The Skeptical Informer, September 2009, Volume 3, No. 7

The newsletter of the IT Skeptic. All the IT skeptical news that is fit to print... and then some!

In the ITIL world, some things improve but others don't. On the blog I recently said

If OGC would pull their heads out and look around they have an enormous potential they could harness. But they don't. They don't even tell us who is writing the ITIL Refresh Refresh, or how they are being selected. When they do offer writing jobs, they give the public three days to apply. Collaboration with existing bodies of knowledge is almost non-existent. Review cycles are rubber stamp exercises instead of genuine attempts to build content and embrace diversity. They surrender certification schemes (people and products) to the vendors. They surrender their web presence to the vendors, who have torn it into three or more pieces. More than anything else, this is why ITIL is probably doomed.

Look at the governance of ITIL professional certification. For those who don't know,

in 2006 The APM Group became the Official Accreditor for ITIL. APMG provides accreditation services related to training, registration and the examination scheme. As the Official Accreditor, APM Group are responsible for running the ITIL Qualifications Board. The Board includes representatives from all interested parties within the community from around the world. Members of the Board include (though are not limited to) representatives from OGC, APM Group, TSO, V3 Examination Panel, EIs and itSMF International as the recognized user group.

..."all interested parties within the community from around the world" eh?

The Qualifications Board act as a steering committee for the official scheme, ratifying any decisions made ... by APM Group as the Official Accreditor. The Board will also be available to consider any complaints escalated to this forum regarding any accredited member of the official scheme ...

Just in case there is anyone who doesn't know...

APM Group as the Official Accreditor is authorized to license EIs to administer ITIL qualification and accreditation activities. APM Group will also use their international offices to act as an EI to deliver the scheme to the market place in the form of training and consulting accreditation and the delivery of qualifications. All organizations approved by APM Group as EIs will be audited by independent auditors appointed by APM Group in accordance with the principles of international best practice standards. APM Group will also submit their EI to this audit process.

I guess that gives APMG a comprehensive understanding of the market if they are both an auditor and a provider. Who is actually on that Board? With difficulty you can find out who was some time ago. The only non-vendor representation on the Board is that staunch independent voice of the ITIL user community: the itSMF International. The ATOs (some of them) make more noise on behalf of the customer than itSMFI does! That's why they've got their own IQB sub-committee, to give the pesky nuisances somewhere to vent. What does the Board decide? If you need to know, there will be a press release - they publish no minutes. Check this out from a year ago:

The ethics board of The APM Group (APMG) met the board of itSMF International (itSMFI) recently to further knit relations between their organisations, which both share the aim of establishing the highest possible standards among service management professionals. Cementing their alliance Sharon Taylor, Chair, itSMFI and Richard Pharro, CEO, APMG, signed a contract, which seals the agreement whereby APMG will share revenue generated from the ITIL Foundation exams to help itSMFI expand and support chapters. In return, tSMFI is committed to promoting ITIL globally and supporting the qualification scheme through its involvement n the ITIL Qualifications board. Colin Rudd, itSMFI’s Qualification Board representative and ITIL author, said “I am pleased that a close working relationship has been established for the benefit of the service management community and for ITIL at large.” “We were impressed with APMG’s corporate governance structure and have extended an offer to Richard Pharro to speak about the subject at itSMF conferences." CEO Richard Pharro, APMG said, “Our relationship with itSMFI and with the international community of service managers continues to grow. Our ethics board is certainly a contributing factor in facilitating this relationship because it gives the community confidence that we endeavor to act responsibly and with transparency.”

Now the IT Skeptic suggests nothing untoward here but it is all very cosy don't you think? APMG give itSMF a cut of revenues in return for itSMF's support. So who is independently repesenting the end consumer on the IQB now? Sharon Taylor was acting in her role as Chair of itSMFI not in her other role as APMG's Chief Examiner. Colin Rudd was acting as itSMFI’s IQB representative, not as Managing Director of his company which was awarded the contract from ISEB to develop the ITIL v2 to V3 Bridging course. One hardly thinks they needed to "further knit relations between their organisations". Note that APMG’s Ethics and Standards Board, led by Chairman Alan Deboo, Canon of Salisbury Cathedral, is responsible for ensuring APMG adheres to good governance standards and works ethically, representing the interests of all its stakeholders. This is an admirable piece of self-governance (no, really!).

If, as a stakeholder, you would like to contact The Chair or Deputy Chair of the Board to raise a particular issue or concern, please send an email to their respective email addresses, chair-ethicsboard@apmgroupltd.com or deputychair-ethicsboard@apmgroupltd.com and the Chair or Deputy Chair of the Board will respond to your enquiry as soon as possible. This email will be treated as confidential and will not be seen by internal APM Group staff.

So, exam question: What is the purpose of the ITIL Qualification Board? Are they there to represent the interests of a) the owners of ITIL? b) the vendors of certification? c) the purchasers of certification? d) the community who use certification as a means of assessing people they pay? (In true ITIL fashion there is one correct answer and one less-correct answer). I put it to you that there is no independent governance of ITIL beyond the indirect involvement of APMG's Ethics Committee. Who speaks for the millions of ITIL practitioners? Who speaks for the over-half-a-million people certified in ITIL? In the unlikely event that a Board member spoke up for we poor punters

Each member of the ITIL Qualifications Board has a single vote and the views of the majority will prevail

P.S. please consider nominating the IT Skeptic for the ComputerWeekly Blog Awards as an "IT Consultant and Analyst" site. Hurry, closes soon!

P.P.S. Photos this week are of two of my most favourite things: my son and trains, because... well because.

Features

Egg on face from the ITIL Refresh Refresh: we can do better at reviewing bodies of work

The whole of New Zealand was out by 190 metres - we're in the middle of fixing it. No big deal: redraw, rebrand, reprint, redistribute every single topographical map of the country; recalibrate/reprogram some of the GPS devices; run batch programs to change the coordinate position of everything in every database in the country; work really hard to make sure all the emergency services stay on the same page ...er... map. Simple really. Harder is telling people it is happening: nobody I speak to even knows. It would have been a little simpler if they had got it right the first time, but that is unfair criticism since technology has moved on over the however-many decades or centuries since they surveyed it for the last set of maps. The errors took a long time to show up (when GPS became widely used).

Imagine the reaction if it were to come out in a year or so that the latest set of maps is still wrong.

The Skeptical Informer, September 2009, Volume 3, No. 7

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