Is the ITIL make-over like putting lipstick on a pig?
Is the ITIL make-over like putting lipstick on a pig?
OGC are planning a new edition of the ITIL v3 publications.
Is it a minor revision with not much impact on anyone (then why do it?)
Or, are the changes substantial enough to make this a revenue-generating activity, forcing priests/practitioners to buy new bibles/publications from the church/itSMF?
Even worse, whether the changes or minor or major, is this a wasted opportunity to make ITIL more relevant for today’s IT infrastructure?
Where’s today’s IT Infrastructure in ITIL?
Since 2004 I’ve been using ITIL as “a language” to integrate VMware virtualization solutions into large enterprises. In all honesty, it’s caused more problems than providing solutions:
- 100% of companies I’ve worked with have only partial understanding of ITIL and varied application of it’s vague best practices (Incident and Problem the wrong way round, being one).
- 100% of companies think, when I mention ITIL, that I’m an ITIL prima-donna somehow hellbent on turning them into an ITIL shop – whatever that means, because ITIL is hardly a reference architecture!
- 100% of companies realise that virtualization changes their IT infrastructure, but ITIL is useless in this regard because it doesn’t talk about IT infrastructure in enough detail.
I think the last point is the killer for me: how can a best practice series called IT Infrastructure Library have very little about IT Infrastructure in it?
If I had the time to analyse the the ITIL publications I would probably find <10% of the content is directly related to IT infrastructure: most of it is about how to develop processes, service management, roles and responsibilities, etc.
That is far to unbalanced and is the root cause of why ITIL is perceived as too high-level, and that there is a requirement to have an itSMF priest (ITIL practitioner) to interpret the bible (ITIL publications) on the layman’s (any IT shop) behalf. Read more about Is ITIL “Gerin Oil” for IT?
I wish ITIL was more referenceable, more pragmatic and more relevant for today’s infrastructure. Here’s some things I’d like ITIL to cover:
- Virtual Infrastructure – how the service and server lifecycles are transformed, and how they impact all the other ITSM processes from SLM through Finance through to Config Management.
- Cloud Computing – the epitomy of managing IT as a service, this is a great opportunity for ITIL to provide a best practice framework.
Yes, you heard me, I’d like to see a library of best practice reference frameworks for IT Infrastructure. That’s right: instead of one “holy of holies” that tries to boil the ocean and cover the design and development of all and any services, I’d like to see solution-specific examples like the two above. Let’s go a bit further and look at some other more specific examples:
- Remote Office Branch Office Operations – how to design, deploy and manage ROBO for banking and retail.
- Offshore Desktop Operations - what do you have to wrap around VDI technology to make this work?
- Application Development Cloud – how would you provide a self-service operations cloud model to developers to turbo-boost their productivity?
These are just three examples from a laundry list of solutions that require different operational models: one size does not fit all.
- If ITIL can’t give me an advantage in deploying these models, then why use ITIL?
- If ITIL restricts me from deploying these models, then why use ITIL?
- If ITIL doesn’t apply to these models, why use ITIL?
- If it takes me more effort to apply ITIL to these models than not using ITIL, why use ITIL?
The proposed changes to ITIL will not go in the direction that I (and my customers) would like. I don’t think ITIL will ever go in that direction: instead I think the current proposed changes are merely lipstick on a pig that might develop into a revenue generating opportunity for the itSMF.
But, being a glass-half-full kinda guy, I see this gap left by OGC and iSMF as opportunity
Imagine if a group of people collaborated to produce an ITIL-esque, but practical and prescriptive, guide to the IT Infrastructure solutions above? I bet you they would be best sellers around the world.
Related posts:
Isn’t that where http://viops.vmware.com/ comes in?
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perhaps! have you got a plan?
What about another frameworks like Microsoft Operations Framework, do you think it falls in the same mistakes than ITIL?
Don’t know about MOF, as I don’t have time to learn Yet Another Framework (YAF) – what do YOU think?
Steve, you make some excellent points.
You’re not alone in wanting to see some real practical guidance that applies to the IT world in 2009. ITIL was developed for mainframe infrastructures in the 80s and has not done enough in its later revisions to address how we use IT today.
For example – and very quickly and briefly – this is what I mean ….
The first deviations from the good old mainframe days came when we started to see mobile computing catch on. Suddenly it was not possible to control all assets and data centrally. The best we could do was state policies, but they’ve become un-enforceable as people walk around with gigabytes of corporate data in the purses and on their utility belts.
Then with web 2.0 we’re now seeing social media – while still in its infancy – already making a significant impression as a set of increasingly important (someday soon “critical”) business tools. Yes, I’m talking to you, you doddery old mainframe types who seem to think this “silly, fun stuff for teenagers” is completely irrelevant. It IS relevant!
Add in the challenges (and opportunities) of cloud computing and you have a list of examples here of how technology and our use of it is progressing in leaps and bounds while the good old folks in corporate IT world have their heads in the sand.
Having said all that, I’m not sure we should be expecting a revised ITIL to provide all the answers. ITIL provides a bedrock of valuable guidance on some standard terminology and generic (adaptable) processes that span across time and are not affected too much by advances in technology. Just like we expect a good business to have strong vision, strategy, leadership, values, customer focus, etc no matter what era it exists in. I look to ITIL for some of the same type of thing for IT operations. Helping us to improve communications between IT groups and users, achieve consistency, focus on the business, etc. regardless of the type of infrastructure or business.
I do agree it would be great if we could snap our fingers and have a new ITIL providing bang up-to-date guidance on how to manage today’s infrastructures, but because of the rapid rate of change in technology, it will need continual updates on a very frequent basis to maintain relevance. In the absence of that, I think we have to settle for what we’ve got – with these corrections via the new edition.
Sorry for the ramble but as you can tell, there’s frustration everywhere – and from a variety of perspectives!
BTW – as for MOF. It’s just ITIL by another name – literally!