Comments from the IT Skeptic blog, February 2008

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February was a busy month for comments on the blog, making up for a quiet January. Msot of the comments came as part of long threads of deep discussion on a few core articles.

The discussion on "ITIL vs. COBIT, ISO20000 et al" was an active one, including the part about itSMF's role.

Charles brought up some interesting research for the old "Emperor has no clothes" post which triggered an interesting discussion of evidence

Lots of comments about the best ways to buy the ITIL V3 books... and about errors in diagrams.

"Implementing ITIL" kicked off a great (and extended) discussion of what works, what maturity is, and costing.

Another good debate was around a layman's definition of ITIL - we really struggle to come up with a pithy definition that means something in plain English.

And another good chunky conversation about Don Page's guest post on ISO20000 - brisk deabte from both sides on the value and apllicability of ISO20000, and interesting thoughts about ISO20000 individual certification.

My People Process technology variant caused a interesting discussion on what models are in the ITIl books, and on people as the key factor.

The question of multi-choice questions caused debate around whether it is the British education system's fault which led into real ongoing professional certification. See also this thread for more on multi-choice.

Two thoughtful comments about getting management commitment.

One of the "meatiest" discussions was about how to treat hosted applications in the ITIL service catalogue - just how do you define "application" anyway?

It also ended with the (unintentionally) funniest comment we've had in a while.