Criticisms of ITILCriticisms of ITIL

ITIL has been criticized on several fronts, including:
• The books are not affordable for non-commercial users
• Accusations that many ITIL advocates think ITIL is "a holistic, all-encompassing framework for IT governance";
• Accusations that proponents of ITIL indoctrinate the methodology with 'religious zeal' at the expense of pragmatism.
• Implementation and credentialing requires specific training
• Debate over ITIL falling under or ITSM frameworks
• ITIL training and certification costs are exorbitant
As Jan van Bon (author and editor of many IT Service Management publications) notes,
There is confusion about ITIL, stemming from misunderstandings about its nature. ITIL is, as the OGC states, a set of best practices. The OGC doesn't claim that ITIL's best practices describe pure processes. The OGC also doesn't claim that ITIL is a framework, designed as one coherent model. That is what most of its users make of it, probably because they have such a great need for such a model...
CIO Magazine columnist Dean Meyer has also presented some cautionary views of ITIL, including five pitfalls such as "becoming a slave to outdated definitions" and "Letting ITIL become religion." As he notes, "...it doesn't describe the complete range of processes needed to be world class. It's focused on ... managing ongoing services."
Van Herwaarden and Grift see the quality of the library's volumes as uneven. They note: “the consistency that characterized the service support processes ... is largely missing in the service delivery books."
In a 2004 survey designed by Noel Bruton (author of "How to Manage the IT Helpdesk" and "Managing the IT Services Process"), organizations adopting ITIL were asked to relate their actual experiences in having implemented ITIL. Seventy-seven percent of survey respondents either agreed or strongly agreed that "ITIL does not have all the answers". ITIL exponents accept this, citing ITIL's stated intention to be non-prescriptive, expecting organizations to engage ITIL processes with existing process models. Bruton notes that the claim to non-prescriptiveness must be, at best, one of scale rather than absolute intention, for the very description of a certain set of processes is in itself a form of prescription.