service

Service Assurance and the pursuit of the elusive service view

skeptic — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 19:22:51 -0600

I learned a new (for me) buzzword recently when a journalist asked me about "Service Assurance". Sounds like a new spin on an old idea: the single view of a service. This is yet another techno-geek wet dream.

ITIL 2011 persists with the dangerous concept of supporting services

skeptic — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 14:43:55 -0600

Not only has ITIL V3.1 2011 not fixed the problems with business-vs-technical services, they have gone the wrong way and reinforced the problem. I will fight to the death to say there is no such thing as internal supporting "services", because I care about ITSM.

Don't run IT as a business, run it as part of the business

skeptic — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 03:10:44 -0700

"Run IT as a business". What a mantra. It is of course rubbish. You run business as a business.

Who does the service desk serve?

skeptic — Sun, 03 Oct 2010 23:56:08 -0600

Who does the service desk serve? That comes back to what the support service is there for.

About the ITIL Service Owner

skeptic — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 02:27:16 -0600

There's a lot of rubbish on the Web about ITIL (not on this blog of course). Take Service Owner. Actually there's a lot of rubbish in ITIL about Service Owner, or rather a lot of ambiguity and not a little outright contradiction. So it's hard to blame other web authors. But really, look at this:

There is only one service catalogue

skeptic — Sun, 15 Aug 2010 04:04:32 -0600

Technical vs Business service catalogue: we had a go at this argument previously but I am discussing it again over on LinkedIn and I have - I hope - a clearer way of stating the position. The popular perception of a Technical Service Catalogue is that it described different service entities than a Business Service Catalogue. That's just plain wrong. It gives IT staff entirely the wrong attitudes and mindset. So here is my shot at a definitive statement of position on Technical vs Business Service Catalogue. For any organisational unit, for the services that are the outputs across the boundary of that unit, there is only one service catalogue ...and only one set of services.

is ITSM the best perspective on everything IT?

skeptic — Tue, 25 May 2010 01:36:48 -0600

There is more to IT than services. Service Management may be the topic du jour but ITSM can't consider itself the primary gateway into governance, development, acquisition, architecture, projects or HR, to name just a few other IT functions. It may have a perspective on them but not the main one. Or then again, maybe it is it a sufficient model for managing all of IT.

Why does IT have to do the business's job?

skeptic — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 11:00:00 -0700

One of the reasons IT is sinking under the burden of our work is all the projects and new services we are dealing with. This shouldn't be IT's job.

Do we overcook services? ITIL out of line

skeptic — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 17:59:04 -0700

It seems to me that the technoid's obsession with over-analysing and chasing perfection - what I call ETF: Excessive Technical Fastidiousness - is often applied to the definition of services.

The true scope of service management and ITIL

skeptic — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 15:45:30 -0600

Service management is IT. It is a way of describing how to do IT - all of it. When it comes to the scope of service management in general and ITIL in particular, the IT Skeptic has had a change of mind. In the past I accused ITIL V3 of having aspirations beyond its station, of trying to take on areas where it has no business going, such as strategy, applications and security. I don't think so any more: now I just think ITIL did it half-heartedly, too anaemically to be taken seriously by areas of IT outside of IT Operations. But Service Management definitely should go there.