High-velocity IT turns five

Well, almost. July 29th 2024 marks five years since I delivered my “editor’s cut” version of the ITIL? 4 High-velocity IT manuscript to Axelos, which they transformed into the final version published early 2020.

High-velocity IT is aimed at the kind of organization that places higher demands on IT. As I wrote in the book, it is for organizations that do things significantly differently, or do significantly different things that would not be possible without strategic use of IT. This requires ways of working, thinking, and even being that are more on the progressive scale of IT service management. Think lean, agile, resilient, continuous and co-creative for starters. It is for practitioners and managers who are willing to challenge the status quo and who seek fresh perspectives to drive the business impact of IT investments.

I might seem like an odd choice for the Lead Editor, not even having an ITIL Foundation qualification, but I believe they saw benefit in someone who looked at IT service management more from the outside than an insider. I wrote half of the book, and orchestrated major contributions from experts on their particular field: Akshay Anand , Dan Ashby , Ariana Bucio , Ana Yasmeen Chong , James Finister , Reni Elisabeth Pihl Friis , Marco Gianotten , Rudolf T. A. Greger – Businessdesign-Coach , Ian Jones , Ola K?llg?rden , Allan Kelly , Donna Knapp , Dagfinn Krog, Jeffrey Liker , Krikor Maroukian PhD , Simone Jo Moore , Pasi Nikkanen , Michael Orzen , Oleg Skrynnik , Dave Snowden , and Jon Stevens-Hall .

The book also bears ITIL Architect-in-Chief Roman Jouravlev’s signature. He initially approached me about applying to write the book with “I warn you; it will be a nightmare ... however, it is a chance to create a good book.” During the writing we had some great discussions about the architecture of the book and he helped resolve some design dilemmas where I was going around in circles.

It was interesting to see how the market reacted to the book, and to see other people talking about “my” baby. It has resonated so strongly with some professionals that they now refer to themselves as High-velocity IT experts, and I am happy to support them. It was also satisfying to get favourable reactions from the DevOps community, including Patrick Debois in his foreword for the Reference and Study Guide where he referred to it as guidance for embedding IT into a business strategy.

If you are interested in learning more, you get the core publication as part of the training. Other books are TSO’s Reference and Study Guide which summarizes the non-examinable content, Claire Agutter’s companion to High-velocity IT, and my own Reflections on High-velocity IT with some additional perspectives that could easily have been in High-velocity IT.