The IT Skeptic - Comments for "Good practice and best practice"

amateur educators

skeptic — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 02:38:00 +0000

...but they were there. The sooner APMG stops using amateur educators to write the exams the better. The fact that questions totally unsupported by the syllabus material (the ITIL books) ever got past the supposedly rigorous review process shows the deficiencies.

The certification is sold as supporting the trainee's status as an "ITIL Expert" - why doesn't APMG use properly-qualified adult education experts and multi-choice examination experts to write, assure, monitor and improve the exams?

Questions regarding

Visitor — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 20:58:23 +0000

Questions regarding good/best practices are no longer in foundation exams.

The Practice Lifecyce

ianclayton — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 19:26:15 +0000

Hi Skep

Did you check the 'Practice Lifecycle' discussion I offer in the Guide to USMBOK? The 4 stage lifecycle tries to connect good to best to common to next in the spirit of continuous improvement, and to position for the best practice statement (bps) I use within the USMBOK to describe what you coined as 'GASP's (!). Its quite strange that after all these years of claiming something is 'best practice' that the industry, and I include itSMF here, has failed to establish a basic definition. I just don't see why folks left it to ITIL... You would think the industry would wnat to have a least one hand on the steering wheel, punting this definition and others, is like throwing your Ferrari car keys to your 15yo

Generally Accepted Service Practice

skeptic — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 20:53:00 +0000

I blogged long long ago about how dangerous the word "best" is, however you frame it. "Best" leads with the chin.

I prefer Generally Accepted Service Practice, GASP, directly analogous to GAAP. Maybe ITIL is the last GASP.

Note that the Foundation exams define the terms but the V3 books don't (consistently), as far as I can tell. According to the exam questions (and ONLY the exam questions)

Apparently the distinction is that

Best Practices are proven activities or processes that have been successfully used by multiple organisations but has not yet become common industry practice
Good Practices are practices that are in wide industry use, they are Best Practices that have been commonly applied

Would ather just ignore the issue, but...

Kory G. Smith — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 20:22:10 +0000

This is truly lame and I'm starting to agree on the Legal CONspiracy front, but even that seems like overkill for how easy it would be to just simply make some definitive statements and then let everyone else either like it or not. With a bit of discussion based research, I've just wasted 2 hours of my time - yuck. The simplest explanation or comparison of the two that I can deduce (and will stick to) is that ITIL is a best practice framework. It is not the best practice, but the goal of the framework is to foster best practices in ITSM for each organization that uses the set of practices in ITIL. Because not all the practices are best for all organizations, ITIL must be referred to as a set of Good Practices in ITSM.

So, my one liner for this (until shown the light otherwise) will be that "ITIL is a set of ITSM Good Practices that provides guidance and assists organizations in the implementation of IT Service Management Best Practices".

There's a legal difference. It's not simply a word shuffle

Keith Aldis — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 19:18:43 +0000

"Good" is subjective to what the individual using the word says is good. It means something different to different people and coveys the message intentionally that what is being done is good, and not intended to be wrong or necessarily bad. It may not be best either. One can view it as an attempt by the individual or organisation to convey that they intend to do good with what advice he or she is giving or doing or promoting, but it's up to the recipient to adopt or adapt it to their own use.

"Best" is seen in some circles as a benchmarkable statement of sorts and potentially could be viewed as objective and measuable. And importantly Best Practice can certainly be measured against someone else's laid down or previously accepted best practice - This is dangerous ground with significant legal consequences. So don't say what you are doing is Best Practice - it might not be!

By way of example, If say ITIL, Configuation Management as a process is called Best Practice, there will be someone who may will have bettered it and be measured to have bettered it. Because of this, there will be two outcomes. Firstly the ITIL Configuation Management guidance/standard/process will become redundant or even worse, the organisation who has measurably bettered the thing, will potentially claim against the organisation (in this case OGC) for mis-representation of ITIL as "Best" practice. (that's a thought!).

UK Gov got caught out many moons ago by saying that something they did was Best Practice (I seem to recall it was in the Construction sector). They were wrong at that time and provend to be wrong as there were better practices being delivered by others. EU Law is pretty hot on this and the UK taxpayer was not at all happy.

And remember ITIL and all things related to ITIL is the property of UK Gov whether or not we like it. You have to work on the basis that UK Gov's Legal advisers are either very clever or complete nutcases for coming up with this shift in emphasis. Trust me though, they are very,very clever!

Good to Best to Good to ....

Prashant Bhardwaj — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 11:50:38 +0000

In a recent training that I attended... my trainer said..

Good Practices are the ones which were best practices once... and because of increase in adoption because good practices...
Best Practices are the ones which used to be good practices... and because of trying to reach higher level of adoption, and lower rate of adoption.. because best practices...

Does it even matter? I have seen these terms being used when audits are being done, sales pitches being made, claims being done...

When you start working on the ground... what matters is what could be institutionalized...

undefined

skeptic — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 20:03:08 +0000

Since "good' and "best" are undefined, I guess you are free to interpret them as you see fit. I'm trying to nail the common sense definition but I guess yours is as good. It might even be best.

For me ITIL is good

Visitor — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 19:19:47 +0000

For me ITIL is good practice.

Best practice is when you adapt it to your environment. Each organization should have its own best practices, based and inspired on good practices. Like ITIL.