The IT Infrastructure Library
Some time ago I purchased the official OGC ITIL book Building an ITIL-Based Service Management Department but I have not got around to reviewing it until now. Part of my slowness stems from my disappointment with the book, and partly I was holding off to see what others thought. I hold Malcolm Fry in high regard: I expected much better and I wondered if maybe I had missed something. Apparently not.
There appears to be more vendors certifying their products against more processes on PinkVerify than the OGC scheme. Why is that? What can OGC learn from Pink about making it easier for vendors? or does it show that PinkVerify is too easy? Does it matter?
I have an analogy for CMDB - it is like a Swiss bank account. Allow me to paraphrase some of the conversations I've had around CMDB:
Pondering my recent (second) visit to Las Vegas, it is interesting the parallels and lessons about ITIL we can draw from the place.
The first is excess. Nobody can accuse the Las Vegans of being constrained by good taste or in fact by anything other than available funds. The motto of Las Vegas appears to be "nothing exceeds like excess". It is like super-size American food portions: I think the objective is for somebody to one-day eat a meal larger than their own head.
A recurrent theme in conversations I have had here at the Pink Elephant ITSM Conference is how resources such as ITIL or related tools have no value or relevance until you understand your organisation's own context for them.
We go round this question every week on LinkedIn. My answer is getting pretty well honed.
For all those who have paid lots of money to be accredited ITIL V3 training organisations (ATOs), be aware that APMG-International the Examination institute (EI) - as compared to their parent APMG Group the official OGC accreditor of all EIs - is not directing any business your way if you accredited through another EI. You know who your friends are in the ITIL world.
It seems Technical Service Catalogue is often misunderstood to mean a catalogue of different services from those in the Business Service Catalogue. It's not. It is a different view of the same services. ITIL SD 4.1.4 sadly refers to "supporting services, shared services" within the TSC which I think contributes to the confusion, but diagram 4.3 makes it clear - the services are the same in both, just the perspective and detail differ because of the different audiences: internal and external.