Sure Footedness

Malcolm Fry brings up an excellent question in his ITIL Lite article:

So why are there so many people seeing ITIL v3 more as a methodology than as a framework?

As summarized in The Tool is the Method, the phenomenon observed under similar circumstances in Agile initiatives is correlation with sure footedness (or lack thereof). The tendency is to follow the 'prescription' as is until one becomes sure footed enough to interpret it in an intelligent manner.