As long as I’ve been involved in service management, one of the perennial debates that’s really never been resolved focuses around how many discrete processes ITIL describes.

It’s really a fruitless debate, but it’s a debate that continually raises its ugly head. As recently as Fusion 2011 I witnessed an attendee ask one of the ITIL authors, “In ITIL 2011, is there a definitive list of all of the processes?”

No such single list exists in the ITIL core books. However, section 4 of each of the ITIL 2011 core books shows the processes described within that specific book. When we deliver accredited ITIL training, if it is describe in section 4 of any of the ITIL core books, then it is considered a “process”.

The following lists, grouped by lifecycle stage, are the processes described in ITIL 2011:

Service Strategy

• Strategy management for IT services
• Demand management
• Service portfolio management
• Business relationship management
• Financial management for IT services

Service Design

• Design coordination
• Service catalogue management
• Service level management
• Supplier management
• Availability management
• Capacity management
• IT service continuity management
• Information security management

Service Transition

• Transition planning and support
• Service asset and configuration management
• Change management
• Change evaluation
• Release and deployment management
• Service validation and testing
• Knowledge management

Service Operation

• Event management
• Incident management
• Problem management
• Request fulfillment
• Access management

Continual Service Improvement

• The seven-step improvement process

The total count is 26 processes described by ITIL 2011.