not have a facelift in this day and age without addressing the unavoidable AI tsunami. It therefore embraces the benefits and challenges offered by AI. Aptly, ITIL added AI to two of its four Dimensions of Product and Service Management: Organization and People and the Information and Technology. The second one is obvious, AI is an information management technology. The first one is a bit less obvious. It shows that for ITIL, AI complements people. This is apparent in the list of capabilities listed in the ITIL AI capability model (so called 6c):
- Creation
- Curation
- Clarification
- Cognition
- Communication
- Coordination
The list is a showcase of what AI can do for an organization. It goes beyond the realm of standard automation, with examples tapping into the essence of service improvement, from content creation to SLA and workflow drafting, to problem management, and to automatic incident escalation.
The 6c model is augmented with a governance structure intended to enable organizations to reap the benefits of AI while reducing the related risks. As is well known by now, both benefits and risks are much more important than past information and automation technologies. It is therefore no wonder that the governance structure is correspondingly high-level. It consists of four interdependent perspectives: decision authority and risk management, ethical principles, data governance, and regulatory compliance.
ITIIL v5 also proposes a 4 level AI governance maturity model that moves from ad hoc AI use to long-term care and responsibility. This last level, called Stewardship, recognizes that it is not enough to simply impose guardrails for people to abide by. It is far better to actively help them navigate through the meanders of compliance, understanding the reasons of the imposed measures, and support people in their implementation.
conslusion
ITIL v5 is a major overhaul of ITIL, but not from the service management perspective. The essence of service management has already been proposed in ITIL v3 and expanded in ITIL 4. ITIL v5 taps into the notion that the digital dimension is now inescapable for most modern organizations. IT executives will find in the new ITIL a one-stop shop guide for their digital transformation programs. With all the other frameworks going through the same evolution, the overlap and confusion are an increased risk. Each framework encourages certified disciples that they are the chosen few to enlighten top-management. We therefore risk both the silos wars and stepping on the C-level toes.
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