skeptic's blog

Riddle me this: matching ITIL theory to the real world

Submitted by skeptic on Fri, 2011-10-21 19:53

Calling all you ITIL theorists, philosophers, pontificators and pundits. Marty is back: our follower from the real world, trying to make sense of ITIL on its home grounds, the operations of big iron batch computing. Marty asks what happens after a service is restored? What does ITIL call the function of undoing the damage done while a service was unavailable? I have a view - of course - but I'm going to stay quiet - for a while- and hear what everyone else thinks. So have at it.

Using ITIL effectively

Submitted by skeptic on Mon, 2011-10-17 22:21

[Updated 18/10/2011] Yesterday I blogged about a request from a reader for advice on service catalogue. It must be a week for it because another reader asked about using ITIL (or ITSM in general) effectively.

Service Catalogue in a nutshell

Submitted by skeptic on Sun, 2011-10-16 22:03

A reader asked for advice on Service Catalogue. Here's my "Service Catalogue in a nutshell":

Service Assurance and the pursuit of the elusive service view

Submitted by skeptic on Thu, 2011-10-13 01:22

I learned a new (for me) buzzword recently when a journalist asked me about "Service Assurance". Sounds like a new spin on an old idea: the single view of a service. This is yet another techno-geek wet dream.

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery

Submitted by skeptic on Sat, 2011-10-08 00:25

There's yet another service desk product banging away: this one is called cmdbcloud, a less than obvious name for a sevice desk. But it is. And if it is true that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then they are trying hard to flatter a pre-existing SaaS service desk offering: Beetil.

Serious contributions from the IT Skeptic

Submitted by skeptic on Tue, 2011-09-27 23:41

It's not all satire and scorn for the IT Skeptic. At times he comes up with some serious contributions to the ITSM community. Lately these include a series of 6 webinars for ManageEngine. (You can view the previous webinars there).

Does ITIL explain the difference between an Alert and an Event?

Submitted by skeptic on Sat, 2011-09-24 06:26

Help me please. I'm thrashing around in the morass of Service Operation, trying to get crystal clear on the difference/relationship between an Alert and an Event. Anyone?

P.S. we did skirt around this discussion before

CMDB is like a linked digital phonebook, and just as pointless for most

Submitted by skeptic on Thu, 2011-09-22 21:20

In the old days a phonebook was a list of names and numbers, like an asset database.

Now we have numbers on phones, with people search. Say I want to ring Gary at Safeness. I don't have a number for him but I know his company, and for others at that company I have the switchboard number. Wouldn't it be cool if people were linked to a company entity and we recorded the company numbers once for that entity so it could be found for everyone in that company?

Now we have the analogous equivalent of a CMDB (or a normalised database for the old farts amongst us).

ITIL 2011 persists with the dangerous concept of supporting services

Submitted by skeptic on Thu, 2011-09-15 20:43

Not only has ITIL V3.1 2011 not fixed the problems with business-vs-technical services, they have gone the wrong way and reinforced the problem. I will fight to the death to say there is no such thing as internal supporting "services", because I care about ITSM.

Tipu: continual service improvement as a real approach to ITSM

Submitted by skeptic on Wed, 2011-09-14 09:52

At the recent itSMF Australian National Conference (a.k.a. LEADit, a top conference) I delivered a keynote on Tipu, my "agile ITSM" approach to continual service improvement, which garnered some positive feedback. The same day I was interviewed by the itSMF's journalist, and we spoke about CSI as an approach from the start; processes are the wrong granularity; how we must align to the business need; ETF and pragmatism; and most of all the need for change at a human pace. Here is that interview (7 minutes):

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