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ITIL Service Management and Scrum

Last post 05:09 pm September 30, 2025 by Maciej Jarosz
2 replies
Christina Sonja Hübner
12:57 pm September 30, 2025

Hi everybody!

I wanted to ask how ITIL v4 and Scrum work together. Online there are quite some resources but I think they are on a higher level than what I need. In my understanding the Service Manager and the Product Owner have quite similar responsibilities and I just want some clarification on that. Who decides what's best for the service/product and what will be done next for example. In Scrum it would be the Product Owner. In ITIL the Service Manager is responsible. What is with SLAs for Incidents when the Product Owner decides what will be done? 
Maybe I'm missing something. 

Ian Mitchell
03:17 pm September 30, 2025

In Scrum it's accountability that matters, regardless of whoever might be responsible for doing something.

If you're using Scrum in conjunction with ITIL--  or indeed in any context -- think about the three Scrum accountabilities, the commitments they make, and how empiricism ought to be established and maintained.

Maciej Jarosz
05:09 pm September 30, 2025

Let me respond as an ITIL4 Master and without dogmas.

Look, there is this Agile Service Management course - https://www.peoplecert.org/browse-certifications/devops/DevOps-13/certified-agile-manager-3776

If you dig here and there you'd find ASM PDF from DevOps Institute from back in the day. That is one thing.

From the perspective of ITIL4 SVS there are 34 management practices - general, service oriented and 3 technical ones.

One of general management practices is project management. 

Scrum can be categorized under project management practice. 

Hence Scrum can be seen as subservient to ITIL4 SVS. Or not.

ITIL4 has a set of 7 guiding principles, SVS and Service Value Chain which encompass how organizations operate and how they do interact with each other via 4 dimensions of service management.

But...

It is but a model. Scrum also is just a model.

It does not matter that much. ITIL4 is a lightweight toolbox of practices, processes, procedures, so on.

Also - adopt, adapt, improve. 

Pick whatever you think will benefit your context. Adopt it. Adapt it. Improve on it.

ITIL4 uses LACMT competency profile in practice guides. If you find those helpful - use them, live long and prosper.

My view - forget about "method wars" ITIL vs DevOps, SAFe is not Agile, stuff like that. It is ultimately irrelevant. 
 

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