'Just because you use Agile, don't throw ITIL out the window', says Advanced

Marc Beder, director of technology at Advanced, explains organisations can pick the best of both Agile and ITIL methodologies

The Agile and ITIL methodologies are not mutually exclusive, and firms should look to employ facets of both.

That's one of the themes to emerge from a recent Computing webinar 'Bimodal IT: stepping stone to cloud or path of no return'.

Marc Beder, director of technology at Advanced said that having access to both ways of working presents organisations with an opportunity.

"ITIL is a foundation for the service, but agile and ITIL aren't mutually exclusive," Beder began. "The two can work well together, it's just about adopting best of both. Just because you use Agile doesn't mean ITIL is thrown out of the window.

"That's an opportunity, there are new ways of working, new technologies and ideas can be adopted, so let's embrace it and not dig our heels in," he argued.

Rob Bruce, head of technology and IT support for PRS for Music agreed.

"We need to be very careful - ITIL has served us well for 20 odd years, and it's become a way to continually improve the service, but we can learn from how Agile can enable us to be more flexible," said Bruce. "Everyone wants to be more flexible, and that fast pace of change is continuing.

"So for traditional organisations to say 'we've always done things in an ITIL way' is very worrying. We shouldn't go down that path, as we definitely want to go Agile, but without discarding ITIL. ITIL does help the service be as good as it can be," he said.

New research from Computing discussed during the broadcast revealed that a third of UK-based organsations believe that their cloud use will remain at the same level, whilst almost two thirds anticpate an increase.