Confusion in the Ranks: IT Service Management Practice and Terminology

Abstract The Information Technology Service Management (ITSM) movement is gaining adopters throughout the world, expanding from the 2005 ratification of International Standards Organization (ISO) ISO/IEC 20000. However, this concept grew out of older frameworks such as Britain's IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) and U.S. service level management (SLM). To further confuse the landscape, there are also related terms such as business service management (BSM), the Control Objectives for Information and related Technology (CobiT), and IT governance. There is a lack of descriptive academic literature currently published, which has mainly focused on prescriptive pieces. This paper gives a background on the several contributing frameworks mentioned above, and reports on a survey U.S. IT managers to determine the extent of understanding of these terms and frameworks. The findings indicate that ITSM adoption and knowledge may be lower than some studies have indicated. There is also conceptual confusion about what constitutes ITSM, with conflation of terms and practices.