In 2005, the OGC began the ITIL Refresh Project - gathering opinions that garnered a diverse set of comments on what needed fixing. Comments were sourced from more than 100 companies and private sector organizations through surveys and workshops, making for over 6000 pieces of feedback.

An invitation was extended from the OGC to authors interested in following through with the updating of ITIL to a new version, using the emerging best practices described by the data they had collected. The authors and their mentors were appointed in early 2006 and the drafting began.