The IT Skeptic - technology

Climate change

skeptic — Wed, 10 Oct 2018 19:55:52 +0000

Media are awash with hysterical (and not as in funny) misinterpretations of the recent IPCC report, all of them along the lines of "we have 12 years to save the world". I'm as concerned about climate change as anyone, but the apocalyptic bullshit over the latest IPCC report only discredits the real science. It's not saying anything like we have only 12 years to save the world.

Technology changes nothing.

skeptic — Mon, 05 Feb 2018 22:03:42 +0000

Recently Damon Edwards said

Beware: “Tools change culture” may sound like wisdom, but it’s not. It’s a fallacy often repeated by people who want cover to embark on a tools project without addressing what is really wrong with their organization.

Dont blame the tool: squeeze the asset, fix the behaviour

skeptic — Mon, 06 Oct 2014 09:05:06 +0000

Organisations are far too quick to blame their software tools for their woes.

The nett result of new technology

skeptic — Tue, 26 Aug 2014 09:42:00 +0000

Any new technology solves one set of problems and introduces another; it simplifies one area and complicates another; it reduces some costs but increases others; it brings new risks. The question is whether there is a nett gain in value. It's called a business case and we so often forget it in our haste to embrace the shiny and new.

Transformational technologies are a small view

skeptic — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 07:40:44 +0000

It seems to me that new technologies such as cloud, social media, or mobile personal computing, are seen as much more transformational by some of us in IT than they really are. I suspect that is because of our industry's fixation with technology at the cost of people and process.

Some ITSM technologies are a no-brainer

skeptic — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 04:29:45 +0000

So there we all were brow-beating this poor guy on LinkedIn because he asked what other Remedy options he should buy [without much idea of any business requirement]. I too put the boot in, but on reflection I realised we were all being sanctimonious and patronising.

There are a few ITSM processes that almost certainly end up needing an underpinning technology.

Keep the vendors and tech geeks away from business automation

skeptic — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 21:33:18 +0000

Vendors sell technology (hardware and software) as silver bullets for business problems. Take a look at this fabulous case study from McKinsey Quarterly. Reading between the lines it seems to me the vendor's pitch was cobblers. The fancy aspects of the technology delivered nothing. The real gains came from process and culture change. When will IT folk ever lose our fixation on technical answers to non-technical problems? And when will the vendors ever step up and start delivering true solutions instead of boxes of crap?

Why the difference in numbers between PinkVerify and OGC ITIL product certifications?

skeptic — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 21:04:58 +0000

There appears to be more vendors certifying their products against more processes on PinkVerify than the OGC scheme. Why is that? What can OGC learn from Pink about making it easier for vendors? or does it show that PinkVerify is too easy? Does it matter?

An outage on the IT Skeptic website and why technology hates me

skeptic — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 01:29:10 +0000

I hate technology. Really. I work with it every day, but I feel about it the same way that sanitation workers feel about their medium (or the way I HOPE they feel about it). I use technology when I have to, to do what I want to do. But I hate it. And it knows it and it hates me back. Take for example the weekend's outage on this blog.

don't expect technology to alter the way business is run

skeptic — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 21:19:21 +0000

The IT Skeptic's favourite quote of the month:
"People change slowly, so don't expect technology to alter the way business is run."
The Future is About Information, Not Tech

My paraphrase: people change process and process changes technology, not the other way around.

Root Cause Analysis can't be done by machines

skeptic — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 03:51:27 +0000

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?

im so xcited by the iPhone

skeptic — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 23:08:44 +0000

The IT Skeptic’s little brother is so excited by the iPhone he wrote an article about it.

Technology does not fix process problems, but that's still what people want to see

skeptic — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 21:52:10 +0000

A lovely example of the "Someone screwed up. What are you going to buy to fix it?" mentality that plagues this industry:

The Service Delivery Tool gap?

skeptic — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 19:57:37 +0000

A recent article raises the interesting question of why there are far more Service Support tools than Service Delivery tools. The IT Skeptic knows why. The underlying assumption of the article that I would skeptically challenge is that there is a role for Service Delivery tools.

Here is an article that raises the interesting question why there are far more Service Support tools than Service Delivery tools.

Technology does not fix process

skeptic — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 20:54:53 +0000

People are drawn to IT by a fascination with complex technology. This is most unfortunate because this fascination blinds so many of us to the importance of the People/Process/Product trilogy.