Roll out a new framework, train the team, update the process documentation, and adoption follows on its own. That’s the plan, at least. Most ITSM professionals know it seldom works that way.
Think of a framework as a blueprint. It tells you how to do something and the processes to follow. Putting it into practice is a different picture entirely, though, and it’s often where resistance appears.
For a framework like ITIL® to make a lasting impact, you need to think beyond simply putting it in place. People need to know how to use it, and just as importantly, they have to want to.
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Mastering the framework is the easy part
ITIL (Version 5) is comprehensive and well-structured, built on decades of collective practice. Learning its principles and terminology takes effort, but with time and the right training, it’s manageable.
Applying that knowledge inside a live organisation is the difficult part. Teams are stretched thin, juggling legacy systems and competing priorities, with years of habits already baked in. Change tends to meet resistance before it meets enthusiasm.
Why adoption of frameworks can fail
Most stalled rollouts trace back to one of a handful of patterns. Here’s what tends to go wrong, along with what can fix it:
Frameworks don’t fit every situation
No framework can account for every situation your business will face. Nuances in your operations, customers, and team structure won’t fit neatly into a generic industry-wide model. For this reason, frameworks work best as guidance, rather than as instruction.
ITIL, the world’s most widely recognised ITSM framework, reflects that, particularly through its guiding principles. The clue’s in the name: they’re meant to give direction, rather than act as a rigid checklist.
There are seven principles, built to flex around context and help teams apply judgement as situations arise:
- Focus on value
- Start where you are
- Progress iteratively with feedback
- Collaborate and promote visibility
- Think and work holistically
- Keep it simple and practical
- Optimise and automate
For more on them, we have a blog describing the seven guiding principles of ITIL (Version 5) in detail. But when it comes to adapting a framework – whether ITIL or otherwise – around your context, the key is building enough confidence and judgement to apply it where it doesn’t give explicit direction.
👉 More from GEL: ITIL 4 vs ITIL (Version 5)
People feel removed from the framework
People are naturally resistant to change, and a framework handed down from above, with no input from the people using it daily, is hard to get behind. For any major rollout, a change management strategy is a good bet, but above all, communication is key. After all, people are far more likely to get on board with process changes if they understand why things are changing.
This is where established change models can help. The popular ADKAR® model*, developed by Prosci founder Jeff Hiatt, for instance, breaks successful change down to five things a person needs: awareness, desire, knowledge, ability, and reinforcement.
With this in mind, when adopting a new framework, make sure you cover the following questions:
- Awareness: Have people been told why this is changing?
- Desire: Do they understand what’s in it for them?
- Knowledge: Is it clear what’s expected of them?
- Ability: Have they had a chance to practise the new way of working?
- Reinforcement: Are managers still backing it up once training’s finished?
Communicate all of this clearly, and buy-in tends to follow.
It isn’t translated into daily behaviour
Knowing a process exists and knowing how to apply it to a system at 9am on a busy Tuesday are two very different things. Without context-specific adaptation, people default to habit.
That means working out what needs to adapt to fit:
- Existing processes
- Technology and platforms
- Team structure
- Customer needs
- Maturity level
Take incident management, as an example. The framework tells you what good incident management encompasses, but it won’t tell you how that works when your ticketing system is a decade old, half your team is still learning the basics, and your customers expect a fix within the hour.
That’s the translation part at work, and it’s where a framework goes from theory to practice.
👉 Read next: What is ITIL (Version 5)?
The rollout gets overcomplicated
If a framework is difficult to adopt, people will slip back into what they know works well. Overly complex rollouts help nobody, and making the transition as seamless as possible for your team is what helps adoption pick up.
A few practical ways to do this:
- Assign clear ownership for each part of the process
- Build the framework into tools people already use, not a separate one to check
- Add prompts, checklists, or templates at the point someone needs them
Launch is treated as the finish line
Go-live isn’t the end point, even though some rollouts are planned as if it is. Without ongoing support, old habits creep back fast.
Keep checking in well after the launch. Build in a way for people to flag what isn’t working, and follow through when they do. It’s the same thinking behind ITIL’s own guiding principle to ‘progress iteratively with feedback’: a framework that visibly adapts earns a lot more trust than one handed over as finished on day one.
Your digital products work. So why is nobody using them?
If you’ve invested in the right tools but usage is still lagging, our latest webinar digs into exactly this. Join us to explore the gap between having the right systems and getting people to use them with David Cannon, Senior Director of ITIL at PeopleCert.
*ADKAR® is a registered trade mark of Prosci, Inc. This content is not affiliated with or endorsed by Prosci.
