Provoking IT from Good to Great
The ITIL believers are massing, Pink with embarrassment?
Hiding with embarrassment
It’s almost like an evangelical event: the ITIL ministers, preachers and followers converge on the unholiest of places, Las Vegas, for their annual Pink conference. There should be much wailing and nashing of teeth because of the failure of ITIL, but most civilizations can’t see their downfall coming and ITIL is no different.
In my fifteen years of working in IT, across banking, managed services, data center virtualization and now data center unification, I’ve met ITIL, flirted with it, fell in love, realised it wasn’t the girl I thought it was, and since then seen many others go through the same process.
ITIL just doesn’t work. An ITIL practitioner (believer) might even agree with you, but won’t blame ITIL and instead will blame the people “doing it wrong” or the organization “is unable to change”.
The crazy thing is that many ITIL people, probably the majority, have their heart in the right place, like most believers. It doesn’t matter that their actions are either useless or cause harm, as long as they are trying to do the right thing. It’s not their fault if it doesn’t work or goes wrong. It’s the unbeliever, the incorrect implementor or the inert, resistant organization.
So why doesn’t ITIL work? Here’s just a handful of real life anecdotes from my own real life, but with a survey I bet I could get you a hundred times these in 24 hours.
- How many CMDBs have you got – do I need to say any more?
- I need an interpreter – lock an IT Manager in a room with coffee, biscuits and the Service Strategy book – when he’s done, ask him to explain it.
- There’s no Technology in ITIL – Rob England, The IT Skeptic, is the biggest offender here and a self-professed technophobe. Yet he’s preaching to IT staff how to run themselves?!
I could go on and on about the lack of prescriptive advice, such as how useless Capacity Management is in ITIL, or even how ITIL is more 1960s that 2010. I work on a number of cloud solutions and mostly on the operations model around them: I would never, ever, refer to ITIL. Ever. It’s useless.
Just one more note from the ITIL apologists: “But ITIL is a language for IT to communicate”. Behave! That’s the most patronising thing I’ve ever heard.
The most important and critical failure of ITIL in my view is that it just doesn’t balance the books. For the massive investment, you just don’t get the return and often end up losing out. Here’s some costs to consider:
- Tools – how much do the BMC/Service-now/etc tools cost? $millions?
- Customization of Tools – who uses the tools out of the box? How many developers do you need? Five?
- Administrators of Tools – another five?
- Dedicated process teams – fiver per Change, plus a manager, plus …
- Time taken away from IT staff to work on ITIL - let’s say a day a week per member of staff…
- ITIL consultants? $3k a day?
- ITIL training? $3k per person per course?
Could that total be about $3-5 million? Depends on the size of the org, I guess, and how good the ITIL salesman is.
And what value in return? You’ll hear talk of “less incidents”, and “improved change” but when you try to talk KPIs you will find the ITIL guys wanting to sell you more consulting and training because there’s no way YOU, poor IT guy, could ever work that out for yourself.
What would happen if the IT org didn’t even look at ITIL and instead went it’s own way on IT Service Improvement? You don’t need ITIL to start improving IT! Don’t believe the hype!
I really wish ITIL was better. ITIL v3 was an improvement on v2 only because it glued all of the high-level stuff together in a nice order, but there’s still no depth. And it was written by vendors like HP and Accenture! There’s still no T in ITIL. If ITIL v4 became more detailed, relevant, prescriptive, then I might start attending a few sermons.
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| Print article | This entry was posted by Steve Chambers on 20 February, 2010 at 10:24, and is filed under ITIL. Follow any responses to this post through RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site. |
about 6 months ago
Quite a heavy attack here Steve but when you look at it in a cynical breakdown like you’ve done and your right…the longer term TCO of introducing ITIL and its draconian processes just dosn’t add up.
ITIL is great to raise awareness and straighten backs when it begain working its way into organisations…now its just a tactical ecosystem that IT “Leaders” can exploit as an “old favourite” or “comfort zone” strategy. In most orgs i’ve seen the biggest ITIL based strategy used is Change Management….now who needs to spend all of our quoted figures in the above on that?!?!?
In reality ITIL does not offer instant ROI with that ROI in the reduction of workforce, if anything i’ve seen it is increased due to the nature of it requiring Risk adverse specialists in each operational field. SO how long before the industry work this out and I hope you don’t get a Lynch mob turning up at your next Presentation
about 6 months ago
I’m going to have to bite, despite not being one of the hordes descending on Vegas.
ITIL is a label. Sometimes it is a useful one, sometimes it does a lot more harm than good. The trouble with a label is you can slap it on to anything you want, as vendors, consultants, and suppliers do. Anyone who has stood on the sidelines of a Linkedin debate about what ITIL is will recognise that it means very different things to different people. I would certainly argue that it has come to mean something very different from the ITIL I knew in its first incarnation.
The parts of ITIL that actually matter can be fitted into a very brief presentation. Of course those elements existed before ITIL and can be found in other approaches. I’m still waiting to be told what ideas represent unique ITIL IP rather than being borrowed from existing guidance such as the IEEE’s. Despite the industry that has grown up around ITIL assessments you can also probably come to a reliable judgement about whether an organization understands and is applying those important elements in less than 20 questions.
If you follow the key advice in ITIL, whether you recognise it as ITIL or not, then the chances are you will have better outcomes than if you don’t. Have a loophole in your change management process, or assess changes against the wrong sort of criteria, and sooner or later someone will mess up. That applies regardless of whether you are in a 1960′s mainframe shop or working with the cloud.
The catch, of course, is recognizing which bits of the behomouth ITIL has become are the key elements.
And with that I’m packing my bags not for Vegas, but for my V3 Manager bridge course that I’ve been putting off as long as possible.
about 6 months ago
Steve,
Sounds like after the breakup, you just became bitter, lonely and engulfed yourself in architecture. Cheer-up young techie lover, there are plenty of other frameworks in the sea. Why you could date MOF who has the technology you are looking for. Problem is will have some of the same bad habits of non-applicable rhetoric. You could always go for a real change and try some newer hipper frameworks like FRITS.
Point is, like any good relationship, don’t try to change the other framework. Really sometime’s it just isn’t going to work out.
I have used ITIL successfully. ITIL has failed me. We still see each other ever now and then but ITIL knows that I do see other people. However, ITIL and I will be spending some time this week in Vegas at #Pink10. Time together will hopefully help each other improve.
All the best in your search for framework love.
-Matt
about 6 months ago
I like this, Matt! Nice comment
I’ve added your blog to my list of Must Reads 
about 6 months ago
Thanks for your comment, James! I agree with what you’re saying: IT is generally common science with a bit of science. ITIL gives me no value whatsoever, in fact it creates me more headaches. Cheers, Steve
about 6 months ago
Thanks, Dan! I’m just fishin’
about 6 months ago
Bear in mind that ITIL is just a set of reference processes published in five books. If someone claims to be “doing ITIL” then they probably aren’t. One does not “do” ITIL, they need to understand what it is that they need to achieve and borrow from ITIL pragmatically to achieve and safeguard their objectives and the goals of their organization.
I do think there is value to learning from ITIL and understanding the core IT Service Management philosophy, but these are all means to ends and not goals. At the end of the day, an IT organization should design, implement, use and continuously improve their processes to enable IT to improve productivity (movement towards goals) and safeguard the goals of the organization.
about 6 months ago
I agree, George, that ITIL is just one tool in the box. I’m trying to draw attention to the preachers out there who who get rich while claiming it can cure boils, and there’s a blind congregation who consider themselves “ITIL compliant”. Thanks for your comment!
about 6 months ago
Do not shake the BABY JESUS, like this. You did tweet a few things I want to address first.
****“bellagio? Wow! How did back-room non-tech cost-centre IT staff get there?!”
The people who go to Pink are the ITIL elite, much like the bilderberg group. We have a few common folk who go (i.e. me) but it usually is the smug of the smug. Look at Pink’s history for signs of bloodline.
****“i don’t think _anyone_ does a business case for #itil – what’s the _real_ cost, and what’s the _real_ return? Unknown?”
There are thousands of business cases for ITIL, there are thousands of case studies showing success.
With that being said there are thousands of studies from the 1940’s that showed the health benefits of smoking. ITIL should be treated like any other terminal illness, it should be managed to help relieve suffering and prolong life.
Now on to your blog, most ITIL people do have their hearts in the right places. To see the people who do have their hearts in the right places vs the ones who we have lost to the disease, look at the ITIL people who follow me vs the ITIL people who do not.
The problem is ultimately not with ITIL, ITIL on its own would have withered away. The problem is with the machine of cash ITIL has generated. Too many people have lavish lives that depend on this doctrine for it to vanish.
To say that there is nothing to ITIL would be blasphemy, but to list the things ITIL has done is a positive way for IT, I can do that with great EASE.
1. Created an IT Esperanto
2. Gave people with no tech skills a reason to be in the server room
3. Offered a way of looking at IT and how it COULD help customer service
That is all ITIL did and that is all it will ever do. Everything else is hyperbole and bullshit.
The organizations that have massive ITIL success also have massive dollars, and with enough money and or time you can do ANYTHING.
Social Media, Virtualization and Cloud Computing are nature’s backlash to ITIL and for that matter all other “make me feel like a natural women” frameworks.
ITIL isn’t going away and so I am leaving in the morning to vegas to hear Nero play his magical tune.
about 6 months ago
Probably the best comment ever on this blog!
about 6 months ago
Cool discussion and comments all. What is anything if it can’t be challenged.
One of my former bosses (in the ITIL realm) used to always ask me if “I helped anyone get better today”. That sums up the approach ITIL is/should be trumpeting. Because if it isn’t helping, it shouldn’t be used (see process for process sake).
Steve- Your comment is right on and strikes a solid chord that you’ll see ServiceSphere, TheITSkeptic and several others mounting challenges to Castle ITIL with:
“I’m trying to draw attention to the preachers out there who who get rich while claiming it can cure boils, and there’s a blind congregation who consider themselves “ITIL compliant””
Bravo all. Have fun at Pink and Vegas!!
about 6 months ago
@Steve Chambers
LOL, thanks, I don’t have great skills at writing or i would blog more over at my site. I think that is why i video and record. ViewYonder is a fav of mine!
about 6 months ago
This is a great rant Steve. I’d love to have you and Rob together for a beer and just watch the argument. I’d actually pay a couple of quid for it.
I’m heading to the Pink Conference in Vegas tomorrow to give two talks, but only if I survive the first one.
See, I’m doing a session on Monday (“Hey You, Get Onto My Cloud”)whose main message is: “ITSM people, you have skills, but you need to get hip to cloud computing and virtualization if you are to stay relevant and useful. Otherwise, the cloud is a career-ending proposition for most of you.
The technical staff in the datacenter is not going to meet you half-way. They have a project and they have funding. They don’t need you (very much). It’s not fair, but it is the way it is.” Of course, there’s a glimmer of life — here’s what to do first.
Great technology waves do not ask for permission to enter our lives and organizations. I still know people “resisting” the internet. What’s next? Resisting writing because it devalues speech (Good call Plato! – NOT).
about 6 months ago
DAMN! I NEED TO BE AT YOUR SESSION! Instead I’ll be building an operational model for a new IaaS solution – how ironic! And don’t get me started on Plato – he was one of the founders of the Divison of Labour – ie. IT SILOS!
< too many caps, sorry! 
about 6 months ago
personally I think the philosophy of ITIL is fine. for me, where it breaks down, is the shitty tools IT guys (me) are expected to work with. BMC Remedy is f*cking awful. Every time I use it I think “how would an Apple developer have made the GUI?” and then proceed to stick pencils in my eyes. The process is fine, the tools for the procedure absolutely suck donkey balls.
The CMDB – we have one, generated via Altiris discovery (hundreds of thousands of CIs).
Still, the number one cause of Incidents, is Change. And until the toolset improves, I believe it will stay that way.
about 6 months ago
Good points Steve. How can a model which requires 44 separate strategies and policies survive? I must be hanging by a thread.
Agree with James that the core of ITIL can be explained quickly. What V3 did was it attached a lot of bells and whistles to and old frame. Core ITIL is useful for those who have not got there.
I have been trying to write a V3 Foundation course because people keep asking for it and V2 will be terminated. Just cannot do it because there is so much pure bullsh..
about 6 months ago
Folks know I’m no fan of ITIL (and especially not of CMDB – ITSM should have stayed out of technology) so I agree with some of what you say. I take exception to your opinion that I have nothing to say myself in this space.
Technology is important to ICT like trucks are important to transport companies. Can’t do it without them but if all you have is mechanics and drivers you’ll go broke. Process is and should be technology agnostic. The mapping comes in the work procesdures which MOF does well and ITIL doesn’t try. (at a process level MOF and ITIL are of course very similar and if you think MOF offers more you are confusing process with procedure)
I studied Operations Management for my degree – I could tell a transport company quite a bit about how to arrange their logistics whilst knowing jack shit about how to drive a truck or fix a truck engine.
Mechanics have been the high priests of IT for way too long. It’s not about the technology any more. The reason ITIl got a following in the first place was because techoes with no process break things too often, don’t look after users properly, and have no way of engaging with customers. If techoes could work this out for themselves there would be no ITSM consultants. That’s why we keep you in the back rooms now
I could give you some great SAN horror stories – that doesn’t mean the idea of SANs is a bad one (maybe). Likewise ITSM and ITIL – it’s not the theory that’s the problem. Sometimes it is the consultants. As often as not it is the failure of cultural change, of which a consultant can only do and drive so much.
about 6 months ago
Strong opinion. But you are right, most vendors pushing on ITIL cannot keep their promises. I have the impression, that there are too few guidelines on how to pragmantically introduce a processes or process frameworks like ITIL in SMBs. On the other hand the big tool providers as said in the comments, benefit from this situation by claiming that you just need another tool and some consulting to get things done.