ITSM

The UK Government reinvents ITSM

Submitted by skeptic on Thu, 2013-05-02 09:14

How exactly does the UK Government spend time and money building a "Government Service Design Manual" targeted at builders of the Gov.uk online services that only once mentions ITIL?

And how does Gov.uk think that essential public services like passports, BD&M, benefits, justice, citizenship and tax are going to run with "Resources for service managers" that barely summarise the syllabus of an ITIL Foundations course?

DevOps ideology and dangerous over-simplification, that's how.

ITSM in Cherry Valley

Submitted by skeptic on Sun, 2013-02-17 16:51

I'm getting lots of positive feedback about my series of articles for The ITSM Review, which use a train crash in Cherry Valley, Illinois as a case study for understanding incident and problem management. (It is part of a wider theme of my articles for The ITSM Review using railroad examples for service management).

It always mystifies me that people (and ITIL) don't grok this simple model: incident management is about users, problem management is about causes.

Kamu: a unified theory of IT management - reconciling DevOps and ITSM/ITIL

Submitted by skeptic on Tue, 2013-02-05 22:18

I know many in the DevOps community wrote me off as a lost cause, but brothers and sisters I have seen the light after reading this: On Antifragility in Systems and Organizational Architecture from Jez Humble. I pledge myself to spending 2013 [and 2014 and 2015] uniting the DevOps and ITSM communities. Tweet this.

Why process maturity is a useless metric for ITSM improvement

Submitted by skeptic on Sun, 2012-09-30 21:27

Process/practice maturity is a metric that should be of little interest when deciding where to focus your improvement efforts, or for measuring the results of those efforts. And CMM process management maturity is even more useless than execution maturity.

Risk and value should be the primary metrics for planning and assessing your improvement.

Book review: IT That Matters. Business porn.

Submitted by skeptic on Mon, 2012-09-24 10:24

itSMF have published another ITSM pocket-book in conjunction with TSO: IT That Matters: An Executive's Guide to maximising [with an "s"!] the strategic value of your IT investment by Dennis Ravenelle (ISBN 978-0117080614). I'm an intellectual fan-boy: I recognise and respect superior intellect. I'm also a writer, and respect fine writing. On both counts I liked IT That Matters. And quoting Nirvana is cool.

In the end though, this is "business porn" like almost all ITSM books. I crave something I can use.

The future of IT management

Submitted by skeptic on Tue, 2012-02-07 21:22

We're having lots of great debate about a number of areas that are supposedly going to transform IT. The focus of this blog is IT management, so here are some thoughts on what is and isn't going to transform IT management, including some long-overdue predictions from the IT Swami!

Social ITSM - a skeptical view

Submitted by skeptic on Sun, 2012-01-22 04:58

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.

A Brief Review of Creating and Driving Service Excellence

Submitted by skeptic on Wed, 2011-11-30 00:13

Creating and Driving Service Excellence looks like a handy tool for selling ITSM to the bosses.

People first in ITSM

Submitted by skeptic on Wed, 2011-11-02 17:53

People first, in priority and in order.

Using ITIL effectively

Submitted by skeptic on Mon, 2011-10-17 22:21

[Updated 18/10/2011] Yesterday I blogged about a request from a reader for advice on service catalogue. It must be a week for it because another reader asked about using ITIL (or ITSM in general) effectively.

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