agile

Meet In The Middle: Slow IT and Fast IT

© Copyright Canstock Photo IncI've talked before about the need for Slow IT. Here then is a strategy for IT to address the issue, to make a value proposition for the parent organisation about how Slow IT will deliver benefit, will allow IT to be more response, will enable Fast IT.

A quest for a unified theory of IT management is not a flag of ITSM surrender

Some folk have interpreted my last post on A unified theory of IT management as surrender to the DevOps movement: "OMG DevOps was right all along, what a fool I have been". Not at all. I'm saying both the DevOps and the ITSM communities need to move on and find something that works for everyone.

Six Tactics for ITSM to Deal with Agile

As far as mainstream ITSM is concerned the primary impact of Agile development method is on our carefully constructed production environment. Agile has the potential to undo decades of work building protection for the assets for which we are accountable. It's our job to control risk as well as enable value. Sometimes it seems Agile ignores the former in pursuit of the latter. Here are six tactics to help deal with that.

Agile ITSM

ImageThe IT Skeptic has a day job, consulting on IT topics including ITSM (not "consulting on ITIL", oooh no, perish the thought! That's not allowed without an official OGC licence and the payment of tithe). In recent times my advice to clients has been to take a more granular - dare I say "agile" - approach to ITSM. I'm rolling this out in a formal methodology called Tipu (which I am presenting for the first time today to the local itSMF chapter).

Agile and Lean need Renaissance Man

Agile and Lean both seem to be based on idealistic, some would say naive, assumptions about human nature and capabilities.

Dev needs to understand what Ops is for

A recent blog post made me angry. This is one cause of the Dev-Ops divide: ignorance of what the other side does. I expect some of that in the trade, down at the coalface amongst Dev and Ops practitioners. I don't expect it from Forrester analysts.

A new concept goes into over-hype: Agile

The latest buzz in IT is of course Agile, and its bastard spawn DevOps. I've written before about how the change is becoming the steady state and stability the exception; and how the old mainframe-centric concepts of change control will have to adapt. I'm even confident that concepts from agile will play an important part in that. But nothing in that warrants the frenzied hype around agile right now. And most of all, nothing in that warrants letting the IT cowboys out of the corral.

Talk of IT innovation is the last gasp of the IT cowboys

All this crap about IT being innovators who lead the business is the last gasp resistance of a generation of geeks who can't stand the idea that IT is about as exciting and creative as building roads. A few road builders work in wild canyons building on steep cliffs and across great chasms inventing new solutions as they go, but the bulk of them dump gravel, roll asphalt and pour concrete. Get over it.

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