The IT Skeptic - Latest Comments

Re: The future of ITIL and Prince2

The Guy Next Door — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 15:52:02 -0000

TOGAF is just too broad and tries to do too much at the same time

Re: Should you spend the money on ITIL V3 certification?

BrianNZ — Sat, 15 Jun 2013 13:31:12 -0000

Very useful site that's answering all my "should I bother just together another cert on my CV" questions so far. Thanks!

Re: Pass the ITIL V3 Foundation exam in six easy and (almost) free steps

Rise — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 14:59:28 -0000

Passed the foundation exam (90%) with just 15 days of preparation. Van Haren book is the start & stop.

Re: Sample ITIL Service Catalogue documents

Carl M Slate — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 09:42:08 -0000

Thanks skeptic. It may be raw, but it establishes a direction and I can take from here.

Re: prISM

Vladimir_ITSM — Mon, 10 Jun 2013 08:13:08 -0000

Now it seems that priSM will have to look for a better brandname: http://www.guardian.co.uk/worl...

Re: IBM: the company with such a firm grasp of ITIL strategic issues that they sold their service desk

Rob England (The IT Skeptic) — Sat, 08 Jun 2013 19:27:43 -0000

Not the point. it is a critical tool for any company committed to the ITSM market. if the tool sucks, improve it don't dump it and have nothing.

Re: Improve first

Rob England (The IT Skeptic) — Sat, 08 Jun 2013 19:25:55 -0000

Not sure if we are agreeing or not.

For example: Incident response at Company A sucks. We have no reliable metrics. We know a big problem is the hand-off from service desk to tech support. And everybody agrees one big issue is comms between the the two groups. So start improving that. At the same time work on better metrics, but don't sit around twiddling with data and reporting while a fire burns.

Re: ISACA's long cultural road

Cary King — Fri, 07 Jun 2013 21:13:57 -0000

I left ISACA for two reasons.
First, yes, ISACA is almost totally focused on Security and Audit.
And, second, after passing the CGEIT exam, I found that my more than 30 years of experience in IT simply didn't count with them because I hadn't been IT auditor or security person. Even those years I spent as a CPA before getting into IT, and my Law practice, and being Director of Finance for a large IT provider - didn't qualify me.

Re: ISACA's long cultural road

Marcus — Fri, 07 Jun 2013 06:43:39 -0000

Wat Aale said is totally true. If you are into audit or security, volume of ISACA material sent to a member is astonishing. But if you are into governance, it is just a waste of money and the majority of it just goes to trash can without even been read.

Re: Improve first

KenBridgeman — Thu, 06 Jun 2013 11:04:19 -0000

Can't figure out how to do a top level comment ...

I believe you can 'improve first' only if you have defined what must be measured (where the value is going to come from) We may not be measuring it at all or consistently in order to create tactics to improve it.

Simple examples are;

- Time to Detect Incident
- Time to Respond to Incident
- Time to Diagnose an Incident
- Time to Decision Recovery Action
- Time to Recover

Overall I want my incident duration to be shorter. I can break down the incidents into a number of discrete buckets; ALL of which require significant improvement - observation and intuition at work if not measurement.
I can develop a strategy and tactics to improve in these areas without having the actual measurements. Therefore I can improve without measuring.

As we improve we could continue by 'instinct' to decide whether we have improved an appropriate amount for the effort, but that's never my choice. I choose to measure so I can have discussions about maintaining, continuing efforts to improve, or reboubling efforts where we are slipping.

Re: the applicability of factory-floor techniques to IT

Cary King — Thu, 06 Jun 2013 10:18:51 -0000

It seems to me that, roughly, 80% of the IT operations labor activities can be standardized.
What I see in most such efforts is that that IT does not break the WBS down into repeatable components. Instead, they see each mini "service" as unique.
It is a struggle for IT to build out componentized services.
The ideas of purposely breaking IT into subcontracted businesses (within the business or without) and each one describing their services (best done as a service that looks like those that are commercially available, with the value add on described so) seems to be a real challenge.
I worked in manufacturing for many years, it's a mindset.
Whereas IT seems to have trouble getting past the "everything is bespoke" mindset.
I deeply appreciate your views on simply adapting some of the "good stuff" out of things like Lean. The best thing there is to take a close look at the value chain from the customer's perspective - instead of the inside-out view only.
One of the things that makes manufacturing work better is TDABC - time-driven activity-based costing. Collecting the costs of the labor work orders, and being able to drive them up to labor costs really helps manufacturing put their improvement efforts to work with Pareto prioritization. All too often IT hasn't the foggiest idea of their cost drivers at a granular enough level to help themselves.

Re: IBM: the company with such a firm grasp of ITIL strategic issues that they sold their service desk

Cary King — Thu, 06 Jun 2013 10:07:04 -0000

I worked at Peregrine Systems at the time.
We set about killing Tivoli and replacing with Peregrine's ServiceCenter.
It wasn't much of a tool anyway, really.

Re: The real cost of ITIL V3 Expert certification

sachin_1 — Thu, 06 Jun 2013 09:33:22 -0000

I just did not know that ITIL Expert certification could be done via eLearning. I paid only $2144 and included the web-based exams. My paper certificates have the APMG and EXIN logos.

I prefer self-study because it was not possible for me to take the time nor do I have the money for classroom training. I purchase 5 hours of Expert tutoring and that was sufficient. I used www.mountainview-itsm.com.

Sachin
ITIL Expert
sachinbaskan@gmail.com

Re: ISACA's long cultural road

Peter Suba — Thu, 06 Jun 2013 06:05:42 -0000

On a more general level, how do we (is it possible to) get the attention of the people who can make a difference in the way IT is directed and managed? COBIT is not the only framework that CIOs and business leaders (mostly) don't appreciate. ITIL V3 / 2011 has included the strategy publication, but even Service Design (and large parts of Service Transition) are ignored / not implemented, certainly not understood to contain value for top IT management and business folks. Architecture? TOGAF etc - usually an arcane art and very static, little real connection with business design in reality.

COBIT is just more an eyesore because it specifically tries to bridge this gap so the fact its largely ignored by the (supposed) target audience makes it more obvious. But I feel there is still a lot to do to make that "IT-Business alignment" happen.

I don't think IT is alone in this, BTW (although as this is our profession, this hurts most for us). Other functions such as HR is complaining about this for decades. Is this lack of structural integration between the "generic business" and the specialised areas such as IT always going to be something to work on? I have a suspicion it will be... Just because of entropy, we'll just need to work on it to avoid opening up that divide further, but won't ever fully close it.

Re: ISACA's long cultural road

Aale Roos — Thu, 06 Jun 2013 02:06:28 -0000

I left ISACA because of their marketing. Expensive, glossy paper publications about auditing and security started piling on my desk unread. Tons of boring emails. They put all the money and effort in pushing uninteresting stuff to their poor members. The cost of printing and mailing those magazines to me in Finland surely cost more than my membership fee.

Re: the applicability of factory-floor techniques to IT

Peter Suba — Wed, 05 Jun 2013 08:17:45 -0000

Rob,

I think the question in itself is a simplification. Having just expressed a view on a very similar MBA exam question yesterday (having to talk about the applicability of Lean in Service industries) I thought I will try to replicate some of my thoughts here, although somewhat more specifically.

I think that the types of activities in IT should better be likened to Manufacturing, not the shop floor. The shop floor is better to be likened (or contrasted) to something like request fulfilment. So straight away those that are trying to shoehorn every IT activity into what is done to the shop floor might just say that Manufacturing is as simple as the Shop floor - it clearly isn't. You do have to take care of the entire supply chain, and various techniques work better or worse in various aspects of it. Similar statements can apply to IT as well.

If you are trying to compare IT to manufacturing, probably one way to look at a significant difference and why some of the techniques may not work is explained by the difference between the traditional supply chain and what is probably better suited to service industries: value networks or value shops (see for example: http://www.peopleandprocess.co... )

I have not had the chance to read through your S+C book (I have purchased it and it is sitting on my Kindle to read now that I can choose my reading...), from what I have seen so far it looks like you are also not trying to infer it would cover the whole of IT either - it does cover service response, but is not trying to be the replacement for governance, demand management, architecture, security, etc etc etc - which are all part of the larger "this is IT" picture.

For what it is worth, my understanding of how (or why) Kanbans are used on the physical product based world of supply chains, or at least an original intent, was to reduce the buildup of excess stock, and therefore signal what and how much stock is needed to be produced by the previous stage. I can't see that being an issue in most service organisations, so whilst using some signals to help direct requests may be useful, I can't help but feel the use is so significantly different that tagging these as kanbans is just so some can artificially claim the use of Lean techniques. Nevertheless, the fundamental principle of Lean i.e. we should only focus on investing in "stuff" that provides consumer value, should still apply in IT, and reducing certain types of waste (especially waiting times) for predictable scenarios is something we can always look to improve. Would you call it Lean? Does not really matter in my view... What's in a name?

Re: ISACA's long cultural road

Marcus — Wed, 05 Jun 2013 06:09:08 -0000

Couldn't agree more. I've also been a Cobit fan for years, but to be honest it seems to go nowhere. Isaca is still an audit/security organization. Worst, those out there who do talk about and work with IT governance don't seem to care about or even know Cobit. And when they do, they don't seem to bother marketing it. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that Cobit is completely ignored by its own target clients. ITIL was successful because it was embraced by IT Managers and practitioners who were desperately looking for a way to "put things in order" at an operational level. But at a more strategic level, nobody seems to care!

Re: Book review: the Phoenix Project

Andres — Tue, 04 Jun 2013 14:55:57 -0000

I can't stop nodding my head to your review. The book is not a total waste of time, but you have to read it with care. There are no gray scales in the book and this makes it simple but misleading. Analytical reasoning sacrificed for feel-good reading. And this makes the book even more dangerous. Some managers may believe that they found the silver bullet in this book.

Re: Improving service support for Real IT

Dave O'Reardon — Thu, 30 May 2013 20:01:42 -0000

No, I mean who are these pundits who you say are telling IT departments to blindly replicate things like genius bars, no matter the cost?

I certainly don't advocate that. I think we should look at these 'world class' support organisations for inspiration and implement good ideas where there's a business case.

(Tongue in cheek: and in the case of Apple and it's Genius Bars, didn't they look at Real IT and borrow from them? Universities have had IT support 'outposts' in libraries long before Apple made them cool...)

Re: Improving service support for Real IT

Rob England (The IT Skeptic) — Thu, 30 May 2013 06:36:41 -0000

Well there's your example right there. I don't know a single organisation in NZ that could afford to set up a "genius bar" for internal Real IT users.

Interactive request catalogues with shopping carts and automated provisioning remain but a dream for most Real IT organisations too.

So do fully-fledged CMDBs.

Real IT bears no resemblance to consumer markets such as electronics or commodity service providers.

I remember being gob-smacked by a site in North America that actually had a reception area with comfy furniture, pot-plants and coffee table. That was flash enough for Real IT.

Re: the applicability of factory-floor techniques to IT

Rob England (The IT Skeptic) — Thu, 30 May 2013 04:55:38 -0000

+Martin Erb
I had been brewing this picture in my head. You inspired me to finish it

Re: Improving service support for Real IT

Dave O'Reardon — Wed, 29 May 2013 23:20:14 -0000

Ooops, you're right, sorry.

I'm with Ian though - Do you have an example or two that describes such an idealised picture of support that it requires unlimited resources to achieve?

As you know, I'm someone who likes to use Zappos, Rackspace and iiNet as examples of organisations who provide great support. And I agree you'd need more resources to completely replicate their success (e.g. setting up Genius bars) than the majority of IT departments have at their disposal. But what you can certainly do is borrow some of their practices and get a lot closer to that level of customer service without the commensurate investment.

Re: Improving service support for Real IT

Rob England (The IT Skeptic) — Wed, 29 May 2013 21:59:43 -0000

You are creating a strawman argument. i never said one requires unlimited resources to provide better support.

I said many pundits paint an idealised picture of support which does require unlimited resources. it's not the same thing. At all.

Then i said they could more usefully offer some advice on how to do better with what we have now in the Real IT world. And you did. So thanks.

Re: Let's not underestimate the resilience of people and societies

Chris Dancy — Wed, 29 May 2013 21:58:01 -0000

usually - : in the accustomed or habitual way <as late="" they="" usual="" were=""> http://www.merriam-webster.com...</as>

Re: Let's not underestimate the resilience of people and societies

Rob England (The IT Skeptic) — Wed, 29 May 2013 21:55:25 -0000

Read on :)

Wikipedia: The word robot can refer to both physical robots and virtual software agents, but the latter are usually referred to as bots. There is no consensus on which machines qualify as robots but there is general agreement among experts, and the public, that robots tend to do some or all of the following: move around, operate a mechanical limb, sense and manipulate their environment, and exhibit intelligent behavior — especially behavior which mimics humans or other animals.