classic Skeptic

How to contribute to ITIL

Submitted by skeptic on Sat, 2006-10-28 19:50

You have several easy options to choose from:
1. Be an author. Wait 3-5 years for the next ITIL Refresh. Tender for one of the books. Be one of about a dozen people worldwide to win a tender. Devote a year of your life to writing a book.
2. Know an author. Get networking now: you have 3-5 years to guess who the next ones will be and get into their professional circle. Then persuade them your idea is better than theirs.
3. Contact OGC to tell them you have some content to contribute. There is no documented process to do this, not any advertised contact point, but OGC are British government bureaucrats so you should find them helpful and communicative if you just send stuff off to any old address you can find. Once you have their attention, they will put you in touch with the next authors. See 2 above.
4. Forget it.

An oldie but a goodie: software salesman dies and goes to Heaven...

Submitted by skeptic on Thu, 2006-08-31 23:03

This software salesman dies and, by some bookkeeping error, goes to Heaven. He gets issued with his halo and harp and assigned a cloud. He sits for a few days strumming the harp, perfect weather every day, constant peace and tranquillity.

After day four, he gets up and walks back to St Peter at the gates. “Hey buddy, does anything ever happen here?”

The software analyst industry needs a code of practice.

Submitted by skeptic on Thu, 2006-08-17 22:52

This article has been podcast

In my country, the broadcast industry and the advertising industry both adhere to a voluntary code of practice to police the more extreme behaviours of their members. I wish the software vendor industry and their parasitic analysts would do the same.

Don't fall for the demo: an asset database with bells and whistles is not a CMDB

Submitted by skeptic on Sun, 2006-08-13 22:09

This article has been podcast

Don't fall for the demo: anyone can set up an asset database with enough relationship bells and whistles on it to fool themselves and others that they have a CMDB.

ITIL's CMDB can't be done, no-how

Submitted by skeptic on Sun, 2006-08-06 22:02

This discussion of CMDB and its total impracticality has got legs. Let me reinforce two points please: (1) CMDB can't be done because of the data and regardless of the implementation and (2) I'm talking about CMDB as specified by the ITIL books, not any old database. It can't be done.

Living without CMDB

Submitted by skeptic on Sat, 2006-08-05 09:20

This article has been podcast

CMDB is positioned as the key underpinning foundation to ITIL:

Configuration Management provides the foundation for successful IT Service Management and underpins every other process. The fundamental deliverable is the Configuration Management Database (CMDB) [Ref 1]

This is wrong. It is a peripheral nice-to-have. In a previous blog we discussed how it is currently an infeasible nice-to-have. Let's talk about doing without it.

IBM: the company with such a firm grasp of ITIL strategic issues that they sold their service desk

Submitted by skeptic on Mon, 2006-07-17 07:41

Is it just me or does anyone else think it is a bit rich IBM lecturing ITIL vendors?

After all, this is the company with such a firm grasp of ITIL strategic issues that they sold their service desk product to Peregrine, abandoned to an inevitable brutal death. That's a bit like GM getting out of making engines and then telling other auto makers what they need to make cars.

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.

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