Official ITIL compliance standard

Documents leaked recently to the press revealing plans for an official standard for the certification of ITIL compliance in software products by the British Government agency OGC have seen that agency defending the proposal to a committee of angry vendors today.

The documents reveal that the planned standard contains 1476 evaluation criteria that represent every significant statement within the five core books of ITIL Version 3. Said an OGC spokesperson after the meeting "Well of course we need to test for all the requirements in the books. Anything less would be a subjective re-interpretation of the books by the standard's author. Since the standard is developed by a small group it is essential it be comprehensive to avoid claims that it is just opinion."

Speaking after the meeting, IBM's representative Ivan MacPherson said "As the founders of ITIL, and the world's leading vendor of Service Desk solutions, IBM are greatly concerned by the impact of this assessment standard on the ITIL industry. It would appear that not a single software product on the market today will comply, and all will require several years of development to do so."

Bob Trout, Director of Ethical Marketing at CA, said "CA will of course comply with all applicable standards and regulations in an open, transparent and auditable manner, but we do feel that this new standard will be somewhat difficult for us and we seek to have it reconsidered."

A Microsoft press release after the meeting said "As the provider of the best known and fastest growing service desk product in the market, Microsoft Service Delivery Service Support Service Desk Service Manager Service, we join our good friends and valued partners in the ITSM industry in rejecting this standard as an unjustified restraint of trade. Microsoft announces today that we will be releasing our own version of the standard fully aligned with Microsoft Operating Framework."

Vendors are also upset by the pass/fail scoring of the assessment. Any product that fails to meet all 1476 criteria will fail. The OGC speokesperson explained that "this approach is essential in order to permit future integration into the ISO20000 standard which is also based on a binary pass/fail structure".

The OGC appears puzzled by the strength of today's protest. "We consulted extensively with all the vendors in London, or rather all those that could be contacted on the day of the survey. As a non-profit government agency we can't be expected to survey across the entire planet. The survey was advertised extensively within British Government departments. If vendors are too disinterested to stay informed and to come to London on the appointed day then that is their concern."

A proposal by the vendor committee to build on the success of the CDMDB Federation by giving it the role of Official Assessor was rejected by the OGC today. "We have conducted extensive interviews for potential assessors, with a primary focus on finding someone who is not aligned with any vendor organisation. As a result we have appointed Mister Len Bexford of Wapping-on-Trent, retired council building inspector, as the new British Government ITIL Compliance Assessor." Asked if Mr Bexford was well known in the IT industry, the spokesperson replied "he soon will be".

The contract for administering the scheme has been let to TSO, a publishing company. The leaked papers also revealed that TSO will charge £30 to apply for assessment, £300 for the assessment process, and £2750 per user per annum for access to the results.

A BMC spokesperson, Malcolm Cook, had the last word: "April 1st 2009 will stand as a day of infamy in the history of ITIL"

[Updated: it alarms me that so many people reading this blog fail the skeptical test. It is an April Fools joke. Please stop asking TSO about it. The real scheme will in fact be assessed by SCMG and audited (and "administered"?) by APMG and will not be announced be OGC until some time this month, although it has been thoroughly pre-announced. If you fell for this, please learn to read critically, for your own good.]

Comments

A nice one!

You had me fuming by the time I got to Wapping and then I realised it was...

it was so near to the truth.

Len Bexford

Mister Len Bexford of Wapping-on-Trent, retired council building inspector is a creation of genius. I hope Skeptic keeps to his promise of making him well known in the ITSM community. Looking forward to hearing more from him......

Len Bexford

Mister Len Bexford and I are done professionally.

Best Regards,
BobGrins

New ITIL V4 T-Shirts

Skep

Did you hear the ITIL t-shirts will be upgraded as part of the ITIL V4 release to include a hole through which to put your head. Its in response to the long-standing request from the professional community to make them more practical.

Unfortunately they will still only have one (left) arm hole, which will continue the trend to date of only left armers being noticed at feature voting meetings.

April's Fool joke maybe? ;-)

April's Fool joke maybe? ;-)

maybe

maybe

I meant on your side... Can

I meant on your side... Can you point to source of the news?

ITIL going Public Domain

Skep,

You missed the other major piece of news. OGC, TSO and APMG have agreed plans to place ITIL in the public domain under a Creative Commons licence. The ITIL v3 Live site will become subscription free as a result and, fully editable as a new Open ITIL Wiki. They will also be adopting COBIT control objectives where they are obviously better/more comprehensive than ITIL

J

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