Do unto yourself before others do unto you

Blog entry submitted by skeptic on Wed, 2006-07-12 01:23. [nid:27]
in

Joe at Evergreen makes a great point

Whether it’s ITIL or some other initiative or project, eventually someone in the organization (usually someone with authority) will ask the proverbial "so what". Other questions they might and should ask include "why did we do this" and, of course, "what was the ROI".

I say, when looking at an ITIL-based initiative, beat them to the punch - take a critical look and be a skeptic yourself. Challenge each step with the "so what" and chances are, you'll accomplish your objectives AND do what's best for the company!

Don't leave it to management, clients or mud-slingers like me: make sure you are skeptically critiquing your own ideas and initiatives before someone else does.

I think a future blog might discuss some methodologies and techniques for skeptical analysis. Any ideas or references?

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Comments

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Thanks for red-teaming this

Submitted by Colin (not verified) on Wed, 2006-07-12 09:29.

Thanks for documenting the skeptical take on this topic. I'm just catching up to it, but I've learned enough over the years to prick my ears up everytime the promotional literature liberally features the phrase "de facto standard."

I have been reading a lot about the use of CMMI, for example -- a lot of the big Indian "business process outsourcing" factories seem to swear by it -- but have never read an article or "white paper" (the marketing brochure kind) that does a side-by-side comparison.

So I figure I'll bookmark your blog and try to learn something. Thanks.

CMM

Submitted by skeptic on Wed, 2006-07-12 11:45.

Thanks Colin. CMMI is about development not production, solutions not delivery, software not operations ... whatever terminology you use for the two distinct sides of IT.

To apply CMM concepts to production in general and IT service management in particular, see IT Service Capability Maturity Model which I discussed previously.

Expect to see the big Indian business process outsourcing factories doing a lot of swearing by ISO20000 soon. They like things they can certify against to reassure potential customers. Very crudely it kinda provides the same level of certification for the production side of the house as CMMI does for development. (The purists will kill me for that crude approximation).

Comparison of standards and collections of best practices

Submitted by skeptic on Thu, 2006-07-13 01:16.

Colin, I think you found the comapriosn you wanted here

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