The IT Skeptic - cowboys

ITIL doesn't add overhead

skeptic — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 21:12:38 +0000

I'm intrigued by the endless repetition of the chant "ITIL slows things down". No it doesn't. Doing things properly slows things down.

Agile and Lean need Renaissance Man

skeptic — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 03:46:13 +0000

Agile and Lean both seem to be based on idealistic, some would say naive, assumptions about human nature and capabilities.

Every Cloud has a silver bullet to kill the dreaded ITIL

skeptic — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 19:13:38 +0000

The Cloud is not sweeping away ITIL or IT Service Management. Every over-hyped fad claims the rules are different now and we don't have to worry about some basic fundamental that has always plagued us in the past. And every time it turns out to be crap. The rules are the same and have been ever since the Europeans over-traded tulips, probably much longer. Business needs management. Without management control, risk kills it. ITSM is the framework for management of IT. It articulates what we do for the customer. ITSM is basic IT, wherever it is running. Cloud may play on different instruments but the tune is the same. The detail of what we control changes. Even the way we control changes. but we still need the controls. So this beating up on ITIL isn't about Cloud really. It is about techs frustrated because they are not allowed to do what they like without supervision.

In defense of ITILista

skeptic — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 20:49:31 +0000

Apparently ITIL people are obstructing the Cloud. Once again the poor techno-geeks' creative brilliance is stifled by unnecessary process.

Song for Stevie

skeptic — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 23:00:42 +0000

A transcript of a recent performance by the famous and fragrant folk music performer Rambling Kid Realitsm, of his popular number "Home on the Range":

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, saddle-down down in your seats now and share with me this sad ditty about a broken-hearted compu-geek, lost in the bowels of an office building, chilled to the bone amongst cheerless racks of servers, locked into the server room. He pines for the open range of his home WAN with a LAN in every room and wireless to the skies, where he can run barefoot through the root passwords and administrator privileges, free to trash and crash and rebuild on his lordly whim, king of his domains. Oppressed by evil managers who cut down his privileges and block his passwords, he weeps at the pain their soulless quest for reliability brings upon him, and slumped behind the storage array he sings this sad lament....

Talk of IT innovation is the last gasp of the IT cowboys

skeptic — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 05:59:48 +0000

All this crap about IT being innovators who lead the business is the last gasp resistance of a generation of geeks who can't stand the idea that IT is about as exciting and creative as building roads. A few road builders work in wild canyons building on steep cliffs and across great chasms inventing new solutions as they go, but the bulk of them dump gravel, roll asphalt and pour concrete. Get over it.

IT professionalism

skeptic — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 10:24:32 +0000

Worldwide there is an overall IT professional accreditation spreading, in the UK (CITP), Europe, the USA, Australia and other places. Not before time.
For too long IT managers have accepted poor documentation, subverted change control and general ill-discipline from IT technical staff simply because they held the sacred knowledge about the technology under their care.
The understanding is emerging that the long-term health of IT depends more on professional behaviour: good process, good data, good record-keeping… a good culture amongst the staff. There is less patience with the prima-donnas and the cowboys.

Dreaming on a cloud - migration as an obstacle to cloud computing: an IT Skeptic Special Report

skeptic — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 08:25:58 +0000

The IT Skeptic will look closer at cloud computing in 2009 - the concept seems to need some skeptical scrutiny. Or rather the concept is a pointer to the future, but the vendor hype around the present seems on shakier ground. Quite simply the idea is impractical in most business contexts. It is yet another technical solution to a business problem. Such technical solutions to non-technical problems often don't solve the original problem at all, tend to introduce more of their own, and almost invariably introduce greater complexity to be managed, but IT loves them. They offer a silver bullet OOTB fix to take the pain away - hard to resist. So it is with The Cloud. Take for example migration of existing applications.