A keen reader of the ITIL books noticed that an updated version of at least one ITIL core book was in the market - but without any release information. ITIL trainers may get in even more trouble than they already are if they use the 'old' version.

After finding differences between printed editions of the ITIL Operations Management book, a keen reader asked the itSMF what might have caused that. The existence of multiple versions of this specific ITIL book was then confirmed by itSMF UK and by Sharon Taylor, who is still hired by OGC as ITIL's Chief Architect. She also confirmed that all core books had been reprinted.

It seems that the ITIL management team hasn't read the section on Release Management. According to ITIL, a new release should be accompanied by release notes (which is a widely accepted best practice), to make clear to the users which changes have been applied. The only reference provided by the Chief Architect was towards the OGC Best management Practice Knowledge Centre, where volunteers can log the errors they find in the books, and the comments they have. Until now, there are only a hundred errors & comments logged in that system, and it doesn't show the status of any of these. It is unknown whether there is another system, that is used by the publisher's change management team. In addition to this logging system, the IT Skeptic also maintains a list of errors in the BOKKED: The IT Skeptic's Body Of Knowledge Known Error Database.

The result of this situation is that the reader of the ITIL V3 books doesn't have any information on the specific differences between their version and others. ITIL trainers - already subject to unprecedented chaos on the specifics of the ITIL V3 exam requirements - will have even more problems, since they may run into the effect of this at any point of their trainings.

Given the fact that the large majority of this world consumes ITIL V2 instead of ITIL V3, and that the ITIL V3 Introduction published by TSO contained specific new content that wasn't covered in the V3 core books, it seems to be getting more and more unclear what the 'real ITIL' is.