Episode 127 of the Enterprise Digital Podcast is on the topic everyone in service management is talking about. Barclay Rae and Ian Aitchison are joined by Vicky Hunter, Portfolio Director at PeopleCert, to talk through the newly announced ITIL (Version 5). What has changed, what has stayed, and how it all came together.

The big shift is a shared management lifecycle for digital products and services. Rather than treating product and service teams as separate disciplines with distinct languages, the new ITIL brings them together around a common way of working. Experience management, including employee experience, now sits as a layer across both.

AI is in there, too, approached as a set of capabilities rather than a bolt-on topic. The seven guiding principles and all 34 practices remain, with minor updates to reflect the broader scope.

The conversation also covers how the development team was deliberately built with a mix of long-standing ITIL contributors and people from outside the traditional ITSM community, and how early ideas were tested publicly before the formal announcement.

This week's trivia explores whether tickling rats makes them more optimistic. Spoiler: it does.