Do unto yourself before others do unto you

Submitted by skeptic on Wed, 2006-07-12 01:23

Joe at Evergreen makes a great point

Whether it’s ITIL or some other initiative or project, eventually someone in the organization (usually someone with authority) will ask the proverbial "so what". Other questions they might and should ask include "why did we do this" and, of course, "what was the ROI".

What a load of .... Computerworld: How Much Is 'Just Enough' for a CMDB?

Submitted by skeptic on Sat, 2006-07-01 11:32

This article has been podcast in slightly modified form.

Antonio gave us an interesting link in a recent comment. Excuse me folks, but what a load of crap it is.

"A just-enough CMDB should provide a full picture of the following:
All technology components related to the specific service.

ITIL’s dead elephant: CMDB can't be done

Submitted by skeptic on Mon, 2006-06-26 22:17

Note: this is the original "dead elephant" post from back in 2006. My thinking about CMDB has matured since then. Please see the articles (and book) in the sidebar of this article for a more complete picture of how I now see CMDB, and a much wider range of ideas why CMDB or CMS is - for most organisations - a bad idea.

This article has been podcast

CMDB can’t be done. Not as ITIL defines it. At least not with a justifiable return on the investment of doing it - it is such an enormous undertaking that any organisation attempting it is going to burn money on an irresponsible scale. The truth about CMDB is no secret. It is a “dead elephant”: a great putrescence in the corner of the room that everyone studiously ignores, stepping around it and ignoring the stench, because life will be so much simpler if they do not acknowledge the obvious.

Many ITIL projects are overcapitalised renovations

Submitted by skeptic on Sat, 2006-06-24 10:05

I have been discussing ITIL ROI with the Spanish ITIL community, via Antonio Valle's blog with the magnificent name "Gobierno de las TIC. Conocimiento Adquirido". I was asked the question “How is the relationship between an architectural project and a house?”.

Unless one is setting up a data centre from scratch, I don't think the architect analogy fits. An ITIL adoption is usually more like renovations.

If IT ain’t broke don’t fix it.

Submitted by skeptic on Tue, 2006-06-13 10:31

This article has been podcast

Perhaps the saddest sight in the ITIL world is organisations that adopt ITIL processes when the old ones were working OK. Don’t tell me it doesn’t happen.

The Emperor has no clothes. Where is the evidence for ITIL?

Submitted by skeptic on Sun, 2006-06-11 07:08

This article has been podcast

Since this is a skeptical blog, it is high time we examined the evidence. Where is the evidence for the benefits of ITIL? There isn’t any. Not the kind of hard empirical evidence that would stand up in, say, clinical trials. There is more evidence for quack alternative medicines than there is for ITIL.

The march of ITIL zealots

Submitted by skeptic on Fri, 2006-06-09 05:24

Today let's look closer at the recent survey I quoted previously. We will discuss the lack of decent empirical evidence for ITIL in a subsequent blog. Vendor surveys are a poor substitute (I know, I worked for one), but when they are all we have then we should at least listen to them.

Sadly I don't think I can include Evergreen in my Circle of ITIL Skeptics, but they undoubtedly take a mature and rational approach to ITIL:

Which industry standards are relevant to my organization and which are redundant?
How do I get started?

Do Google ads undermine the credibility of this site?

Yes
21% (9 votes)
No
45% (19 votes)
Don't care
19% (8 votes)
What Google ads?
14% (6 votes)
Total votes: 42

IT Skeptic bumped off Wikipedia

Submitted by skeptic on Tue, 2006-06-06 11:14

Does the use of Google Ads on this page reduce its credibility? [as if it had any] Is this blog pure opinion? And if so does opinion have any place on Wikipedia? Comments please.

These are questions provoked by recent events. I am most interested in your opinions.

ITIL the cult

Submitted by skeptic on Tue, 2006-06-06 01:13

This article has been podcast

We have seen that the ITIL movement has distinct overtones of a fad. What about a cult? A group that defines its own measure of good and bad by comparing against its own internal reference books then declares that those books hold the key to getting from bad to good sounds mighty like a cult to me.

A colleague gave me a model that I shall call the Skeptical Maturity Model for Technology Adoption. It has four phases

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