The IT Skeptic is writing a new book on service management

As has happened to me before, a new book idea is advancing rapidly and will overtake an existing book project. Please help me name the new book.

My book He Tangata: IT is the People creeps along when I get time. It is hard work: new territory where I have to learn my way along. In the meantime, a new idea is racing into print.

Some of you will be familiar with my concept of Core Practice or "copper".

Frustrated with
1) the complexity of service management advice and the attempts to paint it as something akin to brain surgery that requires lots of expensive consulting to implement adopt and
2) the lack of some sort of staged approach to ITIL
3) the lack of advice that doesn't read like a university textbook or a geek's website

I'm doing a book on "Copper Service" - the application of core practice to service management.

The book is generic service management, not IT-specific.

It is about service management, not happy-clappy service culture (no fish in this book). It is about how to run a business's services.

It is not an introduction or a beginner's book, though it serves as both of those. It describes the core basics, the minimum you need to do to do a good enough job. It describes what you need to do to get the basics done.

It is aimed at any industry or sector, any size. It does apply to ITSM (just not especially).

It is going to do that in less than 8000 words, or 50 Trade paperback pages.

It contains almost no acronyms or Terms Written In Capitals, and is written in conversational English.

it will have an integral website that i have a few mildly innovative ideas for.

I'm currently looking for people to review and pilot it. I will start with my accountant, my lawyer, my son's headmistress, a metalwork factory i know, the local supermarket-butcher, the city council...

What name do you suggest for the book? I'm thinking

Copper Service
Core Service
No Bullshit Service Management
The Basics of Running a Business The Service Way
You are in the Services Business Whether You Know it Or Not
... ideas?
Is "Copper Service" catchy? Does it have any negative or odd connotations?

P.S. Yes I know about "Service Management for Dummies". I haven't read it yet: it will be interesting to see how non-geeky it is. It sounds still very IT-specific, and it is 336 pages :)

Comments

book title

What's about 'Common Sense Management'?

Copper Service

Thank-you everyone for your input. In the end I have gone (provisionally) with Copper Service: a basic guide to providing services. I liked Core Service but it has been used too much (and the domain has gone, an important consideration in the 21st Century). Copper gives a distinct branding, making it memorable amongst the hundreds of other "service something" books, and the subtitle still appears in an Amazon listing and gets to the point.

(It is a truly fantastic world we live in. In seconds I can search Amazon for similar book titles, Google for uses of the phrase anywhere and potential trademarks, GoDaddy for available domain names, and even the US IP database for registered trademarks - a search I'd have paid thousands for and waited weeks for an answer prior to the internet. Mind you prior to the internet i'd not be writing the book because no-one would have heard of me and I'd have nowhere to sell it)

How about a variant on "kiss

How about a variant on "kiss my arse".

K.I.S.S. my ITSM
K.I.S.S. my Service

limit

Hmmm I like it but might limit the middle American market, Tom

Another suggestion

Personally, I'd suggest "Service De Corps". Say it out loud for the full effect.

The Right Level of Service

I like the "Delivering the Right Level of Service" suggestion. You can add a subtitle about "good enough" practices or how to uncomplicate your services or bringing sanity to service delivery.

To fellow yanks, Happy Thanksgiving.
To any brits, Happy "we're finally rid of them" day.
To the rest of you, happy thursday.

Best Regards,
BobGrins

book name

hello, i like your initiative. Love to read the posts and comments on your blog.
What about:
Business at your service
Running your business as a service
The business service model
Get it done the service way

How about...

"Are You Being Serviced?"

unfortunate

Has some unfortunate connotations. Sounds like what a vendor might ask...

...as a Service"

"Service as a Service"
"Copper as a Service"
CAAS

???

So sorry. The recent trend of offering any IT product "as a service" is starting to annoy me. And going back to the basics as your book-idea does sounds rather refreshing.

Good luck with the book

to follow on this theme, how about:

BSaaS

"call your local vendor, no longer do we need to come to your site to dispense it, now we can deliver our BS in web2.0!"

I am not sure about Copper, it was derived from an acronym so maybe flying in the face of your "no acronyms" stance.

I do like the idea of the book and I'm sure it has a wide audience, I will be interested in how you manage to make it as generic as you intend.

I will try and come up with more than just platitudes and quips after another coffee.

Copper makes sense but...

Hey Skep,

Good luck with the book project.

A thought.... Practical Practices, delivering the right level of service.

Still want to read your He Tangata.

names

"Copper Service Management: The best you can do is good enough"

sneakly meaning that Good Enough is the best you can do, but might get picked up by someone thinking you're encouraging best practice in everything ... they need educated.

But I do like the idea of no bullshit. "Copper: Service Management without the BS"

dunno - just tossing ideas at you

A good initiative

Great idea skep, cont me in on you review board ;-)

I discvered whilst replacing the CIO of the drinkwater company in Rotterdam that what we were doing in IT (and called ITIL) looked pretty mucht the same as the way they managed the production (read purification) and distribution of water for over decades.

How about: "At your Service"

BlaBla

I forgot.... we should add a new acronym too: the BLA which means Business Level Agreement. This should be a document much more usefull than the common blablabla we find in a SLA

Service request agreement??

Or perhaps even a 'service request agreement'? Its so much easier to start to target and gain improvements by looking at each drain on IT resources as a 'service request', even incidents should be managed as a type of request (for service), and then associate a service level with each request. This will simplify relating the request to what the USMBOK calls a 'vital mission activity', and with the first baby steps needed to successfully develop a service catalog.

Why folks start out putting themselves behind the 8-ball of defining a service to then define an agreement, two major efforts, is beyond me....

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