Many view ITIL as a large and complex framework - and it is. However, one of the most important concepts expressed in ITIL is that companies don't need to adopt everything in ITIL, and there is no specific order of implementation or set of required processes. The processes described by ITIL are representative of all the activities that successful companies have evolved over many years. ITIL covers every aspect of IT management - from application development to security to engineering. It is imperative that businesses choose just those elements of ITIL that are relevant to their particular situations.

Currently, the most commonly utilized edition of ITIL is Version 2, which was released in 2001 and consists of 2 publications: Service Support and Service Delivery. One of ITIL's foundational principles is that best practices can and should be used for business benefit. Building on this philosophy, Version 3 of ITIL was recently released (May 2007) to adopt a more lifecycle-oriented approach to service management. Rather than aligning business and IT, V3 views service management and business strategy as an integrated entity. V3 does not conflict with V2 so existing and ongoing investments based on V2 principles will not lose value as V3 gains widespread use. ITIL V3 also now organizes by lifecycle rather than IT management domain and consists of 5 books: Service Strategy, Service Design, Service Transition, Service Operation, and Continual Service Improvement.

Success with ITIL framework comes from analyzing the people, process and products in existing IT operations and business environments, and then choosing the minimum set of process descriptions from ITIL. This should not be confused with choosing less ITIL processes than required, however. ITIL is very clear about how to align with businesses to ensure IT does the right things in the right way. ITIL is an agnostic tool, but only the smallest of IT organizations can make use of ITIL ideas and processes without implementing at least some automated tools.