The IT Skeptic - Comments for "How to find free ITIL V3 Foundation training"

Save your £95

skeptic — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 20:27:00 +0000

£95 for 1000 courses does seem a good deal, if one intends to do 1000 courses. You could equally join the ACM or a number of other bodies and get a similar deal.

But the point of these posts is that any half-way smart person can pass without any paid assistance. Save your £95. See Pass the V3 Foundation exam in six easy and free steps for details

ITIL for £95

Myles — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 12:21:43 +0000

The National Skills Academy for IT is Government funded and has all the training you need for ITIL foundation. It does cost £95 but you do then get access to all their other content, with over 1000 other courses. See http://bit.ly/pUeMZI for more details.

CSU ITIL on Youtube

Visitor — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 23:57:31 +0000

I found the CSU online ITIL class helpful. I am using other materials too. I went through all 78 modules, but there should be more. Any idea about how to get to the remainder of the modules?

More on artificial intelligence

skeptic — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 04:23:25 +0000

Robotics expert Noel Sharkey used to be a believer in artificial intelligence. So why does he now think that AI is a dangerous myth that could lead to a dystopian future of unintelligent, unfeeling robot carers and soldiers?

Why AI is a dangerous dream

"These ideas are based on the assumption that intelligence is computational. It might be, and equally it might not be."

quiet on Lucy

skeptic — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 19:58:00 +0000

Steve Grand went quiet on Lucy the android in 2006 due to "lack of funds" but he has plenty of funds to start a commercial android-making company. Everyone knows that occasionally a "rogue" scientist makes breakthroughs. We know because it makes good press. When they do, many career scientists quickly pick up on their work (especially in these days of rapid communication) because scientists aren't silly. Einstein was not working alone for long. Everyone forgets that for every rogue who does achieve something, ten thousand nutters don't. And for every rogue who does, a million mainsteam scientists also advance human knowledge incrementally.

"Simple Heuristics That Make Us Smart" sounds great - on my reading list

utterly in agreement with you over applying the Pareto principle to technology, taxonomy and process!!

Growing up with Lucy

JamesFinister — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 12:55:00 +0000

I'm sure you've both read this.

Growing up with Lucy: How to Build an Android in Twenty Easy Steps

I must get past chapter two at some point, I've only had it for four years.

There is one very valid area of ITSM which rarely gets discussed, which is brokering between two automated services. An obsolete example from my financial services days would be a portal service that displayed a range of quotes to customers provided by different insurance companies. If your quote didn't reach the portal with the right information, within a specified time then it wouldn't reach the customer - but neither would it if it was the 11th quote to reach the portal - putting services that looked at a wider range of their own products before submitting a quote at a disadvantage, and also disadvantaging the consumer. A software service manager might be a way to make such a service more equitable.

I say the example is obsolete because now there are so many 3rd party price comparison sites that return all the results.

But why look for complexity?

Simple Heuristics That Make Us Smart is an excellent book that really got me thinking.

Often we over complicate things. I often find people spend ages trying to come up with a process that will handle all hypothetical cases, rather than one that will handle 95% of cases with a branch out to real time decision making for the 5% of difficult cases that might never happen.

Think CMDB - how often do people try and develop a CMDB that will answer every possible question, rather than the ones they most want answers to on a regular basis, and even then they need to ask if a CMDB is the most efficient way of answering the question.

Or how about prioritisation of incidents? The real question for a support team is "which incident should I be working on next?" and to answer that I need to know the relative priority of all the incidents currently in my queue - not how important they are compared to a hypothetical event that hasn't happened. I've seen sites with horrendously complex systems for prioritising incidents that have the net effect of 98% of incidents being "Medium" priority, which in turn means that most of the time every incident in the queue has exactly the same priority as any other. Well you might as well just pull out incident numbers from a bran tub in that case.

Incidentally many years ago I did some research in to how we could automate incident queues for support teams. The biggest issue at the time was the psychological impact on the support team of being forced to do things rather than being involved in the decision. In retrospect I wonder if that could be addressed by social engineering the way the decision is presented to the support team.

anything but facts

skeptic — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 10:49:00 +0000

There is everything wrong with New Age. As PJ O'Rourke said, New Agers will believe in "anything but facts". New Age brought us razor blades under pyramids, crystal therapy, aromatherapy, homeopathy and every other form of drivelling superstition we are plagued with today.

We've spent a hundred thousand years getting to the level where we are finally crawling out of the primordial slime of superstition and taking our first faltering steps on the solid ground of rationalism. New Age arises from a profound ignorance of science and failure of critical faculties. in a word, it's bullshit.

Jules Verne predicted precisely nothing about lunar travel other than that we did it. I enjoy sci-fi too, and like any fiction I get valuable insights about humans (personally I like Robert Heinlein). i don't use it as a source of scientific prediction. scifi authors have predicted everything imaginable - some of them have to be right

critical analysis

skeptic — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 10:42:00 +0000

My friend, you don't know how widely read I am

first the Guardian is not exactly the authorative source of scientific news. perhaps you should try some less credulous and more objective sources such as New Scientist or even the Economist, both of which I read regularly.

Second "just completed the first phase" is not a breakthrough. Simulating a neocortical column is not building a brain. To go back to my car analogy, they have a 3d image on a PC of a hexagonal nut and wow! they can make it rotate! it is no more useful than any 3d image of a nut is and it is much closer to a car than a single blobbing computer image is to a human brain.

Third they are only emulating electrical activity - there is far more to a brain than that. since we don't understand how a brain works they are only modelling the tiny portion we vaguely do understand. My dog understands far more about how my car works

Stop smokin that Eumundi Gold and apply some critical analysis, sound science and logic

HO-LIST-IC

IsleBeeBach — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 09:56:05 +0000

Mmmm...

I like your response a lot. Very constructive, and itSkeptic can take a lessons learned from it.

Nothing wrong with New Age, and definitely nothing wrong with philosophy. They should start teaching philosophy in primary school, and teach us some proper logic, but at the same time teach to appreciate the irrational and illogical. I feel that New Age and Balance have something in common, but I could be wrong there.

I keep saying and strongly believe that ITSM is all about balance (see one of my other comments), and clearly said that AI would take over management. I never said that AI would take over leadership skills (at least not in the foreseeable future), as I believe they are two very different things altogether. In many organizations AI is already embedded in Management Information Systems, and decisions are made based upon statistical trends, deviations, and predictability outcomes. I guess a system that could embed CobiT's control objectives, 6-Sigma and something like the BSC could be a step in the direction of automating the management side of ITSM, but hey that's just an idea for now.

Leaders are about influencing, and motivating other people, setting the example, and impacting on the culture of an organization and is for me basically about sharing some type of energy field (charisma).

So basically we need both (managers and leaders) and integrate these with the world of processes, technology, partners, information, organization, culture, structure and the rest.

Thanks for not taking my comments out of perspective.

PS. itSkeptic - I'm sure you're going to read this - you may want to read "The Line of Polity by Neal Asher" - I think the author has some great ideas and vision. Sure, it's Sci-Fi, but so was Jules Verne's "From the Earth to the Moon" in 1865.

Only time will tell my dear Watson

IsleBeeBach — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 09:22:32 +0000

Hahahaha...

I was waiting for that - it didn't take long to find your boundaries ;-)

Read some more articles like this one http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/dec/20/research.it, and maybe read a bit less ITSM stuff, and you may change your mind one day.

Maybe you're more predictable than you would like to admit.

Few million years huh? We'll see. We're already starting to panic if someone uses the word flu. Various types of RNA will remain - humans - not sure.

Snowflakes - it's all about snowflakes ...

staggering complexity

skeptic — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 01:38:51 +0000

"people and managers will some day be replaced by AI that controls full management of the organisation"? Sorry to rain on an enthusiastic new contributor to the blog, but: bollocks.

The human brain is not a complex computer. We can't even conceive of the mechanisms it uses. We understand that they are some complex interplay of electrical signals, chemical signals and neuron growth, but that is like saying a car is a complex interplay of metal, glass and rubber. To come up with a device of the staggering complexity of one human brain is beyond prediction. Read The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat.

We may some day move the Earth to a different sun too.

it is that kind of reductionist mechanistic thinking that gets us into the trouble we are in with IT. Humans are wet, messy, unpredictable, cussed, annoying, perverse and selfish. They are also infinitely adaptable, self-correcting, self-learning, original, creative and best of all funny. For the next few million years we ignore them or underestimate them or try to reduce them to machines at our peril

Critical factors

JamesFinister — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 22:47:47 +0000

I grew up in Bournville, a whole suburb built around an old company, very much driven by the personal vision of the Cadbury family. Yes Cadburys is still going, but it isn't the type of company it was when I was young.

Good process and good use of technology only happens when the people factors are right, that is why American industry has never really understood Toyota.

Process and technology cannot, for me, compensate for a lack of great leadership, insight and execution. You think AI will one day replace management? Perhaps, if AI ever passes the Turing test, but remember we are delivering services to people who are are, like it or not, emotional, irrational and sub-optimal
And to return to being on topic that is why I think training is so important in the ITSM world, because we have to win hearts and minds.And that is why training was so central in the early days of ITIL.

I don't want to sound all New Age because nothing could be further from my own boring rationalistic philosophy degree view of the world, but delivering ITSM is a holistic activity.

Just take a simple example of trying to identify what the business priorities are. Years ago I used to help out on an internal consultancy course where I role played a senior manager with no agenda at all but faced with a choice of either cutting my staff or cutting my budget. However hard I tried to be neutral in my answers delegates would always say "You obviously really want to get rid of people" because that is was what they thought senior managers would think. When we showed the delegates videos of the interviews it was clear that if anything I was defensive of my staff.

One day ITSM software might be able to capture the subtleties, but not now.

Culture vs IT culture

supportthought — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 17:32:17 +0000

I think its worth considering the place IT culture finds itself within the context of corporate culture in general.

the merger of creative and the technical has been hard for corporations forever, form and function are often seen as oposing forces.

"managing" creativity has never been an easy task.

IT suffers from this in spades, we promote the most creative people to the least creative roles, ones they are not suited for but can do better than most.

We take our most technical and hard working and pay them nothing, we systematically remove imagination.

If ITIL has some redeeming features its that it is not prescriptive, it is flexible.

If best practice is going to get better we need the squeeky wheel, we need the outliers and imagination, but we need to foster this as an asset not sneak off being creative in spite of the organisation.

In my mind we all need to support thought :).

The open source movement has changed the way of thinking for many, it is a game changer, but it too has structure, strict systems, and processes, they just enable innovation rather than stifling it. to see the success and failure of open source in another field rather than software take a look at: www.teamfrednet.org the forum is a great history of organic growth of process.

Collections of billions of related cells with one common goal

IsleBeeBach — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 03:26:53 +0000

James,

----- Stuff for another thread on most likely a different website altogether -----
People are "collections of billions of individual, but related cells with one common goal" - sounds like we're something like a system/process ourselves ;-) We're a walking / talking biological, functioning chemical processing unit with the additional ability to replicate (although with minor deviations) clones of ourselves. Science fiction? I don't think so.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I may have to disagree with your statement ;-) If you look at "old" companies that have been around for 100-200 years people come and go, but in the end the organization remain. Surely people have a role to play, but personally I do see them as one of the many pieces of a large jig-saw puzzle.

Many people think they can't be replaced or are somehow special. Again, I disagree, we can all be replaced and are all part of a never-ending very natural cycle of birth - adding value - and ultimately death. I know it sounds bizarre, but really people and cultures come and go, but the world will keep spinning, and organizations will keep producing.

We as people in our daily jobs are as dependent on processes and technology (and the rest) as we are on other people. Ultimately I do believe that people and managers will some day be replaced by AI that controls full management of the organisation (and most likely will do a much better job at it), and ultimately this entire planet. We're not that special after all.

So I do think that at same stage processes and technology will compensate for our "people" weaknesses and peculiarities. I feel it's the added energy that some people are able to give and share and those that don't that make a difference in organisations for the time they are part of those organisations. Some people are able to speed up transformations, others aren't, but the transformation is still occurring.

IsleBeeBach

Two key things unsaid

JamesFinister — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 19:30:25 +0000

One is that the CSI cycle takes no moral stance, but I believe ITSM should.
The second related point for me, and I think I've said this elsewhere is that "people" aren't just another "ingredient" or on a par with process and technology. ITSM either succeeds or fails based on the attitude and skills of the people delivering and managing the service. Process and technology cannot compensate for couldn't care less management, suppliers and staff.

watch COBIT

skeptic — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 04:15:45 +0000

Watch COBIT too. COBIT 5 will reportedly be assembled on an open model. I really think COBIT has the potential (and credibility and governance and funds and...) to be the One BOK to Rule Them All

Common Sense for Sensible People

IsleBeeBach — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 02:52:10 +0000

Control --> Plan --> Do --> Check --> Act --> Control

What else is there to say?

It doesn't need that many pages, now does it?

Neah, I don't think it's only about culture, it's about finding and maintaining a perfect balance between:

People
Processes
Products
Partners
Information
Organisation
Culture
Structure
and most of all
Energy

(does that make any #@!&%$ acronym?)

The four Ps ITIL v3 is referring to is way too weak and narrow minded. One of the most vital ones "information" lacks completely, and from an IT point of view that doesn't seem to make a lot of sense to me ;-) CobiT seems to have a much more accurate approach here!

I don't even think or claim to be complete as yet. Yeah, I believe it's all about ZEN, the ZEN of existence, the ZEN of ITSM, and somewhere in that equation you'll find the ZEN of ITIL.

IsleBeeBach

PS. I like the USMBOK, but I believe that ultimately SM should end-up in some type of OpenSource space to become fully accepted. Only an OpenSource model of SM will really see the continuous improvement all these models are referring to, but none are actually really delivering against. An SM "Linux-like" version would do the trick quite nicely. Ah well, that's probably something for a new discussion thread. Anyway, I definitely have my eyes on USMBOK right now :-)

makes too much sense

skeptic — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 22:57:42 +0000

ITSM might be a post-modernist cultural artifact: a mythical conception that will appear as silly to future generations as Egyptian cat-worship, Victorian prudery, or our current neurotic obsessions with environmentalism or safety.

But I don't think so. It makes too much sense.
What fails is that people do ITSM using processes, or worse still technology. ITSM needs a cultural solution (and not a cultish solution). Hence my coming book He Tangata

Shift

JamesFinister — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 21:32:01 +0000

Funny, I would say a lot of people I taught, and I can only go on their feedback forms and what they said to my face,* found doing ITIL courses a life changing experience., I guess that is less likely since the focus shifted to passing the exam.

I am concerned that dear visitor is making possibly libellous assertions behind a façade of anonymity about courses delivered by people who he has never met, and whose courses he has never attended.

What would visitor like us to teach? That the business are "f**kwits" That knowing about a technology that will probably be obsolete in five years time makes you a professional?

I have to be honest I sometimes forget how much we depend on people with technical knowledge, though I also forget that I have techie moments... only tonight I was explaining to SWMBO about assigning static IP addresses and her eyes told me I'd lost her, and BTW visitor, I'm an ISACA certified auditor who I suspect knows a lot more about process control systems in critical industrial systems than you do. But then I'm sure one day you will tell us who you are and who you work for, because of course you have no reason not to.

* Knowledge of neither of which, "visitor" has unless he was on one of my courses but has never acknowledged it

The myth of the cage

JamesFinister — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 21:07:51 +0000

I've been reading an excellent book, Ben Goldacre's "Bad Science" which is particularly interesting read in conjunction with "The Halo Effect"

A bit of me clings to a purely ethical view that "ITSM is a good thing" but is that a verifiable proposition? If ITSM made no contribution to the bottom line would I still say it should be done?What does "doing ITSM" mean anyway? I've been around the ITIL world a very long time and I could count the organisations I think have consistently "done" it on my fingers without recourse to my thumbs.

Is ITSM just a good myth? What is the axiomatic basis for it, and how do we verify the value of ITSM?