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The Skeptical Informer
- Free ITIL®
- ITIL V2-V3 Managers Bridge
- Dev needs to understand what Ops is for
- Don't run IT as a business, run it as part of the business
- We need a movement
- ITSM open content
- ITIL Problem versus Risk
- ITIL is not a tool it is a framework
- Getting IT development to support production - a people problem
- How business has failed IT like a bad parent
- Binder-chuckers
- ITIL v3 Process Maps
- Why Free ITIL?
- Tailoring guidelines for a service industry
- Chokey The Chimp has a fan page
- Subscribe now
- ABC Cafeterias
- Executive support and rabbit stew
- COBIT v5 will reduce number of processes covered to align with ITIL V3
- Squeell: a breakthrough application of social media to IT Service Management takes ITIL to the next level
- prISM service management professional certification great in theory flawed in execution
- Refining the Five Percent Club
- A wandering skeptic I've become...
- Response from British Government to appeals for Free ITIL
- Cloned logos
- itSMF International Board portfolios announced
- ITIL configuration guinea pig wanted
- Two Hills' cloud-based IT strategy for 2011
- A tragic piece of spam
- Whither Castle ITIL in 2011?
- ITIL publisher TSO and accreditor APMG have their contracts extended two years by OGC
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We need a movement (no bad-taste jokes thanks folks). And I'm beginning to think that, whatever Seth Godin and all the social wonks try to tell us, you cam't synthesise a movement. You gotta wait until it spontaneously ignites (as Aale also observed recently). ITIL was a pretty unlikely hit when it happened. I suspect the next will be just as unexpected. By all means keep floating stuff but expect most to go nowhere - don't expect to predict the hit.I hope to meet more of you in Copenhagen and Ottawa and Perth and Wellington in the next few month. If I do, tell me you read this newsletter! Meantime hang on tight and don't get complacent. Japan's already feeble economy just took a body blow. The world's supply chains will be staggering as I write this, especially in the automotive industry, thanks to Japan's inability to meet its just-in-time commitments for parts. Portugal just went to the wall. Iceland is reneging. China is showing structural cracks. 100 municipalities in the USA are predicted to go bankrupt this year. You could hunker down and stash every dollar, or you could spend them like you won't have them tomorrow. Consider profligacy as your social duty to keep the economy warm. My family had a lovely time in California and Nevada recently, and my wife did her bit to prop up the US retail economy. Hence the pictures. P.S. Once again I had fun with April 1st - be careful as you read the posts below...
- The Five-Percent Club
- There is only one service catalogue
- The heart of ITIL is the service catalogue
- Song for Stevie
- IT project portfolios are bursting while BAU crumbles!
- In defense of ITILista
- The difference between an underpinning contract and a SLA
- Subscribe now
- Please vote for the IT Skeptic in the ComputerWeekly blog awards
- The book Owning ITIL is now available on Kindle
- The Worst of the IT Skeptic on Kindle
- A CMDB is like a Swiss bank account
- A new concept goes into over-hype: Agile
- For all you vendors out there
- Dirty Deeds reprise - ITIL is clearly a commercial product not a community work
- Trevor reads a dump over the phone
- Why IT projects fail: underspend
- Who does the service desk serve?
- Public service
- ITIL made easy
- Some ITSM technologies are a no-brainer
- The importance of IT drills to enhance performance
- Over a million ITILers
- Do you promise not to tell?
- Good practice and best practice
- Create a variance register for ITIL and other frameworks
- About the ITIL Service Owner
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- What policy applies to this situation? What policy applies to my role?
- Are our IT policies complete? sufficient?
- What is the maturity of our organisation's set of policies?
- Does each audience (users, operators, customers, managers...) have a complete set of policies? Which audiences are not covered?
- What is the hierarchy/structure of policies? how do they inter-relate?
- If we have gaps, how do I prioritise addressing those gaps? What is most important?
- What is the difference between CMS and SKMS?
- A review of The CMDB Imperative
- The IT Skeptic looks at ITIL Lite
- Green IT isn't about saving the planet
- Review of Building an ITIL-Based Service Management Department
- Rich IT Poor IT or Opposite Day?
- Incident vs Service Request
- All you need to know about ITIL incident, change and problem management
- Comments on the June 2010 itSMFI Board Talk: we need shared services
- ITIL out of the box
- "Business" in ITIL?
- emerging trends and themes of IT Service Management
- What ITIL is not
- A little something as a thank-you for registered readers of this blog
- Problem detection is everyone's duty
- The missing entity in ITSM models, the Interruption
- Service Archetype
- Basic Service Management
- Subscribe now
- Chokey the Chimp turns rockstar
- Pass the ITIL Foundation exam in six easy and (almost) free steps
- ITIL Service Delivery Manager
- One reason why OGC has to make some serious money out of ITIL and PRINCE2
- Keep the vendors and tech geeks away from business automation
- ITIL services are customer-facing, whatever catalogue they appear in
- Doubting that automation really reduces errors
- COBIT5 another step closer... to ITIL
- Chilling condemnation of those selling abstract deliverables
- Wave goodbye: Google lacks bottle
- BMC are at the old bait and switch again over CMDB
- Rant vs counter-rant: the ITIL V3 Certification Scheme
- ITIL according to Sarah Palin
- Five things to remember about social media titles
- Remarkably frank, but what are the benefits of the ITIL V3 Update?
- The CMDB is dead
- Even Gartner say ITIL adoption is limited and falling
- It's official - ITIL is a commercial product
- EasyVista release Category 2 cluster of ITSM crap factoids
- New itSMF newsletter - boon or burden?
- ITIL product compliance criteria are no longer a secret
- Castle ITIL further degrade the standards of ITIL V3 certification and training
- The service catalogue according to the IT Skeptic
- What does it mean when there is a Second Edition of a core ITIL V3 book?
- See you in Melbourne
- Choose your Major Incident Manager for who they are not what they are
- A study in governance: comparing Castle ITIL with ISACA
- Ensuring the service catalogue gets used
- Why ask the doctor when the other kids know the cure?
- Fourth anniversary of the IT Skeptic
- The services CATALOGUED (not just mentioned) in ITIL Tech Service Catalogue are the same as those in the Business SC
- How many ITIL Examination Institutes is enough?
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- CMDB and CMS – the industry-created myth
- ITIL for Telecom Techs
- How to implement ITIL for a client?
- The top seven issues with Cloud Computing
- I'm going to call root cause primary cause from now on
- Subscribe now
- The king's method of writing a new decree: how OGC does ITIL V3
- Is TSO operating without a license to enforce copyright for PRINCE2?
- The IT Skeptic at work
- Shock horror: the IT Skeptic endorses a technology - service catalogue
- The Exhibit Hall Optimizer
- Chalk and Cheese continued: ISACA vs itSMF
- Software automation won't necessarily lower staff costs
- ITIL V3 Business Service Catalogue and Technical Service Catalogue are different views of the same services
- Is APMG an accreditor or a competitor for ITIL ATOs?
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- David Cannon elected Chair of itSMF International, and a Kiwi joins the Board
In 2010, in keeping with many organisations and our fellow chapters in the movement, itSMF UK has continued to feel the pressures caused by the global economic downturn. It's also fair to say that we face increased competition from organisations delivering services in the same market space that we operate in."Competition"? "Market spaces"? If that competition is ISACA and/or BCS, I'd like to think close cooperation between professional bodies in the interest of exploring synergies for the membership would be in order, not seeing them off and squabbling over turf. Later
Since its inception as BS15000 (and latterly ISO/IEC 20000), the itSMF UK name and people have been synonymous with the development and growth of the standard. During 2010, the management board recognised that our operational capability and marketing reach was unlikely to see the pace of development that the global market requires.Whatever happened to promoting the good word of standards? itSMF should not exist to financially exploit them by selling them to a "global market". All this vendor-speak coming from itSMF makes me most uncomfortable. My favourite "world-conquest bit of the report is
the ever popular Service Talk remaining the world's leading IT service management journal.I doubt that many people outside the UK have even seen Service Talk let alone read it regularly. I've blogged before about how Service Talk is a parochial provincial publication. I said then
I can't help noticing that it has a column by someone called Barry Corless who apparently is the Chair of itSMF. Funny i thought that was David Cannon. there's a lovely two-page spread about a conference in London. How about the conferences in Melbourne, Helsinki, Nashville and Bangkok? there's two pages on IOSM too, but no mention of ICSM or PRISM? Surely the rollout and progress of PRISM is big news worldwide? perhaps the most exciting news was Nottinghamshire County Council's adoption of Hornbill. The international ramifications are immense. I wasn't so excited by the discussion of the UK's Energy Efficiency legislation. perhaps you'd be interested in an article on the impact of NZ's new labour laws on call centres? I tried to call a few of the phone numbers in the ads but just got error tones. I guess they need the UK country code first eh?"remaining the world's leading journal" can only be a swipe at the new itSMF International magazine At Your Service (disclosure: I wrote one of the articles in the first edition). Someone needs to tell itSMFUK the sun has long since set on the Empire and the colonials no longer require their patronage. The most fascinating part of the Report is this:
Perhaps the most exciting venture of the year is working alongside APMG to produce a brand new set of ITIL qualifications to be titled the "Analyst Series". Due for a November release, individual ITIL processes (Change, Problem and Service Level Management in Phase One) will be featured with instruction in softer skills required to perform the roles featured alongside traditional ITIL skills. Courses will focus on "How to" more than "What" with a very practical bias with syllabuses following the job roles defined by SFIA.Castle ITIL seems to have reversed their previous objections to alternate ITIL certification schemes. It remains to be seen how these courses fit with the existing certification scheme. Will they earn points? Will they be governed by the same mechanisms? Will they be quality controlled in the same way? [Quiet up the back. I didn't say it was good governance or QA - I just think we should be consistent.] Why are we allying ITIL with SFIA? which is an even more closed proprietary framework than ITIL. Who will profit from the new courses? Who is funding the development? What is itSMF International's involvement? Do itSMFUK members know all about this? Whiffy. Like that other great multinational, BP. P.S I'm doing a presentation on Dead Cat Syndrome at CC Learning's upcoming conference in Wellington, so I thought we'd have some nice pictures of cats for this edition. P.P.S. Please welcome to the blog Rambling Sid Realitsm, who has two songs posted in this newsletter. I hope you'll all make him welcome alongside those other blog characters The ITIL Wizard Chokey the Chimp and the IT Swami
Working in ITIL
In my working life too it's all about ITIL. ITSM actually, but "ITSM" draws blank looks where "ITIL" doesn't. I'd love to get on to governance and assurance, but when the service basics aren't there it's hard to move on. My recent comment on the blog:"mapping Business communities to interfaces to application tiers, to infrastructure" "QA has them for testing priority and DR has them for priority restore" Oooh I wanna work where you work. Actually no I don't: there is a much much bigger constituency who regard what you just said in the same way i do - as a medieval peasant would have regarded descriptions of London: a wondrous place that I'd love to see one day. I'd be happy if all my clients had DR plans and QA in any form, let alone ones that mention services. As another analogy, I feel like a social worker dealing with kids in a slum tenement who reads about a Manhattan counselor straightening out rich kids suffering from Excess Toys Syndrome. Sorry but my work is here with my clients.We get a very distorted view of the world from what we consume. Websites, blogs, forums, twitter, vendor and analyst crap... they are all talking about sites that already have some interest and activity around ITSM. We lose sight of the fact that many don't. I've complained for a long time that the "boffins" of ITSM only get to talk to the Fortune 1000 who can afford to talk to them, and a few others passionate enough about ITSM to seek them out. It is a biased sample. But even the chatter of the broader ITSM community is biased too: if a site knows nothing and cares not at all and does absolutely nothing about ITSM, they are unlikely to be represented in the ITSM community in any way. But they are out there in their hundreds of thousands. Ian Clayton said recently "Why are we still demystifying ITIL 22 years on...?" Because most of the IT world still hasn't got past being vaguely aware of ITIL... let alone the business management world. Client after client I deal with has ITSM that can only be described as primitive. Those I chatter with are talking about water-conserving shower-heads and desalination plants and I'm working on getting clean running water. I like to think this doesn't reflect badly on New Zealand. We may not be in the top 10 richest countries any more but we aren't Third World (except our broadband access). Kiwis embrace change and innovation. I'm confident this is a worldwide state of affairs. There are huge numbers of organisations crying out for better ITSM. They have a helpdesk they've renamed the Service Desk though they still just "bag and tag" anything that the simplest script won't fix and they don't own tickets from open to close. They have formal incident process that nobody remembers or follows, there are no OLAs. The service catalogue either doesn't exist or lies forgotten. When it exists it is a software list. Even projects aren't managed as a portfolio, let alone services. There are basic config spreadsheets, and change approvals that get steamrolled by senior management. The wrong people attend the CAB and the right ones are "too busy". Testing is not done at a service level and production readiness (service design) is poor. Capacity and Continuity are primitive. Servers are monitored, services aren't. There are no Problem, Availability or SLM processes. Service level reports are a chart of happy- and sad-faces done manually by the Service Desk Manager, usually late but customers don't believe them anyway. SLAs are defunct, irrelevant or non-existent. Sound like anyone you know? If not, you need to get out more. Before we get too much in a tizzy about oily beaches or runoff in rivers or whether to fluoridate we should remember that a child dies somewhere in the world every few minutes from preventable diarrhea and half of Pakistan is under four feet of murky brown gunk. And so it is with ITSM. We have a long way to go simply to get the basics to everyone who needs them.
ITIL Fundamentals
We also have a ways to go to get a common understanding of some fundamentals of ITSM. Take the debate over whether a service catalogue can catalogue anything more than the services provided to the customer. It bowls me over that anyone can think otherwise but a majority of my readers seemingly do. They're wrong - I'm sure of it. And if I read one more time that CMDB is the heart of ITIL or ITSM I'm gonna scream. Or the HUGE debate on the blog over whether applications are services and whether the Applications group leads the customer relationship. In the changing world of IT there are two groups who are sinking from the limelight and becoming increasingly more tactical and less strategic: applications developers and infrastructure technicians. And they don't like it. Something else that staggered me is that there seems to be no framework for IT policy. I know I mentione dit in the last newsletter, but on the subject of fundamentals I want to revisit it. ITIL bangs on about it with 44 separate strategies and policies that it scatters through the books like punctuation (thank-you Aale Roos for compiling a list of them). But I can find nothing that gives us a comprehensive list of necessary policies, let alone describes what a policy structure looks like and what the priorities are. There seems to be no systematic authoritative way to answer the following questions:Basic Service Management
In that light, it seems ironic that my latest book is focused on promoting service management as a generic business discipline when we still haven't got our IT act together, but at least it is focused on the basics. Basic Service Management is a 50-page introduction to SM for business people everywhere. It is in early review now, to be published before Christmas (this Christmas). It is what Service Management for Dummies should have been: they tried to take the authors out of IT but they couldn't take the IT out of the authors. And it is what USMBOK needs to complement it. That 450-page doorstop is a definitive masterwork but it is hardly accessible to beginners. So I think I'm hitting a sweet spot just as awareness of the value of SM begins to grow outside of IT. For all my gloomy remarks, there are successful ITSM operations within IT departments and they are being noticed by the rest of their organisation, who look to them as centres of excellence. ITSM has proven value whatever Stevie Chambers may say. Calling the book "BSM" may annoy a few people who need annoying too :)Goings on up at Castle ITIL
Now, to scuttlebutt. OGC took a drubbing from the Office of Public Sector Information in the UK, after Van Haren Publishing complained about anti-competitive practices between OGC and TSO. The resulting report confirmed that ITIL is a commercial product. ComputerWorld went further than that and interpreted it as saying that OGC have no remit to work on ITIL. That's not quite true: OGC have a remit alright to contribute to better practices. in order to wriggle out of their obligations to contribute to the public good and hence to protect their commercial arrangements around ITIL, they played weasel word games with the literal definition of what they do to suggest that it doesn't cover service management. This was so patently a cop-out that the OPSI's frustration and irritation is evident in the wording of the report. Personally I'm shocked that public servants can get away with this - servants who are amongst the highest paid in the British government. There is a veiled threat in the report that they won't continue to get away with it when an audit comes at the end of the year. In addition OGC have a new boss and new masters so we shall see what that brings. I wonder if the weird sudden republishing of the Official Introduction to the ITIL Service Lifecycle merely to remove the word "offical" from the title was actually a panicked response by OGC to the OPSI report. I say panicked because it was misplaced: that book is the only book NOT a valid target of the OPSI's criticsm of the mis-use of the word "official", whilst TSO continue to plaster "official" all over books like ITIL Lite to pump sales of their own copyright commercial products. On another note, common sense has finally won out within APMG and the criteria for the OGC ITIL Product Compliance Scheme [Oh for something snappy like say "ITILVerify"] are finally published. The very idea that the criteria could have been secret was the most pompous bit of British nonsense since ...[insert myriad examples here]... It is unsurprising that there was an attempt to keep them secret since my brief perusal suggests they are pretty basic. Something that isn't secret but sure isn't talked about is that vendors only have to meet 70% of the criteria (unlike PinkVerify which has more criteria and requires 100%). In fact I reckon a blind three-legged dog with a spreadsheet could pass the OGC test: something I plan to try out when I get the time but my dog got wind of it and went into hiding. The Scheme is an even more debased worthless certification than the ITIL Foundation exam, which is saying something. Speaking of which, the industry dragged the standards even lower by upping the teacher:trainee ratio to 1:18. I got disagreement from folk whose opinion I respect, but I'm holding my line on this: one person can't teach 18 adults under pressure in a few days. You can pedagogically lecture, you can preach, but you can't ensure they learned, and that's what I call teaching. Adult training has nothing to do with university lecturing so please don't give me that comparison. Universities have tutors running supplementary tutorials, students do extensive assignments and form study groups, and lecturers spend years getting the principles across. This move is just further commoditisation of the product for higher profit at the expense of the customer. Meanwhile the itSMF ructions continue, with the sudden exit of the itSMF UK CEO, Keith Aldis. Keith and one of the International Board had a small falling out, but I think this is also representative of the broader power struggle between the old school UK faction and the interests of the broader International itSMF. I had a hilarious email exchange when it was suggested to me that the itSMFUK's Service Talk was all the magazine itSMF needs internationally and the new newsletter is redundant. Allow me to share my response:Gosh, sorry to be parochial. And thanks for the link - first time I've seen it. [That edition. I have been sent links to other editions occasionally by friends] But I can't help noticing that it has a column by someone called Barry Corless who apparently is the Chair of itSMF. Funny i thought that was David Cannon. there's a lovely two-page spread about a conference in London. How about the conferences in Melbourne, Helsinki, Nashville and Bangkok? there's two pages on IOSM too, but no mention of ICSM or PRISM? Surely the rollout and progress of PRISM is big news worldwide? perhaps the most exciting news was Nottinghamshire County Council's adoption of Hornbill. The international ramifications are immense. I wasn't so excited by the discussion of the UK's Energy Efficiency legislation. perhaps you'd be interested in an article on the impact of NZ's new labour laws on call centres? I tried to call a few of the phone numbers in the ads but just got error tones. I guess they need the UK country code first eh? Yup, sorry to be parochial.
I blogged about the bulls**t that goes on selling "digital abstractions" and how glad I am to be out of that and doing something - I think - of value. I've turned down several lucrative offers to go back to sales, and with a new mortgage and a son in private school the pressure has been pretty intense. But I'm not doing it. The photos in this edition are of night-fishing with my son at Mana (if you haven't tried Google Earth you need to). If you are in the digital sales world, read the post and get a life. And before I get abusive emails, I know there are good people in software or consulting sales who only want the best for their clients and who tell it like it is. I've met some of them. I like to think I sometimes was one. I also think many of you need to step back with a pure heart and consider the culture you have absorbed from your employer and peers. There's a bumper edition for you to make up for so long away. Thanks for reading this far. It was hard choosing the articles to feature after four months' gap. I think there is plenty here for everyone. Enjoy. P.S. I have to resist the habit of spelling ITIL as "#ITIL": I've been doing much too much twittering, with the 5000th tweet coming up any day now. I'm @theitskeptic if you'd like to follow. P.P.S. Four years and going strong! If you use Facebook please show the support by Liking the blog: P.P.P.S As it says in the footer at the bottom, please forward this newsletter to all who you think might enjoy it and encourage them to subscribe. I'm happy to share these exclusive insights into the ITSM world.2009
- ITIL-COBIT mapping shows even less coverage by ITIL
- Great paper on failure of complex systems
- Response Management
- Real-world Lean ITIL
- Is ITIL there to describe what the experts know? Or is it there to guide those setting out on the ITSM journey?
- Governance directives as input to ITIL
- What ITIL V3 says about the distinction between a Call and an Incident
- The true scope of service management and ITIL
- Where can I buy ITIL?
- Subscribe now
- 5 Tips For Developing An ITSM Strategic Road Map
- The software analyst industry needs a code of practice.
- The Julie Linden saga draws to a close
- How it feels to be the IT Skeptic
- prISM service management professional certification great in theory flawed in execution
- OGC revising ITIL again
- the end of ITIL V2 annnounced by OGC
- Constructive criticism or demonising ITIL?
- SD 22.214.171.124 five or six elements?
- Call for authors and reviewers for the ITIL V3 Refresh refresh
- Refreshes all round and no time to apply
- A hundred users call up and say they can't get emails. One incident or 100?
- Proliferation of ITIL V3 introductions and pocketbooks
- 5 easy steps to implement ITIL V3
- The average blog has 100 readers
- Carpe diem
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- What matters
- List of ITIL V3 roles
- Checklist ITIL environment health check
- On Demand CMDB implications
- Cloud Common Sense
- ITIL Software Scheme released
- Prince2 2009 plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose
- More discussion of CMDB: not the best use of funds
- Cutting the cost of IT Operations
- Standardised Service
- Green IT: dolphin-free computing
- management by memo
- Operating the Cloud: the people and process questions
- Way cool! The Wright Cycle for you
- Subscribe now
- All five IT Skeptic books available on Amazon
- Why the USA is unsuitable for offshoring
- Checklist ITIL project proposal
- The scale of ITIL V3
- Checklist post ITIL implementation review
- Checklist progress of an ITIL project
- Aidan Lawes on ITIL certification
- The ITIL portal was originally going to be free
- The iPhone apps goldrush
- BOK revisions breaking out all over: PMBOK 4th Edition
- Proactive problem management description does not exist in V3
- Obtaining the ITIL V3 Foundation syllabus
- A few of our wealthier readers might now consider ITIL Live™
- Excellent analysis of how software vendors violate the customer relationship
- BMC are ahead of their competitors in ITIL compliance
- The War for Plain English
- A new skeptic enters the blogosphere
- Interesting idea for spreading the expertise - and the risk
- Crazy Stats
- Gullibility
- New Zealand makes another positive contribution to itSMF International
- Self-deluding optimism over the recession
- ITSM for the Real World
- 10 Things I don't get either
- Do we have two flavours of ITIL now? The plot to end ITIL V2
- PRINCE2 2009 refresh spookily familiar to ITIL users
- Booyaaa!! COBIT User Guide for Service Managers now available
- Satyam, Sallie Mae, and call center outsourcing
- Multiple choice questions criticised but not in ITIL V3 this time
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- Owning ITIL: project horror stories
- ABC Cafeterias
- Dreaming on a cloud - migration as an obstacle to cloud computing: an IT Skeptic Special Report
- ITIL Software Endorsement Scheme dropped on an unsuspecting public
- Subscribe now
- Updated terms and conditions for this site
- Review ITILV3 Service Strategy - The IT Skeptic
- CMDB a skeptical view
- Not Review Cult of the Amateur - The IT Skeptic
- What use is Passing Your ITIL Foundation Exam now?
- ITIL 101 for software vendors
- A new ITIL V3 online product changes the game
- How long will the IT recession last?
- Official ITIL compliance standard
- Deep discounts for ITIL Live™
- The Magnolia bursts
- Awful support conversations
- Why do we waste money training people in ITIL? Just More Crap
- ITIL is not alone
- Open Source is political: Blows Against The Empire
- dev2ops blog
- Should you spend the money on ITIL V3 certification?
- McKinsey on how CIOs should think about business value
- ST p76 Table 4.7 Nonsense RACI chart
- ST p69 Wrong hierarchy in the CMS
- What should IT call the Rest Of The Business?
- The word all consultants and writers should avoid: "must"
- The ITIL V3 indexes
- Problem management process graph is wrong
- CMDBf ...um...explained
- Incidents overwhelm problems
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- governance: which is hot in a serious way
- cloud computing: which is hot in an entirely vacuous vendor-hyped way
- alternatives to ITIL: which is not hot at all but I am predicting it will be
- The Pillars of ITIL
- The IT Swami's Predictions for 2009 and ITSM in Recession
- The IT Skeptic Awards for 2008
- Owning ITIL® - a skeptical guide for decision makers
- Subscribe now
- He Tangata
- Dead cat syndrome
- The CMDB Federation is a brilliant piece of vendor marketing smokescreen
- Deming cycle diagram the wrong way round
- Windows Vista - the sick slug
- Bill the IT Guy Part 2
- Delivery of COBIT User's Guide for Service Managers is slipping waiting on ITIL approval?
- ITIL V3 Foundations effectively put on hold until May 2009?
- collecting examples of terminological debasement
- Terminological debasement: a committee becomes a board
- ITIL Prime
- Crap Factoid Alert 370 percent ROI from ITSM
- How is ITIL Live doing?
- Merry Christmas
- Un-Common Language
- Batten down the hatches
- Simple useful rules for defining Configuration Items
- The Microsoft evil genius of docx format
- itSMF International website adrift
- APMG has our full support
- Setting the target goal for service management initiatives
- Real ITSM user priority
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- I strongly urge everyone to do amateur acting classes even if, like me, you never tread the boards. One of the most important things you learn is mask work. It is enlightening to see how a mask transforms your personality as you put it on.
The IT Skeptic didn't set out to be a journalist but that is what he has become. Journalists are a contemptible breed (except of course any reviewing this book). I don't much like most that I have met. But the IT Skeptic performs a useful function in the IT industry, asking hard questions that needed to be asked, especially to put a brake on the wild exuberance that is sweeping the ITIL industry away.
In order to fulfil their function, journalists must be read by many readers. To be successful - to survive - journalists must serve the market. They write what the market wants to read, and the market likes a little titillation with their content.
I can't say I entirely like the IT Skeptic, but I like what he does and I hope he continues to do it. In the end, I have come to terms with him because he is me.
Format | Price | Amazon.com | Other Amazons | Lulu | |
Introduction to Real ITSM A satire on IT operations | $18.99 +p&p Special price! | Yes | Not yet | Yes | |
The Worst of the IT Skeptic all the good stuff from three years of this blog | $19.95 +p&p | Not yet | Never | Yes | |
download | $15.95 | Never | Never | Yes | |
The IT Skeptic Looks at CMDB | $9.95 +p&p | Never | Never | Yes | |
download | $7.95 | Never | Never | Yes | |
Working in IT our career, our profession (my personal favourite) | $19.95 +p&p | Not yet | Not yet | Yes | |
download | $15.95 | Never | Never | Yes | |
Owning ITIL® a skeptical guide for decision-makers | $34.95 +p&p | Not yet | Not yet | Yes |
- Introduction to Real ITSM, the new ITSM body of knowledge from the IT Skeptic
- The ITIL V3 - COBIT V4.1 mapping white paper is available and no wonder noone is saying much
- COBIT rivals ITIL
- IT Legends, a writing competition for IT people - tell us the legends of your IT past
- ITIL V3 lost that down-home authenticity
- Building complex people systems
- ITIL V3 and eTOM, the rapprochement begins
- New IT Skeptic blog widget on CMDB
- Comments are a great resource of this site
- New design at the IT Skeptic Shop just for our British readers
- BMC's own CMDB figures - The IT Skeptic
- Happy Birthday ITIL - The IT Skeptic
- Crap Factoid: CMDB saves $1M - The IT Skeptic
- Is ITIL Dead in the Water?
- Defining terms in Root Cause Analysis - let's be clear what we mean
- How to refer to the ITIL V3 books online for free
- The most important IT monitoring tools are those that measure the end user experience
- People people people people process process technology
- Google rots your brains
- a back-of-an-envelope re-analysis of Forrester and BMC's own CMDB research
- CMDB for free
- Your favourite IT books
- SLAs that promise a resolution time are like firemen promising to put a fire out
- the world of ITIL V3 certification and training
- EMA CMDB research: where's the wave?
- How Software Vendors Lie About ITIL Support
- Foundation is the ONLY V3 exam that is going to be on Prometric
- Lack of Management Commitment seriously affects project delivery in our organization
- Planning for ITIL V3 - or staying with ITIL V2
- the distinction between organisational change and administrative production change
- A new look for the IT Skeptic, and a note on Excessive Technical Fastidiousness or ETF
- The hot internet topic of IT jobs
- The computer that sang to its operators
- Free IT magazines
- Building an ITIL CMDB is easy and cheap
- Porter quotes
- Just a minute
- Real ITSM priority starts at zero and goes up
- There is more to social collaboration than providing the tools
- Plaxo as malware
- Advertising to the itSMF keyword
- Interfacing Technologies - the miracle fix to the ITIL problem
- Is ITIL still dead in the water?
- More on the privacy issue from Wharton U
- Three reasons why ISO20000 certification is NOT ITIL V3 certification
- don't expect technology to alter the way business is run
- It is a helpdesk so it must be ITIL
- Feedback on the ITIL V3 manager's bridge exam
- Confusion between CMDB and Configuration Management
- If IT ain't broke don't fix it.
- The CMDB as a dead elephant, it cannot be done ... NOT
- NASA employs ITIL to provide fully automated lights-out IT operations for all future space missions
- What Governance Isn't
- 25... no, 26 errors you need to know about in the ITIL Version 3 books
- The future of IT is Governance, Service and Assurance: The Seventh Vision revised
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- DNS problem fixed on www.itskeptic.org
- Change to the way this blog works: BOKKEs displayed
- passing multi choice exams - The IT Skeptic
- Is Microsoft attempting to patent CMDB?
- ITIL is copyright: use of quotations and extracts
- ITIL exams dropped from Prometric: consider ISO20000 certification as an alternative?
- Crap Factoid Alert: "Two-thirds of companies around the globe are using ITIL"
- Which ITIL3 books do you use most? Is there a useful subset?
- ITIL V3 Key Element Guides now available
- ISEB offers online ITIL exams - April Fools?
- Prometric lists ITIL V3 Foundation exams again ... for ISEB this time!
- Has there been a second edition of ITIL V3 or not?
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- I still don't see much value out of itSMF International vs my other similar membership ISACA
- Ivor Macfarlane seems to be toughing it out as Chair of IPESC despite howls of protest at his nomination (I like Ivor and we get on well personally, but I have to say this was a shaky bit of process by itSMF)
- The certification industry still seems to have an attitude of f**k the quality of teaching! Maximise profits! An unregulated industry.
- APMG have still lost accreditation as an accreditor as it were.
- how to treat hosted applications in the ITIL service catalogue
- Which is the best way to buy ITIL version 3: as books, PDFs or online subscription? The IT Skeptic makes a choice.
- ISO20000 gives ITIL the balls it needs to be successful
- What does it mean to "implement" or "do" ITIL?
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- ITIL 3 how best to buy it - The IT skeptic
- itSMF and ISACA - like chalk and cheese - The IT Skeptic
- A visualisation of how ITIL Version 3 transforms ITIL version 2
- ITIL Certification: a technique for passing multiple-choice exams
- The new best book for introducing yourself to ITIL V3
- ITIL V3 sample exam question: is it just vague or plain wrong?
- Community, Activity, Environment: put the main effort into changing the people and culture instead of twiddling with tools
- The IT Skeptic's first public appearance: "The most unbalanced team you can currently find…"
- itSMF International launches new website
- Coming up for 2008 on the IT Skeptic website
- In 2008, do you want this blog to continue to report on Service Management politics, scandals and dirty deeds?
- Define ITIL for the IT layman
- itSMF International announce the election of Ken Wendle to the Executive Board
- What do the IT Skeptic readers feel about the ITIL v3 exams?
- Beyond the 7-minute attention span: getting management interested in ITIL (or anything)
- Comments from the IT Skeptic blog, February 2008
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- Announcing the IT Skeptic Awards for 2007
- itSMF and ISACA: like chalk and cheese.
- ITIL vs. COBIT, ISO20000 et al, and itSMF's role in promoting them.
- Privacy is dead - get over it.
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- IT Skeptic Awards 2007 - IT Skeptic
- Do we have to do ITIL to do Service Management?
- itSMF International announce the election of Ken Wendle to the Executive Board
- What I did in my summer holidays
- itSMFI new website and new Board portfolios
- Perhaps one day Service Management will become a universal discipline: ITIL 4?
- The blogging bubble
- Comments from the IT Skeptic blog, February 2008
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- ITIL is the hitchhiker's guide, COBIT is the encyclopaedia
- Announcing the IT Skeptic Awards for 2007
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- ITIL is the hitchhiker's guide - The IT Skeptic
- Living without CMDB
- the IT Skeptic's New Year's Resolutions
- Merry Christmas from the IT Skeptic
- A dozen IT Service Management and ITIL Forums
- itSMF International launch an online discussion forum.
- Is ITIL Version 3 "Strategy Generation" a mystery process?
- Comments from the IT Skeptic blog, January 2008
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I give up. Like many readers I would like to see ITIL certifications being a serious contributor to the professionalism of the IT industry, but I get the distinct impression this isn't going to happen. Foundation certification is a boom industry. The post I made on "ITIL Version 3 certification: seven sources of free ITIL V3 Foundation practice exams, and some ITIL Version 2 sources too!" has moved into the blog's all-time top 10 for popularity. People just want to get the ticket. The ITIL Intermediate and Expert (hah!) certifications are aimed at the same market. They aren't about making better practitioners; they are about selling certificates. They don't test ITSM; they test the holy books. The courses are built to be delivered by non-experts and marked by machines (You can't test an "expert" through multi-choice. And it is the usual Castle ITIL arrogance that says the questions are beyond challenge by real experts. It has already happened that written answers to ITIL V2 Manager's exam gave an alternate answer that was rewarded. Impossible under multichoice). And yet V3 Intermediate and Expert exams won't be available via Prometric, i.e. you have to sit a face-to-face training course first if you want to be examined. Why? Well it could be said it is to make sure you get the training you need. But I call that hypocracy. The exam should test the quality of the candidate, not the associated course. And if the candidate is too poor or remote to attend a course (think developing nations), or just smart and experienced enough not to need to, then they should have that option. So the real reason is evident to me: to maximise revenue to the training money machine. The trainees are complaining. The trainers are complaining. The ATOs are complaining. Even the EIs are complaining. But Castle ITIL shows no sign of even acknowledging the issue publicly (while busily hosing it down behind closed doors). They aren't going to budge on this one. It's all about the money now. ITIL is too big and too successful for it to be anything else. I don't see this changing. People need to accept that ITIL is a commercial product focused on financial gain for the ITIL industry. Play their silly games when you need the ticket. Learn the magic formulas that get you a pass. And understand the value of the certifications when they are presented to you on a CV. When you need to get the job done, use ITIL when you have to (usually politically) or it is best fit, and look for less-voracious alternatives otherwise. I've written about how the COBIT suite of publicatuions is a substantial body of knowledge now, and how it is increasingly pushing down from the overarching framework and audit criteria into ITIL's territory of the practical "how". Wait until you see the new COBIT's User Guide for Service Managers. We had some fun on the blog this month with vendors asking for a drubbing with some published bullshit (there are those who would say that adequately describes this blog but we try to stick to facts and we don't hide, disguise or abuse them). BMC and Forrester published some supposed research which was as laughable as it was misleading. Really the BMC paper was beyond the pale. You should heap scorn and derision on any BMC employee who tries to use this crap on you. EMA scored an own goal with numbers that suggest CMDB is successfully implemented in only a tiny percentage of sites. A firm called Interfacing technologies tried to spam the blog so we took a hard look at their ITIL "solution". I got email spam from a group whose use of the term ITIL was just silly. And ITSMWatch ran an artcle of mine under the banner "How Software Vendors Lie About ITIL Support " - even harsher than I would have been :-D Polls and competitions typically don't get a lot of response on the blog. (Congratulations to Mike Walter for winning the photo competition). You readers prefer to read - but I would really love to see some input from you on the latest one: Legends of IT. We could really have some fun digging out all the great yarns ('tall tales and true") from our past. And I'm giving away a $100 gift voucher. I know you have a story or two - please share. A few changes to the blog this month: a changed look, a tag cloud of topics, a comments browser, a CMDB widget, free IT magazine subscriptions for qualifying subscribers, a Dipity timeline, a thread for your favourite books, and you can post photos of yourself on "My Account". In fact you have a whole node about you now, we may look at allowing you to create a profile page on The IT Skeptic if anyone is interested? On a final note, personal tragedy once again affects those close to me, and reminds me that ITIL is only business, not anything important. Let's all keep some perspective on Father's Day.
Governance is the new kid in town. "Everybody's talkin' 'bout..." In a short period of time, I did an article for Novatica (coming out soon), my local ISACA chapter ran a governance think tank discussion, and ISO/IEC is about to release an IT Governance standard. Just like "management" and "consultant" and many other words, the IT industry is in the process of debasing the word "governance" to the point of meaninglessness.
The new ISO standard will force us to understand what governance isn't, which covers most of the current usage of the word, especially by analysts, commentators, journalists and of course vendors. Just as "managing" now means "doing" and "consulting" means "working", so too "governing" is coming to mean "measuring or monitoring or checking". Which it isn't.
Scuttlebutt: For those who missed it, Ian Clayton and the IT Service Management Institute® (ITSMI) have parted ways. Given Ian's bombastic style (the IT Skeptic is but a pale shadow) I guess it was only a matter of time before this happened, as every Institute needs an aura of conservatism and respectability. It would seem to be in the best interests of both parties, as Ian is free to say what he thinks and ITSMI can cosy up to the establishment. They'll need to sort out between them as to just who founded the Institute though... (Ian can now be found at Service Management 101)
This is a busy month for the IT Skeptic, attending the itSMF Netherlands conference. That may not sound like a big deal for you Northern Hemisphericals, but for we Antipodeans it is a long trek: 36 hours each way to be exact. Add a day to at least begin recovering from jetlag, and a couple of days to look around since I've never been outside the international zone in Amsterdam airport, and suddenly there is a whole chunk of April gone. As soon as I get back, my son and I will make our annual trip into the Southern Alps, so there's the rest of the month trashed. All this is the long way of saying sorry there is no review of comments from the blog this month. Please contact me if this deeply upsets you.
On the other hand,
I am going to speak in the Netherlands soon on the future of ITIL. I'm a big believer in the little things as indicators of the big things. Right now all the little signs are mixed. That might indicate we are in a state of transition, and since it was pretty bad I'm hoping things are on the up and up. But right now I have to say I think my Visions of the Future of ITIL still hold: they range from decaying to disastrous, with a small glimmer of hope that ITIL will play nicely with other BOKs so some synthesis can result...but I doubt it.
We could use some competition in the IT operations BOK space. Right now there is only one game in town, ITIL. And it shows. It shows in the arrogance of the certification industry, who design training to suit themselves not their clients. It shows in the ITIL aristocracy, who think they can do what they like without reference to the peasants funding the whole circus. It shows in the user community, rendered apathetic through lack of choice or excitement.
What the IT community needs is a bloody good stoush, a cracking brawl between two competing bodies of knowledge. ITIL needs a challenger to keep it honest.
I had high hopes for ISO20000, but it seems too big, too abstract, too challenging, too something... The response to date has been underwhelming.
It could have been MOF, except for the Microsoft kiss of death.
There are multiple wanna-be challengers out there, but all lack something to give them serious momentum.
Perhaps IBM really will do something, like I once suggested in jest. Or ITSMBOK will find a heavy backer to give it some oomph. Or itSMF USA will break away, toss the tea in the harbour (sorry, "harbor") and do their own un-British thing.
Somebody, somewhere do something! This smug complacent decadence is infuriating.
I had hoped that we might have the final seventh Executive Board member elected for itSMF International as news for this edition of the newsletter. But we don't.
We do however have the interesting spectacle of the itSMF International website transitioning to a new site. Spectacle? Well it wouldn't be itSMFI if it happened gracefully and seamlessly would it? The old site is gone, and hastily I might add. But the new site won't be ready until February. We have a "holding" arrangement in the interim.
So why did the old site have to shut down when the new one will be ready in a month or two?
Because itSMFI "have been informed that the current 3rd party support, for the current website, will be withdrawn from December 31st 2007." If you wonder what lies behind this, I have had indications that a key player in the ITSM world is withdrawing from the itSMF community, presumably in disgust at the shennanigans that I have been reporting on throughout 2007. That person provided the itSMFI with website hosting.
I suggest this is the tip of the iceberg. The IT Swami predicts:
More volunteers will be unwilling to contribute their efforts to an organisation that is so overtly supporting the commercial ITIL industry rather than the practice of service management, let alone the practitioners.
More practitioners will regard itSMF with apathy and disinterest as they see less personal value from it.
More and more, itSMF will depend on the contributions of those with a vested interest in doing so.
Sigh. There goes one of my New Year's resolutions, blown already.
Note for those paying attention: there is no December 2007 edition of the Skeptical Informer. I skipped it so that I now publish at the start of the month instead of a few days following the end of the month.
The theme for this month's pictures is of course "circus".
- The role vendors play in the ITIL community
- The ITIL world descends into farce
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- Don't fall for the CMDB demo - The IT Skeptic
- Many ITIL projects are overcapitalised renovations
- The itSMF voting saga: who is Julie Linden?
- Great myths of ITIL #1: "You can't manage what you can't measure".
- Five reasons ITIL Version 3 is not "Best Practice"
- ST p223 CAB/EC to ECAB
- itSMF publish their list of ITIL Version 3 processes
- Malcolm Fry swaps sides
- Good advice for those on the receiving end of the IT Skeptic's comments
- Comments from the IT Skeptic blog, November 2007
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- Brother ISACA
- ITIL's biggest hole: where is the meta-lifecycle?
- itSMF risks instability and constitutional crisis through high-handed elimination of election candidates
- Who Is The IT Skeptic
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- IT ops can learn from Lean - The IT Skeptic
- 10 reasons NOT to do CMDB - The IT Skeptic
- Why chase Best Practice?
- The IT Skeptic blog is about debating ideas not personalities
- The penny dropped: itSMF "members" are in fact shareholders.
- Five reasons not to rush into ITIL Version 3
- Occam's Razor applied to itSMF USA election saga
- How long can they beat the CMDB drum? What is the next fad?
- How to read the ITIL version 3 Service Strategy book
- How not to comment-spam a website
- latest on ITIL Version 3 Certification from APMG
- a scout hall built between a pub and a brothel
- The trainers actually delivering ITIL version 3 Foundations certification training are NOT HAPPY
- What I know about the candidates for itSMF International Chair and Board
- Please identify yourself if commenting about other people
- itSMF International has announced the results of election nominations
- Comments pulled from the IT Skeptic blog
- Comments from the IT Skeptic blog, September 2007
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- certification: get it sorted
- alignment... no: unification... with ISO20000 and COBIT, for starters
- governance of itSMF
- vendor influence on APMG, TSO, itSMF...
- public input to ITIL
- The IT Skeptic has dropped anonymity: identity revealed
- Announcing the IT Skeptic's first ever guest blogger: Sharon Taylor, Chief Architect and Chief Examiner of ITIL Version 3
- Top 10 reasons NOT to implement CMDB
- ITIL Version 2.5: Will we see hybrids?
- Visions of the Future of ITIL: First Vision
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- IT ops can learn from Lean - The IT Skeptic
- ITIL Version 2.5, Hybrids? - The IT Skeptic
- IBM: the company with such a firm grasp of ITIL strategic issues that they sold their service desk
- IT operations can learn from lean manufacturing
- The CMDB Federation releases its federation specification for public review
- Lies, damned lies and statistics: adoption of ITIL
- Establish a name for yourself as a thought-leader in ITSM
- A special thank-you to all you readers
- More on the three sets of itSMF rules
- 10 reasons NOT to do CMDB - The IT Skeptic
- We get the governance we deserve: what to do about itSMF?
- itSMF International secret rules revealed
- They're changing the guard at ITIL palace
- the ITIL industry is worth about $2 BILLION to $5 BILLION per year
- Selected comments from the IT Skeptic blog for August 2007
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- Top 10 reasons NOT to implement CMDB
- ITIL Version 2.5: Will we see hybrids?
- Is ITIL V3 Foundations designed to suit the needs of the students or the trainers?
- ITIL on eBay: an IT Skeptic Special Report
- Books by the IT Skeptic
- C'mon, confess to the world! You're just an ITIL Learner.
- The Sheep from the Goats - The IT Skeptic
- The march of ITIL zealots
- itSMF USA board election irregularities: the IT Skeptic unlocks the original posts
- Technology does not fix process problems, but that's still what people want to see
- How to use this website
- ITIL Version 3
- I saw it on a computer so it must be true
- A nice skeptical ITIL cartoon
- The future of the IT Skeptic's blog
- Tell us what you think about the new ITIL Version 3 books, and see what others thought
- Wonderful discussion of process improvement
- How to tell whether your IT vendor is a product vendor or a consultant
- A superb piece of IT Skepticism
- I want links on the IT Skeptic site that link to another site to open in ...
- The Sheep from the Goats: ITIL vendors and Version 3
- The IT Skeptic's first impressions of the ITIL Version 3 core books
- Selected comments from the IT Skeptic site for July 2007
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- ITIL product compliance
- A visualisation of how ITIL Version 3 transforms ITIL version 2
- The itSMF does not exists to represent the interests of its members - they say so themselves
- Financial transparency of the itSMF: let's have some.
- itSMF can be forgiven a little shaky governance
- Dirty deeds done dirt cheap. More on ITIL V3 discounting and how TSO screws itSMFI screws local itSMF...
- Announcing the IT Skeptic's BOKKED: the Body of Knowledge Known Error Database, for ITIL et al
- ITIL Version 3 changes everything for ATOs and consulting firms.
- Antonio Valle Salas's Mystery of the 1.1.1 Deleted - was ITIL once "public domain"?
- Books by the IT Skeptic
- Recommended links
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- Financial transparency at itSM - The IT Skeptic
- ITIL's dead elephant: CMDB can't be done
- The IT Skeptic reviews ITIL V3 book "Service Strategy"
- ITIL V3 Certification points system: the magic number 21.5
- "Good IT Service Management is simply not possible without" a CMDB? Balls!
- McKinsey on IT Strategy; a combination of insight and gibberish
- Where to officially report ITIL book errors: "behind a locked door marked BEWARE OF THE LEOPARD"
- Paint it yellow! Living in a world of numbers. From "Triumph of the Airheads"
- Don't get het up about ITIL V3 qualifications scheme; it is still a work in progress
- The commercialisation of ITIL: a slow boiling of the frog
- Magic happens. BMC promise some magic ITIL.
- itSMF global members/sponsors: dropping your pants is not a good business model
- Why the IT Skeptic site exists
- My first ITIL spam. ITSM is going to the dogs.
- The CMDB Federation lumbers on
- How to use this website
- Selected comments from the blog for June 2007
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- What are training vendors supposed to say to people who ask them for V2 training?
- What are the new consistent rules for accreditation of training organisations for V3?
- On what basis were the seven countries for the launch selected? Ask to see the minutes of meetings of the Board of your organisation, the itSMF, or of any other body runnign ITIL
- What is the formal commercial relationship between OGC and itSMF and between TSO and itSMF? On what basis is itSMF organising the worldwide launch of V3 instead of OGC?
- Why do the eight Global itSMF members (all poor, down-on-their-luck international mega-corporations) get deep discounts on V3 that go a long way towards paying back their subscription, while local branches carry the burden of servicing their staff without reimbursement from itSMFI?
- What are the allegations against itSMF USA's last Board elections? How long has the Board really known about them before finally being forced to act?
- What were the vote counts by IPESC for the V3 books, and what were the comments and discussions around them by the people who represent we itSMF members?
- How was the architecture of V3 derived from the 400+ submissions? Can we see the submissions to draw our own conclusions about what the user community wanted?
- What were the views of the reviewers of V3?
- Where are the annual report and audited accounts of itSMFI?
- Given that TSO is now a private operation owned by German banks, what is their contribution to the costs of the V3 Launch?
- The little spot of bother at the itSMF USA
- The scale of ITIL Version 3: are people ready for it?
- The king's method of writing a new decree: how OGC does ITIL V3
- A visualisation of how ITIL Version 3 transforms ITIL version 2
- everything the IT Skeptic can find out about ITIL Version 3 on one page
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- Who Is The IT Skeptic
- Books by the IT Skeptic
- Announcing the IT Skeptic's ITIL Pipe - an ITIL newsfeed
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- New products in the IT Skeptic's store
- Don't fall for the CMDB demo - The IT Skeptic
- Today's shock joint announcement from Microsoft and IBM throws ITIL Refresh into doubt - The IT Skeptic
- ITIL damage by vendors? - The IT Skeptic
- The king's method of writing a new decree: how OGC does ITIL V3 - The IT Skeptic
- Sharon Taylor's 5 ITIL Myths - The IT Skeptic
- Is ITIL Dead in the Water?
- Sharon Taylor's five common myths about ITIL Version 3
- Today's shock joint announcement from Microsoft and IBM throws ITIL Refresh into doubt
- How badly is ITIL damaged by vendor influence? What needs fixing?
- IBM draws that long ITIL bow again
- The CMDB Tidal Wave? More of a ripple.
- APMG finally let us in on ITIL Certification thinking
- IT Skeptic Version 3 Refresh
- Volcanic rumblings under the ITIL mountain
- Sorry for any inconvenience
- ITSM skepticism becomes a crowded field
- An Alternative to ITIL
- Watch out Microsoft, your spurious patents may be worthless
- Powerpoint as a protector of intellectual property
- These big frameworks are in vogue because as opposed to thinking, folks just want the answer
- SLAs are not as widely applicable as ITIL would have us believe. The Catalog is.
- itSMF announce all seven global ITIL Version 3 launch events only weeks away so book now!
- Selected comments from The IT Skeptic blog for May 2007
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- secrecy in governance
- undeclared vested interests
- questionable trainer practices selling V2 certifications
- questionable vendor influence
- failure to adopt changes in "best practice for best practice"
- lack of independent user representation
- Today's shock joint announcement from Microsoft and IBM throws ITIL Refresh into doubt
- The ITIL version 3 Refresh Launch Roadshow: the world waits with bated breath....
- BMC, CA, Fujitsu, HP, IBM and Microsoft promise to play nicely over ITIL CMDB. Yeah, right!
- Web 2.0, hype or just hype? An IT Skeptic Special Report
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- The IT Swami
- All-time favourite blog entries
- Today's shock joint announcement from Microsoft and IBM throws ITIL Refresh into doubt - The IT Skeptic
- When you don't run IT - The IT Skeptic
- Are Microsoft patenting CMDB? - The IT Skeptic
- advice for purchasers of ITIL - the IT Skeptic
- CMDB can't be done, no-how - The IT Skeptic
- The Emperor has no clothes. Where is the evidence for ITIL?
- IBM wrote ITIL. In fact Alasdair Meldrum did
- ITIL Version 3 London launch event announced: the IT Skeptic comments
- Six reasons to use Live Chat for support
- Software branding seems to be in the hands of imbeciles.
- ITIL certification and training: Version 2 recognised but not as a prerequisite for Version 3
- Microsoft are more avaricious than the Fat ITSM Four, by a nose
- Rediscovering the Big Iron
- Irrational exuberance in the IT industry: CMDB is going nuts
- CIO Asia magazine criticises the IT Skeptic's comments
- SLAs: measuring an ITSM service as a black box is essential
- Somebody help me: what is the point of standalone CMDB tools?
- Selected comments from The IT Skeptic blog for March 2007
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- You and I both will get tired of OGC's dirty laundry
- There are other topics waiting in the wings
- Version 3 will be out soon and I can turn to critically analysing the content rather than the process of getting there
- Announcing the Inaugural IT Skeptic Awards for 2006
- The Emperor Still Has No Clothes: no evidence for ITIL
- Should you do ITIL certification training with ITIL version 3 looming? An IT Skeptic Special Report
- ITIL reform needed: not letting the money changers and hookers into the temple, just some sort of protestant reformation
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- When you don't run IT - The IT Skeptic
- CMDB can't be done, no-how - The IT Skeptic
- The key to living without CMDB - The IT Skeptic
- Is ITIL another Y2K? - The IT Skeptic
- ITIL the cult
- Book review: "I Think Something is Missing From ITIL" by Ian Clayton, reviewed by the IT Skeptic
- The Service Delivery Tool gap?
- Acoustic shock syndrome – don't employ nervous anxious people in your call-centre, it will cost you
- BMC, CA, Fujitsu, HP, IBM and Microsoft promise to play nicely over ITIL CMDB. Yeah, right!
- The IT Skeptic defends his anonymity
- An apology to the OGC, the itSMF and the ITIL community from the IT Skeptic
- Someone should tell the OGC and TSO bookshops about the ITIL Refresh
- When you don't run IT as a business, the inevitable results: bad business decisions.
- The CMDB boundary problem: stop chasing this technological rainbow of a unified CMDB repository
- A great article on how technology does not fix process in CMDB
- ITIL is on the wane - Bruton
- Selected comments from The IT Skeptic blog for February 2007
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The ITIL certification storm continues to rage. The IT Skeptic blog saw much activity around training and certification this month. How on earth do APMG expect to have any credibility as a training organisation if they violate the most basic principles of adult education? I am no expert but I did half of a post-graduate Certificate in Adult Education before I discovered what lecturers get paid, and I have designed and delivered many IT courses from one to five days long, and I'm shocked by what I see.
Never have I heard a single authorative source suggest that 25 is an appropriate size for a class in a complex technical subject like ITIL.
Nobody in their right mind would consider covering all five ITIL books in three days - no matter how lightly - with people who have no prior exposure to the subject.
And only post-modernist intellectual idiots suggest that multi-choice is an appropriate mechanism for examining practitioners in IT consulting.
But APMG thinks all of these are a good idea. I don't actually think that APMG or the Senior Examiner Panel are stupid people, so that leaves one other option: that all these decisions were taken with a commercial imperative. They are not in the best interest of the students, they are not designed to deliver quality education, they are not intended to ensure competent graduates. It is hard to come to any other conclusion than that these three decisions are taken solely to benefit the vendors of training.
Pack them in at 25 a course to maximise revenues. Keep it down to three days to make it easy to sell. And make all exams multi-choice so we don't have to pay human graders - we can just run it through a machine.
I find this venality appalling, especially because it is so overt. APMG is answerable to no-one but OGC, who never takes a stand on anything except protecting their own copyright. itSMF exists to promote the industry not to represent the user community, so they are not going to pipe up. The industry can just pillage away unchallenged. No wonder the Department of Justice is sniffing around our industry: I can smell the stink from here in New Zealand.
I think this dissent stems from a more fundamental problem. As a result of integrating all the "Lost Books" of Version 2, ITIL Version 3 is an order-of-magnitude broader and more complex than the red-and-blue-books-version2 that most people work with. This is an advance for the industry, a step up in competency. Unfortuantely it is only a step up if you are already standing on the Version 2 step. If you have not embarked on the service management journey yet, then Version 3 represents a high wall. Chuck the Five Books at a beginner and they'd run screaming. This is what is happening with the Fundamentals course: jam the five books into three days and the result is deep shock.
Version 3 provides no intermediate steps up the wall. Version 2 is the only "beginner's ITIL" available. OGC and TSO are hell-bent on killing off Version 2 as fast as possible. But Version 2 will not go anywhere until an "ITIL for Dummies" comes out as part of V3 complementary guidance. Or people will start turning to alternatives such as FITS.
The other book we desperately need is "How to Implement ITIL" including a progressive series of steps up that wall. The Five Books say where to get to but they still say little about how to get there.
I've criticised the development of version 3 in the past for not being open and inclusive enough and I think this is a consequence. If ITIL Version 3 had been tested with a wider audience along the way which included organisations with no knowldghe of ITIL then this would have emerged as a problem sooner. But it wasn't. It was developed from and tested on the existing ITIL community, and mostly the private little club of the ITIL aristocracy.
So if any reader wants to gain fame and save the world, write a decent book on How to Do ITIL.
These remarks are probably not the best way to introduce the next bit of news: Sharon Taylor has agreed to be an occasional guest blogger on the IT Skeptic (see below). I'm hoping this move will take the quality of debate on the blog to the next level.
On another note, let me share a comment from me from the blog re itSMF:
I want to be part of an organisation that represents the views of the users of ITIL not the sellers of ITIL. And right now I'd like it to be kicking some butt on a number of issues:
Oh...and this month I outted myself. Hi, my name's Rob.
The dust is settling after the ITIL Version 3 launch. I've already said nice things in the May edition of this newsletter but it is appropriate to do so again. I congratulate OGC on the reception of the ITIL 3 content: a recent informal poll on the IT Skeptic site returned a nicely formed bell-curve between "useless" and "better than anything else". One imagines that coming from IT Skeptic readers the voters may be skewed towards the less-gruntled end of that spectrum, so I think Sharon and Co. you hit the spot. Thankyou!
[Disclaimer: voters were unverified so vote-stacking cannot be ruled out. It does happen online you know]
Rather than look back this month I want to look forward, to two significant upcoming events: the election of the itSMF International Board and itSMF USA Board.
International comes in for criticism on the blog from me and from readers, and obviously there is a pall cast over the USA Board at the moment by the Executive Director's abrupt departure ,and the fraudulent voting apparently of or on behalf of a member. (There is also the possibility that somebody fiddled the votes entirely without the knowledge of any Board member at all, for their own conspiratorial ends. Whoever it was they had some high-level database access. We await further revelations: as was said to me recently, this story is better than Harry Potter.)
The USA nominations have already closed, at the end of July. Quick, did you see it? The call for nominations was in the July Forum magazine and on the website (still is). I'm not sure for how long it was advertised (you might be able to call foul) or whether a late submission has any chance.
For International the notice is also terribly short: end of August. That is not a long time to talk to family, employer and supporters; make a decision; get yourself selected as the national Board candidate (which is distinct from the national representaive to International); then wend your way through the bureaucracy; so please get on it.
Just about all paid-up itSMF members are in fact eligible for these positions. So please give it some serious thought. Are you happy with the way the organisations are going? Could you do better? Would you like to contribute?
You can bet that mates in the inner circles have already been fingered for these positions for some time now, but that doesn't mean you won't win the vote. The US Board is elected by all members (as we are painfully aware right now), and only about 10% voted last time so anything could happen.
The International Board is elected by national chapters, i.e. one country one vote. The entire International Board is to be vacated this year (Chairman plus 6 Board members), so there never was a better time for an outsider to run. And many countries are not entirely happy so don't expect consistently establishment voting.
So think about it please! (Yes I did and no I won't be)
Finally, and also looking forward, please provide feedback on where you would like the IT Skeptic blog to be heading in the future. I've had some great comments but I'd like to hear from more of you.
For reasons that are not clear, my newsletter database says I didn't send the June edition. I hope this is wrong, but what the heck: a bonus this month, two newsletters! June and September! (Thanks to the way the template works, you'll get the same pictures in both, sorry)
What an extraordinary month it was in June on the IT Skeptic blog. I had expected ITIL Version 3 books to dominate proceedings, but they took a back seat to debate over the itSMF: it's transparency, it's accountability to members, and the broader debate over its viability and reason for existence.
We also had an enormous debate over the philosophy behind the Service Strategy book, culminating in accusations of plagiarism in comments on the blog! Not to mention robust discussion of APMG's new certification scheme for V3, and the perennial CMDB. Next to all that, the IT Skeptic's new BOKKED, the Body of Knowledge Known Error Database, has had to take a back seat. But I hope this facility will grow if it is seen as useful by the IT community.
Getting back to the itSMF, the IT Skeptic was delighted to see Keith Aldis - CEO of itSMF UK and of itSMF International - wade into debate on my blog. His openness and preparedness to meet criticism head on is a refreshing change from past practice. Long may it last, though a cynic doubts that it will last long, once other powers notice. He has been quiet of late...
We have had two emails from Leah Palmer, itSMF USA President, to US members regarding the accusations of foul play in the itSMF USA Board election. These emails either show a determination to investigate all avenues or a determination to shoot the messnger - I am not yet sure which.
This is not the end of the itSMF's woes with Board trouble brewing in another country as well!
You can see from this newsletter that the IT Skeptic has taken a long hard look at governance and transparency of itSMF. A recent poll shows just under 90% of you are itSMF members so this examination will continue (the rest of you please bear with us for now).
I end with two quotes from me from the blog:
"I encourage all readers who are itSMF members ...to ask ...questions of your local chapter. Ask them formally in writing and ask your chapter executive to pass them officially to itSMF International for response. If that doesn't work email the Chairman direct: email@example.com. I'm just a troublemaking nutter living on 'the last two rocks before you step off the planet'. I can safely be ignored. A groundswell of queries from multiple chapters cannot."
"My personal interest on the internet is social computing or Web 2.0. This blog has made me intrigued by the democratic power of Web 2.0 and I have already served notice that I intend to explore that power. You can see the first rumblings on this blog already..."
One ITIL V3 author told me I am a "terrier snapping at the heels of the establishment", and I know that hurts the owners of the heels. On a personal level I'm sorry for those I hurt who act honestly with the best interests of the ITIL commnity at heart. I hope you can believe that I respect what you have done with ITIL Version 3 - it isn't perfect and I don't agree with everything, but it is a magnificent body of work. Again, congratulations!
For those who act with selfish or corrupt motivations, I have no sympathy. The blog's primary purpose is not to expose you, but I don't mind if that is a secondary effect.
A comment on the IT Skeptic blog suggested I am obsessed with the ITIL Version 3 Launch. I replied:
I don't think I'm obsessed. I am, in effect, a journalist. Not that I chose to be but that is another story. There is a huge vacuum of open discussion and debate around ITIL that this blog seeks to fill. The Refresh is the big story, the topic on everybody's lips right now, so I report it. Or maybe I'm obsessed. Let the readers judge.That is this month's theme, transparency: whether it be transparency of the process of creating ITIL V3; transparency of the decision-making processes behind ITIL; transparency of the governance of the vested interests feeding off ITIL; or transparency of governance of the association which is supposedly owned by us, its members (even if it does not, by definition, exist to represent our interests).
I'd like to get onto some other topics actually but OGC and itSMF keep alternately leaving this void and then providing me all this great material. I look forward very much to the ITIL world becoming so boring that I can look at other topics on this blog, and go do a few other projects that might pay better :-)
You imply that I am delving into unimportant minutae. Tell that to the Japanese and the Canadians. I for one would be interested in the reasoning behind the change [of countries for the launch roadshow] and I bet they would too. It's called "transparency".
For those who wonder what the hell I am on about, go see if you can answer the following seemingly simple questions:
And the internet renders it impossible. I hope my blog will help prove that.
Editor's note: if you are new to the Skeptical Informer, the quirky nature pictures are in support of ITIL Version 3's nature-themed graphic designs
This month the activity on the blog has revolved around three things: CMDB (topic du jour for IT it seems); the scope of ITIL change management; and the looming release of the V3 Refresh.
I must say the big disappointment of the month is continuing reports of training vendors furiously making hay while the sun shines: flogging V2 training to people with narry a word about the implications of V3.
The root of the problem lies deeper, with OGC and APMG studiously ignoring the problem. Possibly this is because of all the politics and disruption surrounding the outsourcing of accreditation and certification to APMG, but that is a reason not an excuse. The fact is there has been a total failure of governance here, with not one jot of guidance from the organisation which has at least a moral responsibility for the best interests of the ITIL consumer: OGC.
Coming a close second in failure to act is of course itSMF, which is proving once again that it does not exist to represent the interests of its members. As I have pointed out in a recent ITSM-Watch article "The Pillars of ITIL", it doesn't even claim to do so, but I believe that would come as a surprise to many members.
And then tawdry third are the perpetrators themselves. It beats me how some people sleep nights, but then there are many more time-share and used-car sales people who don't look too tired either. At a bare minimum, all ITIL certification and training vendors should be pointing out to prospective clients that there is some uncertainty over the status of V2 qualifications after the V3 ones come out. Oh sure, sure, everyone bangs on about how they will still be "recognised". That's like saying that after a currency devaluation your peso is still a peso.
It now appears that you will have to do bridging training before your V2 certifications count as a prerequisite for any V3 ones. Any training vendor that fails to mention that is defrauding their customer through mis-quoting the true cost.
Right now your $10,000 V2 Manager's certificate will stand you in good stead when job hunting. But if the IT job market ever goes back to being competitive again then it will be another story.
And most of all, nobody knows what the status of V2 Practitioners' certificates will be, as the whole practitioner structure is being torn down and re-done. Selling Practitioners' certification right now without explaining that is simply dishonest. The IT Swami sees a few class actions next year.
As a product ITIL is a Good Thing. It works. It is useful. Heck, it is GREAT. And I'm hoping the V3 books will be even better. What alarms me more is the management of the ecosystem that has sprung up around the books. Right now parts of the ecosystem are polluted by:
The big news of the month for me was confirmation of the publication date for ITIL Version 3 - the Refresh. I have had a month of throwing stones at OGC, itSMFI, TSO, APMG, ISEB, and EXIN. They must be heartily sick of the IT Skeptic by now ... if they even notice. Actually I know at least some do because they have been in touch. This is even turning into a bit of a whistle-blower's site, and I don't have a problem with that. Tip-offs welcomed: if something to do with IT does not stand up well to close critical scrutiny, send it to email@example.com and I'll let the sunshine in.
I promise it won't be like this every month for three reasons:
So start saving, girls and boys. Three hundred quid: that's two to six hours' pay for we consultants and no hours' pay for the people who get their boss to fork out for it. An interesting question is whether it is cheaper than ITIL 2 or not. The minimum ITIL (version 2) set of "the blue book and the red book" will set you back a cool six hundred bucks on CD ROM or half that on paper. The other books tend to run to about the same or a few for about half that much each. A full set of ITIL 2 would not leave much change out of a thousand British pounds on CD or a thousand US dollars on paper. ITIL 3 can be had as a set for three hundred pounds, but be careful of the comparison, as the core books are more focused in ITIL 3. I suspect you are more likely to need to purchase additional complementary publications to expand on them. This is still less than some of the proprietary frameworks and methodologies peddled by consulting firms, but certainly more than the free open content sources emerging from the Internet... and more than COBIT which is now freely available. Good on you ITGI/ISACA.
I do like the graphic design of the ITIL 3 books, with all the x-ray images of nature. Very nice. In fact this newsletter has a nature theme - if somewhat quirkier - to complement the new books.
And while the process has not been above criticism as you will see from some of the articles below, ITIL 3 still looks set to be a magnificent body of work.


text:
3 VoiceThread Features You Should be Using
This is a guest post by Alissa Harrington, VoiceThreader and Instructional Designer at Stevenson University.
VoiceThread is so flexible and simple to use, that we often overlook some of its powerful built-in features. Below are three ideas to incorporate into your VoiceThread experience:
1. Insert an Active Link– An easy way to share a file* or website with students during a VoiceThread presentation is to copy the source URL and paste the link in a text comment. Links in the comment area are live once posted. Alternatively, you can also post an active link in the title of a slide, however only one link can be shared per slide using this method. No matter which method you choose, be sure to introduce the URL with a video or voice comment so the students are aware of its purpose.
*Note: To share a file, place the item in Google Drive or Dropbox first and then select share to generate a URL for the file.
2. Create Assessments Using Comment Moderation– Comment moderation "hides" comments from all users except the creator of the VoiceThread. This option is useful for assessment prompts as it forces students to create original and creative responses. To enable this feature, select Publishing Options from the Edit page of your VoiceThread and then select the 'Moderate Comments?' option. Moderated comments will appear grayed out with a closed-curtain icon. Once all grading is complete, instructors can click the closed-curtain icon to reveal each comment to the class.
3. Organize Conversations with Tags– Tags are an optional, yet powerful item; they allow you to conduct a search based upon keywords. The tag field appears in the 'Describe your VoiceThread' dialog box under the title and description fields. Use tags to associate your VoiceThreads with categories, research topics, or presentation types, such as debates. Once you assign tags you can quickly filter related conversations by entering a keyword into the search field located on the MyVoice tab.
About Alissa Harrington
A former elementary school teacher turned techie; Alissa is recognized for her ability to teach complex technology concepts to the non-technical. Technology and education have been her passion for nearly 20 years. Alissa is currently an instructional designer for Graduate and Professional Studies at Stevenson University. Follow her on twitter at: @aj_harrington

subset: commoncrawl


text: Good morning. I'm Steve Inskeep. Rihanna is a billionaire. Forbes describes the pop star as the richest female musician, worth $1.7 billion. Beyonce, by contrast, is said to be worth a mere few hundred million. Rihanna, who grew up as Robyn Fenty, has not released a studio album since 2016. Her cosmetics company made most of her fortune. Apparently, NPR's marketing plan for cosmetics in a tote bag still needs a little work. It's MORNING EDITION. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.