The IT Skeptic - change

The secret to easy organisational change: hacking the org.

skeptic — Wed, 23 Oct 2019 02:41:41 +0000

Our secret is out.

Kill the CAB

skeptic — Wed, 07 Jun 2017 04:38:37 +0000

Requiring permission from a Change Advisory Board after a change is complete is absurd. A system has to be broken to need any discussion by that stage. Fix the system and kill the CAB. Its possible.

Change goes away

skeptic — Sun, 28 May 2017 04:52:50 +0000

What does IT operational production change management look like in a highly DevOps-driven organisation? It doesn't. It vanishes.

why DevOps transformations succeed where ITSM so often doesn't

skeptic — Wed, 26 Apr 2017 01:41:55 +0000

I've consulted on many ITSM initiatives and it always seemd a struggle to effect improvement: all stick and no carrot; dragging horses to the river with no interest in drinking. My DevOps consulting these days is a different experience - of happy horses following willingly and drinking their fill. The difference between ITIL and DevOps is that DevOps works.

Two questions to ask

skeptic — Tue, 04 Apr 2017 19:29:55 +0000

Here are two questions you can ask yourself, or you can ask any person or team, to challenge them to change the way they work:

Can you show how your work will be better in a year?
We want to know whether there is any improvement programme, or any bandwidth for improvements, or even any culture based on improvement.
Can you keep working in this way indefinitely?

The lizard brain

skeptic — Tue, 07 Feb 2017 00:57:25 +0000

The lizard brain is a colloquial term for the most basic parts of your brain.
We are primal animals. We dont interact with machines in the same way as we interact with humans.

Move from change control to change facilitation

skeptic — Mon, 30 Jan 2017 08:27:30 +0000

ITSM Review quoted me from Pink16 as saying
"Change Management needs to move from Change control to Change facilitation”.
This is referring of course to IT operational Change Management.

A client challenged me as to how.
My answer: One Principle - Shift Left.

Darwin doesnt justify change

skeptic — Thu, 19 Mar 2015 20:27:56 +0000

I heard this one again recently: "survival of the most adaptable". To be clear: Darwin did NOT ever say "It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is most adaptable to change." Because it is NOT true. Change is not essential and it certainly isn't always a good thing.

Release management: landing airplanes

skeptic — Thu, 16 Oct 2014 07:26:08 +0000

It's all very well to talk about "release trains" of interdependent changes as if in a sequence, but meanwhile in the real world it's a complex business scheduling inter-dependent and conflicting releases.

Don't try to change culture

skeptic — Sat, 05 Jul 2014 12:10:35 +0000

Should you try to change culture?

Who owns the risk of an IT change?

skeptic — Sun, 06 Apr 2014 02:11:25 +0000

Stuart Rance posted an interesting blog about What Is Change Management For?. Then we had an excellent discussion about it on Google+, where some great stuff came up that I want to capture here in my IP repository (or "blog" for short). Tell me what you think:

Fix change not ITIL

skeptic — Thu, 06 Feb 2014 22:03:04 +0000

Fix the way we change ITSM behaviours, not the models of that behaviour. ITIL is near enough.

Evolution not revolution

skeptic — Sun, 11 Nov 2012 11:53:55 +0000

What is this IT obsession with revolution? Revolution is destructive, counterproductive, the source of much pain. The destruction which evolutions wreak can set communities back by decades. Revolution is to be avoided at all costs. The intelligent and civilised way to move forward is evolution: building on the work of others, retaining value and knowledge, growing, changing incrementally.

The Standard+Case approach: applying Case Management to ITSM

skeptic — Mon, 18 Jun 2012 23:44:25 +0000

Here is an exciting new approach to categorising and resolving any sort of activity "tickets", such as requests (including incidents) on a service desk, problems, or changes. It is called Standard+Case until somebody comes up with a better name. I know there is so much to read these days, but if you have anything to do with service support or change management, read this. It'll change your year.

Standard+Case is a synthesis of our conventional "Standard" process-centric approach to responding, with Case management, a discipline well-known in some other industry sectors such as health, social work, law and policing.

S+C addresses criticisms of approaches like ITIL for being too process-centric and not allowing customers and knowledge workers to be empowered. S+C does not seek to replace or change ITIL or other theory: it expands and clarifies that theory to provide a more complete description of managing responses.

It provides a good skills path for service desk analysts that fits well with gamification. And Standard+Case is applicable to Problem Management and Change Management (and Event Management...) as well as Service Desk activities. S+C applies to anything that requires a human response: there's either a standard response or there isn't.

For more information about Standard + Case, see the Basic Service Management website.

Abolish the CAB at your peril

skeptic — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 05:53:45 +0000

There seems to be a fashion for analysts to make rash revolutionary statements. I reckon it is in their KPIs. The normally-temperate Glenn O'Donnell said: "Abolish the CAB!". That is - to put it mildly - a bit rash.

Binder-chuckers

skeptic — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 20:01:51 +0000

The problem with too many ITSM consultants is that they are binder-chuckers. ITSM consulting is not about inventing a process. It is about enacting cultural change.

A new concept goes into over-hype: Agile

skeptic — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 22:40:15 +0000

The latest buzz in IT is of course Agile, and its bastard spawn DevOps. I've written before about how the change is becoming the steady state and stability the exception; and how the old mainframe-centric concepts of change control will have to adapt. I'm even confident that concepts from agile will play an important part in that. But nothing in that warrants the frenzied hype around agile right now. And most of all, nothing in that warrants letting the IT cowboys out of the corral.

why on earth did ITIL V3 rename Forward Schedule of Change to Change Schedule?

skeptic — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 06:20:08 +0000

This has been bugging me for a long time: why on earth did ITIL V3 rename Forward Schedule of Change to Change Schedule? Beats me, and it is counter-productive.

Confused change management in ITIL V3

skeptic — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 10:35:39 +0000

I believe ITIL has aspirations beyond its station. ITIL is an operational framework for IT production environments. So long as it knows its place and sticks to it, all is well. But every now and then it gets an inflated view of its own importance and starts poking into the development aspects of IT, or worse still the strategic ones. This is an example of the latter, where the book is confused between operational and strategic aspects of change. The forums are littered with confused postings.

Dead cat syndrome

skeptic — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 11:14:22 +0000

[Hi! IF you came looking for insight into the rebounding world economy, you are looking for Dead Cat Bounce. This post is about IT project management. But thanks for dropping in! If you are interested in IT, please take a look around]

Operational readiness of new and improved services ensures a smooth transition from Project to Production. ITIL talks about it in a number of places, but I think Operational Readiness needs to be recognised as a practice in its own right, like any other ITIL "process". OR is not (just) about being a gatekeeper to Prod: it's about ensuring readiness throughout the lifecycle. OR provides a positive benefit for the customers, projects, development, and operations.