The first version of ITIL originated in the mid 80s to the government on British CCTA (Central Computer and Telecommunications Agency), the agency in order to support the Government in the field of Information Technology and Telecommunications. Previously known as the "Government Information Technology Infrastructure Management Methodology" (GITMM), the first version was composed of numerous books, many of which correspond to individual processes of the successive versions 2 and 3. The project was approved by CCTA in 1986 with the aim of defining a set of guidelines to improve the efficiency in the ICT for the government. The first version of GITMM was published in 1988 as a guide for Public Administration (UK) and focused on Service Level Management. In the same year, the work continued focusing on cost management, capacity and availability. It is in 1989 that the name GITMM appears inadequate: no longer a model and had to leave the purely governmental. Thus the name ITIL and in 1989 it was published the first book: Service Level Management, Help Desk (which included the Incident Management), Contingency Planning and Change Management. 1990 was the year of the Problem Management, Configuration Management and Cost Management Services for Information Technology and then to follow, Software Control & Distribution (1991), Availability Management (1992).

Publications continue until the end of the 90s reaching a total of 31 books. This first version of ITIL was very similar, especially in the areas of process Delivery and Support with the methodology ISMA (Information Systems Management Architecture) developed by IBM starting in 1972 and published in 1980.
The diffusion of the first version of ITIL was initially slow. Only in the early 90s the framework began to spread more quickly at large companies and European government agencies. In 2000, the CCTA was absorbed by the Office of Government Commerce (OGC), which decided a significant revision of ITIL, version 2, which saw the light at the intersection of 2000 (Service Support) and 2001 (Service Delivery). In the years following new titles were added to these: Application Management (2002), Planning to Implement Service Management Information Technology (2002), ICT Infrastructure Management (2002), Software Asset Management (2003), Business Perspective: The IS View on Delivering Service to the Business (2004) and the glossary v2 (June 2006).

Since its birth in 2000 to our days, version 2 has been gradually establishing itself as the most used and recognized for ICT Service Management in the world, or for quality improvement in the supply of ICT services. However not all the parts were marked by equal success. The contents of the modules Support Service (which covers the processes of Incident, Change, Problem, Release and Configuration Management and is the "Service Desk) and Service Delivery (which covers the processes of Service Level, Financial ICT, ICT Service Continuity, Availability and Capacity Management), have been by far the most adopted by companies, especially the first, while others have not found a similar interest.

The spread of ITIL v2 was also varied according to geography: first in English-speaking countries and northern Europe and only recently in many other nations.

While the transition from version 1 to version 2 was mainly due to reasons of synthesis, integration and harmonization of content without actually changing the width of topics covered and their content (only a few changes to processes remained unchanged for almost 20 years), so it was not for the transition to the new version that has almost doubled the scope of topics covered and the number of processes in the five books that comprise it: Service Strategy, Service Design, Service Transition, Service Operation and Continual Service Improvement. The reasons this time are to be found in the fundamental questions that the approach of the previous version had not been able to solve. Among these open points, most significant:

• integration between Business Strategy and ICT Strategy,
• the nimble and quick design and introduction of new ICT services,
• measuring the value of ICT services and continuous improvement of their quality.

ITIL v3 is the result of the attempt to satisfy these requirements in addition to consolidating the benefits brought by version 2 of the framework, in particular, over the years it demonstrated its ability to bring systematic, efficiency, quality and an increased alignment between business needs and ICT in the areas of the Service Support and Service Delivery.

Besides the core books of ITIL v3, the release of a large number of complementary publications will be issuing with the aim of supporting the adoption of the new framework, including reference to specific sectors. This will be case studies, quick-wins, quick guide and / or overview, etc. ..