The IT Skeptic - Comments for "Killing the Goose, another ITIL skeptic"

there isn't one jot of advice

skeptic — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 10:37:42 +0000

Two things:

First, I agree with michael that while ITIL may give dribs and drabs of guidance in specific processes and functions, it has zero holistic guidance on what i call the meta-lifecycle, the lifecycle of the lifecycle mechanism itself, except where guidance on managing services accidentally also applies as guidance on managing ITIL.

Second, nobody does ITIL as one huge lump, especially not ITIL v3. Nobody sane does anyway. What guidance there is - as above - does NOTHING to describe the journey to ITIL. How do you get there? in what stages? Oh yeah yeah every site is different. Remember my analogy: every human is different but we still have anatomy textbooks. And even if they are all different , how the **** do you APPROACH it? How do you decide how to break it up into stages? What are the milestones? How to design a stage that works, is viable on its own? What are the considerations and criteria when designing your roadmap to ITSM? WHich bits of ITIL fit where? When to mix in other things? (lord knows ITIL is insufficient on its own). there isn't one jot of advice on this in either core or complementary books. That's why ITIL V2 is still so popular - the red and blue books are a far more accessible first step.

Implement specific areas, or ITSM as a cultural change.

Michael Imhoff Nielsen — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 06:57:46 +0000

I think you got me wrong Peter. I was talking about the management of organisational change and ITSM implementation as a whole, where the ITIL V2 PISM book gave some good advices. The specific details in an area I agree that you can find in the 5 core V3 books (at least to some extend).

A good story

JamesFinister — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 22:24:09 +0000

What worries me about V3 is it doesn't read like a bed time story. V1 had a natural narrative that we imposed on it, V2 made the narrative more explicit, but somehow V3, despite the life cycle model, has lost that compelling story.

Imagine a jigsaw piece. There is more than one and less than n defined ways it can interface with the existing world view, and more than one way but less than n ways it can interface with the next part of the puzzle,

V3 seems to have lost that narrative thread. The content might be good, but it doesn't lay out a compelling story.

ITIL books are good.............................sleeping medecin

pjotrg — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 11:28:12 +0000

Permit me, Michael, to disagree slightly with you. I've very, very recently gone through all 5 V3 "books" and discovered a lot of things I would like to dig in further. Especially the implementing part. In ITIL V2 99% of the people considered ITIL to be The Red and The Blue book, where not too much guidance on the "how to" par was to be found In the current 5 books i've found quit a lot of it. Of course real IT people are looking for a method that always delivers the same and good thing IT Servive Management is peoples work and unlike computers people might not always react the way we predict or would expect (little understatement ...;-) )

Please let's not forget that ITIL is called "best practice" and not "The Ultimate Perfect Practice" and that like any good cookbook is also requires a skilled and creative cook to make a nice meal.

Little disclaimer: Gone through all 5 means in this case that I did not read them form cover to cover but picked relevant parts to pass the intermediat exams (this week all nine intermediates in 3 days and just failed one).

P.s. The ITIL books have still not lost one of their biggest virtues (present since version 1) and that is that they are the most excellent medecine against insomnia. Better than whatever homeopathic or traditional medicin. For patients with severe insomnia: If the Strategie book does not get you into sleep than forget about ever sleeping again, ..jawn... ;-)

PISM

Michael Imhoff Nielsen — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 06:00:07 +0000

ITIL V3 could do with some more guidelines on the "adapt" part. The best book in ITIL V2 (in my opinion, although not perfect) is the Planing to Implement Service Management. It's even readable and offers some guidelines on the "hard" part. Doing process design and implementing tools has become a commodity and even though we have been talking about the importance of organisational (notice the s, not z) change management for many years as an important part (maybe the most important) of a service management program (program, not project) it's still neglected. Most (all) of the attempts of doing service management that I see failing is because of this.

I think I heard that PISM is on it's way for ITIL V3 as a complementary publication, but I have no knowledge of when or who is writing it.