The Death of ITSM? How Business Value Stream Management is Changing the Game

Introduction: The Fall of Traditional ITSM?

ITSM has long been the backbone of IT operations, ensuring that IT services align with business needs. The ITIL framework, its library of standard practices, Incident Management, Problem Management, Change Management, the CMDB and Service Level Agreements (SLAs) has long governed how organizations provide IT support and maintain stability.

But times have changed. In an era where businesses compete on speed, digital experience, and innovation, traditional ITSM often slows things down. Customers don’t care about SLAs or ticket resolution time - they care about whether they can use the product or service when they need it, and achieve the outcomes they want. Enter Business Value Stream Management (BVSM), a new approach that focuses on end-to-end value creation rather than siloed IT processes.

What is Business Value Stream Management (BVSM)?

BVSM shifts the focus from managing IT services to delivering value across the entire business process. It integrates IT and business operations into a single, customer-focused framework that optimizes value streams rather than individual IT functions.

Key principles of BVSM include:

• End-to-end visibility across the entire value stream (from idea to delivery to customer experience)

• Continuous flow rather than process-driven ITSM bottlenecks

• Customer-centric metrics instead of internal IT performance indicators

• Business agility, allowing teams to pivot quickly to meet demand

• Automation and AI-driven service operations

Why BVSM is Overtaking ITSM

1. ITSM is Too Slow for Modern Business Needs

Traditional ITSM models emphasize stability over speed, leading to slow approvals, rigid change processes, and excessive bureaucracy. In contrast, BVSM prioritizes flow efficiency, ensuring that work moves seamlessly through the organization.

A prime example is DevOps and Agile methodologies, which have already eroded ITSM’s dominance. By emphasizing rapid deployment and continuous delivery, DevOps has proven that IT can be both stable and fast—something ITSM often struggles to balance.

2. Customers Want Value, Not Process

ITSM tends to focus on internal efficiency, measuring success through SLAs, ticket resolution times, and uptime percentages. But customers don’t care about those things—they care about whether they can use a product or service without interruption.

BVSM flips the perspective: instead of tracking IT success based on internal metrics, businesses measure success based on customer outcomes. This means prioritizing availability, usability, and business impact over incident closure rates.

3. ITSM Creates Operational Silos

One of ITSM’s biggest flaws is its siloed nature. Different teams handle incidents, changes, and service requests, often leading to misalignment with business priorities. BVSM eliminates these silos by integrating IT operations directly into business workflows.

For example, a bank’s mobile app downtime affects customers, revenue, and reputation—not just the IT department. BVSM ensures that IT, product teams, and business leaders work together to maintain value delivery instead of IT operating in isolation.

4. ITSM is Reactive, BVSM is Proactive

Traditional ITSM models operate reactively—problems arise, tickets are created, and IT teams fix them. BVSM, on the other hand, uses real-time analytics, AI, and automation to predict and prevent issues before they impact customers.

Companies like Netflix, Tesla and Amazon have demonstrated the power of proactive IT management. They use predictive maintenance, AI-driven monitoring, and self-healing systems to ensure high availability without relying on ITSM-style incident management.

5. Automation is Replacing ITSM Processes

Modern businesses leverage AI and automation to replace many of ITSM’s manual processes. BVSM embraces intelligent automation to manage value streams, reducing the need for traditional ITSM functions like ticket management and service desk operations.

For example, self-healing infrastructure in cloud computing allows systems to detect failures and automatically resolve them—eliminating the need for ITSM-driven incident response teams.

Can ITSM Survive the BVSM Revolution?

Despite its shortcomings, ITSM isn’t dead—yet. However, it must evolve to stay relevant in a world increasingly focused on business value.

Here’s how ITSM can adapt:

• Shift from service management to value stream enablement: ITSM teams must move away from managing individual IT services and start focusing on how IT contributes to business value streams.

• Embrace automation: ITSM must integrate with AI, AIOps, and automated incident response to reduce manual effort and improve efficiency.

• Adopt customer-centric KPIs: Instead of tracking MTTR (Mean Time to Resolution), IT should measure customer experience impact, business process availability, and overall service value.

• Integrate with Agile and DevOps: ITSM must work seamlessly with Agile product teams, DevOps workflows, and continuous delivery models.

• Move from reactive to predictive IT operations: ITSM must become data-driven, using predictive analytics and AI to prevent issues before they affect customers.

Conclusion: The Future Belongs to Value Stream Management

The writing is on the wall: traditional ITSM is no longer enough. Businesses need IT operations that are fast, integrated, and customer-focused—something BVSM delivers far more effectively than ITSM’s process-heavy, ticket-based approach.

While ITSM won’t vanish overnight, organizations that fail to adapt to a BVSM-driven future will struggle to remain competitive. The next generation of IT management isn’t about controlling services—it’s about ensuring continuous, seamless value delivery to customers.

For IT leaders, the choice is clear: evolve or become irrelevant. The future of IT is about flow, agility, and business value—not rigid ITSM processes. The question is, is your organization ready for the shift?