The Skeptical Informer, August 2008, Volume 2, No. 8
The newsletter of the IT Skeptic. All the IT skeptical news that is fit to print... and then some!
The big news from the IT Skeptic this month - special advance notice to you good readers of this newsletter - is that the IT Skeptic's new book Introduction to Real ITSM is available now.
This book is for those who work in Information Technology (IT) and for those who have IT done to them.
This book is not about ITIL. Really. Real ITSM™ is a tongue-in-cheek satirical look at what the real-life practices might be, as compared to the idealised models in frameworks like ITIL or COBIT or ISO20000 or ...
In the tradition of “real ale”, Real ITSM is the genuine thing as it is found on the streets, not the sanitised commercial offerings marketed to the masses.
Through humour we can explore some of the disconnects between the idealised framework and its actualisation in the dysfunctional cultures so common in real ITSM.
You can read several more extracts from the book on the Real ITSM website and this month's pictures are of course from the book.
I know there are a few ITIL authors read this: I'm beginning to empathise and my little book was a doddle compared to the ITIL books. So excrutiating was the experience that I plan to do it again, with Owning ITIL, which will be out this year I swear! You can register for advance notice of that if you wish.
Maybe it is the stress of birthing a new book but I've been a bit stroppy this month. I apologised for my tone when the red mist came down over an upcoming itSMF conference. Sorry again - I try not to get abusive. Elsewhere I've been giving the vendors a serve: Managed Objects, HP and BMC. Makes a change from the poor old itSMF who at least have the right intentions. We bloggers walk a fine line with this stuff - I welcome any advice from those knowledgeable in the law. I feel sympathy for itSMF but less so for the ITIL Training industry which continues to disappoint with their commercial voraciousness at the cost of the trainees' and community's best interests.
We have a few pictures for the IT Skeptic's Rogues Gallery and I look forward to more contributions. Best photo by the end of this month which includes IT Skeptic clothing, hat or mug (or book) wins a free copy of Introduction to Real ITSM.
P.S. I'm hearing rumours about ITIL V3 exams on Prometric - can anyone provide more info please? Email me. You can quickly create a gmail account if you wish to remain anonymous: you wouldn't be the first :-D
Features
Vendors are making a fuss about their Root Cause Analysis (RCA) features in their tools. People Process Things once again: who says Root Cause is in the technology?
We asked the question Who are the mysterious ITIL Qualifications Board?
The definitive answer is given here by LCS
The vendors like to tout auto-discovery as a feature that solves the problem of discovery - how to populate a Configuration database and keep it populated. It isn't. [Oh alright, I'll call it a CMDB so long as we all understand I don't mean the ITIL-defined dream model].
There are varying degrees of point-stretchedness, with so many products that claim to "deliver" or "support" or "monitor" ITIL.
With the release of the new format for ITIL V3 Intermediate exams, once again APMG and the ITIL Qualifications Board have opted for maximising profitability and sellability of product for the ITIL Version 3 training industry over maximising the quality of the resulting trainee.
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