skeptic's blog

I'm intrigued by the endless repetition of the chant "ITIL slows things down". No it doesn't. Doing things properly slows things down.

As a consultant, COBIT is my first-choice body of knowledge for my engagements. I go to it first* to assess, to frame, to define, to justify, to audit. I turn to ITIL second, when I need more detail, or when I need the authority of the holy of holies to justify what I suggest. There are two reasons for this:

Somebody somewhere is really unhappy with itSMF International. They have a childish way of dealing with it.

The itSMF International Executive Board (IEB) announced Marianna Billington as chair for the coming year. Yay Marianna! Another high-flying Kiwi in ITSM. Congratulations.
Actually the news was on Twitter days ago, I think @servicesphere called it first.

It seems to me that new technologies such as cloud, social media, or mobile personal computing, are seen as much more transformational by some of us in IT. I suspect that is because of our industry's fixation with technology at the cost of people and process.

The hype around social media is reaching the usual almost religious fervour typical of our industry when faced with anything novel. We run shrieking into the street like kids chasing a noisy carnival parade. Social media is a distraction to our day job, just like Cloud. Social media is a communication channel, and not a very good one. Get over it.

You know, I've read more IT books than most of the human race has, at least fifty. And most of them don't work for me for two reasons: they're too complete and too correct.

Some time ago I did some research for APMG on the state of ITIL. Now the resulting white paper has been published.

Every year the IT Skeptic website starts the New Year with our Awards. (You can see past years' awards here).

If a post falls in the internet wilderness and nobody reads it, does it make a blog? Of course not. A blog is nothing without you, gentle readers. So at this festive time of year, I'd like to say a special thank-you for following and commenting, and offer a little something in gratitude.