Welcome to "The Skeptical ITer" - the newsletter of the IT Skeptic

This is the inaugural edition of The Skeptical ITer, a regular newsletter to be published at the start of each month, summarising activity on the IT Skeptic's blog at www.itskeptic.org. We will also provide some additional content and commentary not found there, just for our newsletter subscribers.

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 skeptic@itskeptic.org and I'll let the sunshine in.

I promise it won't be like this every month for three reasons:

  • 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

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.

I do like the graphic design of the ITIL 3 books, with all the x-ray images of nature. Very nice. And while the process has not been above criticism as you will see below, ITIL 3 still looks set to be a magnificent body of work.

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