The IT Skeptic - Comments for "Proactive problem management description does not exist in V3"

Very True!

kengon — Mon, 11 May 2009 06:22:25 +0000

Aale,

You're right. I mentioned in an earlier post my experience with a job candidate. When the candidate told me that ITIL v3 said "x", I left the person with the books and asked the candidate to find it for me. When I returned 15 minutes later, we had a conversation similar to -- "I was sure that this was in there".

It's good that professionals fill in gaps in coverage with their knowledge and experience. It's bad when these adaptations become attributed to the common sense in an area. ITIL doesn't have the market cornered on this, but it's a very real and timely example.

kengon

Fair analysis

JamesFinister — Mon, 11 May 2009 05:58:14 +0000

I suspect that is broadly true, it is what happened with previous versions. In fact when lecturing to a "corrected" slide you can end up forgetting that it says what the books should say rather than what it actually says. My fear with on line training is that delegates don't get that perspective.

I also suspect that most people who have read the books have done so with the exams in mind, which distorts what you see in them - if the exam is about what the book says you learn what the books says, rather than questioning the book.

James Finister
Wolston Limited
www.wolston.net
www.coreITSM.com
http://coreitsm.blogspot.com/

I do not think that anybody actually reads the books

aroos — Sun, 10 May 2009 17:01:38 +0000

If a lot of people had actually read the books, there would be more criticism.

People take courses. Trainers know their materials, consultants have their models. I'm pretty sure that many trainers and consultants have fixed the V3 faults and errors in their materials, otherwise it would be impossible to teach V3. As the message was that V2 is intact in V3, why update the training materials on those parts.

Aale

Hitchhikers Guide analogy

skeptic — Fri, 08 May 2009 21:12:10 +0000

I'm reminded again of the Hitchhikers Guide analogy. People are charmed by the informal; and they forgive faults in something useful.

Need for a structured approach

Charles T. Betz — Fri, 08 May 2009 18:14:18 +0000

This is why the ITIL authors would be well advised to use a more structured, architectural approach.

There's no mystery or secret practice here. TOGAF v9 says it extremely well: catalogs, matrices, and diagrams.

Every "thing" in your universe of analysis must be in one and only one catalog (you may have several catalogs). Catalogs should be under change control. New additions should be inspected for suitability. Catalog representation & coverage must be consistent across artifacts.

Every catalog should be matrixed to at least one other catalog, and every intersection considered. This helps ensure that catalogs are orthogonal.

Interesting intersections may be represented as boxes connected by lines on diagram artifacts.

Charles T. Betz
http://www.erp4it.com