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Looking for something as a Christmas present for an ITSM geek? Tough isn't it? How about a copy of Introduction to Real ITSM, the IT Skeptic's reportedly funny spoof on the whole ITSM world? To help you weather the recession, the price of the book is reduced to $19 for the next four weeks. Merry Christmas!

Any readers who are in Second Life please contact ITSkeptic Scribe

A reader, Eppo Luppes, asks the question "Give three reasons/statements why ITIL V3 is an improvement over V2 and also three reasons why it is NOT". Most readers can guess my three (which I may give later). What do you think?

Recently we looked at the Folly of the Crowd: how in all but the largest of online communities the supposed consensus community content is actually created by a fanatical few. This is made worse by the online world's distaste of people making a living.

Here is an opportunity to have your say on the future of ITIL V2. EXIN is running an anonymous poll of public opinion regarding the future of ITIL V2. Despite the Dutch error messages and the limited opportunities for additional comment, this is a worthwhile initiative. The ITIL Money Engine wants to kill ITIL V2 as soon as possible - add your voice if this is not what you want.

APMG and the ITIL Qualifications Board are insisting on using multi-choice exams to certify ITIL V3 competence for Intermediate and Expert level qualifications. We have discussed this already across the blog but allow me to summarise the arguments against it here.

Past discussions on this blog have suggested that a process fixation such as ITIL's engenders an inflexibility and ponderousness in an organisation. Whilst I am a process fan, there is an important point to be addressed here about how ITIL relates to nimbleness and adaptability.

An ITIL V3 report from Sunrise Software is rich in crap factoids, since the report itself suffers from all the methodological deficiencies we have described before. Mercifully this one may not get much airtime so we rate the risk Medium.

Service Management is always on about Continual Service Improvement, as if this was a holy grail and an assumed permanent state of change. What seems inadequately discussed is where does it end? Do we improve forever? Surely not. We must encounter diminishing returns until eventually we are just gilding the lily. Is the "to-be" always different from the "as-is"? or rather is it always sufficiently different to justify doing something about it?

In ITIL, a Service Level Agreement is a set of Service Level Targets. Somebody please tell the vendors.

What's the big deal with Twitter? As far as I can see it is a mechanism to allow large quantities of low value noise into your life while at the same time being a device for ego stroking. No I'm not interested in your every idle non-thought, and I don't need to feed my ego hourly. And it doesn't work very well.

ITSM Watch might do me out of business soon... but it is great to see some good IT skepticism. [Updated: fixed a link]

Much of what we read about CMDB is actually singing the praises of asset management, network discovery or other simpler technologies. Other benefits attributed to CMDB actually come from process improvement and do not depend on the technology at all. When all you want to sell is a hammer...

Many people argue that there is no such thing as ITIL compliance because there is no exact standard to audit against. Perhaps it is all semantics but I don't take such an absolute position - it seems to me that it ought to be measurable or at least assessable in some way. On the other hand I think the opposite statement is clearly true: There is no such thing as ITIL NON-compliant software tools.

Here is a high Crap Factoid alert from Chokey the Chimp:
We recently demolished the EMA paper on CMDB adoption but nevertheless the paper in question is being misquoted by bITaPlanet as saying that "there’s been a dramatic jump in the number of companies that have completed their CMDB, from just 9 percent in 2006 to one-third in 2008". This is nonsense but it is nonsense that is now turning up elsewhere. Be on alert and keep the CFirehose ready.

Some recent stats point to lots of ITIL practitioners worldwide.

There are two references to Known error sub-process in the SO book.
For example Chapter 4 states:
Problem Management involves root-cause analysis ... and a Known Error sub-process to allow quicker diagnosis and resolution if
further incidents do occur.

In the Problem Management Process there is no reference to this sub-process and I cannot find the description anywhere.

Here's hoping the upcoming (any day now, apparently) COBIT User's Guide for Service Managers is closely followed by a certification. Imagine "COBIT Certified Service Manager". Wouldn't that put a cat amongst the ITIL pigeons?

The IT Skeptic is not anti-ITIL V3. ITSM View suggests "There are plenty out there that are seemingly wanting to derail ITIL v3". I'm not one of them. Nor can I think of anyone who is. That blog post has the heading "Where is the love?". Let us not confuse reluctance to leap immediately into bed with active animosity.

One of our readers, Red Pineapple over at Thinking Problem Management posted a list of "blogs that rock" and was nice enough to rate the IT Skeptic at five pineapples, the highest rating so far.. or maybe the lowest, since pineapples represent problems (stickly and prickly see?). Check out the list - there are lots of interesting sites.

On the other hand David Wheeldon's statement that this (the Skeptic's) blog is "bollocks" is currently showing as "confirmed" on Red's myth-busting poll so not everyone agrees with Red :-D

In a previous post we looked at excitement - hype even - about the potential for Web 2.0, in particular what is known as the Wisdom of the Crowd. But majority does not equal truth. Voting is good for social decision making but not for advancing knowledge. It isn’t even a majority anyway that fills the forums and blogs and wikis. It is the voice of a fanatical few. And the Crowd equates fame with wisdom. The Crowd also fails to discriminate between sources of information.

The itSMF Singapore conference is over and I write this en route to Bangkok for the Thai annual conference (a tough gig I know). The highlights for me were meeting Sharon Taylor, and a panel discussion on CMDB, and congratulating David Wheeldon on his last presentation ever. And a couple of good bits of gossip...

There is an excellent online credit calculator on APMG's ITIL Official Site that I hadn't noticed before (thanks to Rocky K.K. Lam) .

As Don Tennant pointed out, ITSM is not the most exciting subject. Some days I'm just over it. On those days, this is my kind of CMDB: the Concours Mondial de Bruxelles.