How ITIL and Scrum Can Work Together

At first glance, ITIL and Scrum might seem like they belong to different worlds—one focused on process control and service delivery, the other on iterative development and team agility. However, when applied thoughtfully, these two frameworks can complement each other and help organizations deliver value efficiently while maintaining operational excellence.

Balancing Stability and Agility

Scrum excels at managing complex projects by encouraging iterative development, rapid feedback, and team empowerment. ITIL, on the other hand, focuses on ensuring stability, reliability, and predictability in IT operations. When integrated, ITIL processes like Change Management can support Scrum's delivery cycles by managing production deployments in a controlled, risk-aware manner. Incident Management and Problem Management can also feed insights back into Scrum retrospectives to continuously improve products and services.

Making It Work in Practice

To align both approaches, organizations need to foster communication between Scrum teams and ITIL-based operations teams. For example, a Scrum team might plan a Sprint goal that includes deploying a new feature, while coordinating with the ITIL Change Advisory Board (CAB) to ensure it's reviewed and approved in time. Similarly, service desk feedback gathered through ITIL processes can directly influence the product backlog.

Conclusion

ITIL and Scrum aren’t mutually exclusive—they serve different but complementary purposes. By using ITIL to ensure operational consistency and Scrum to drive innovation and responsiveness, organizations can build products that are not only fast to market but also stable and supportable. The key lies in integrating processes and fostering a culture of collaboration between agile delivery teams and IT service management.