Edward de Bono
I was listening to a great radio show this morning that featured Ed de Bono. If you don’t know of him, then please look him up. His many ideas include Lateral Thinking and Provocative Operators. In the car this morning the “de Bono” neuron in my brain bumped into one of the ITIL ones, and the ITIL Tragic Quadrant was born.
As usual I thought I had been innovative but in reality someone had already beaten me to it when it comes to Tragic Quadrants. But nobody has done an ITIL version, so here goes.
I think the reality of ITIL is not what you hear from the mouths of ITIL consultants and vendors. For example, one reality aspect is the cost of “doing” ITIL is like an iceberg: we know it’s big, but how big is it really? The consultants and vendors either don’t know or won’t tell. The number is probably much larger than we think, but I already talked about that.
Is the reality of ITIL a good or bad thing? Can you even call ITIL good or bad? Perhaps it is intended for good, but it’s results are bad? Who knows, because nobody, despite decades of existence, seems to have any data (except for the Consultants and Vendors, and who’s going to believe them?).
So what about measuring if ITIL reality measures up to the hype? Could these be our X and Y axis? Not living up to hype, well that’s like not getting something you really want and that could fairly be called tragic depending on how far off the mark it is.
So how far off the mark (tragic) is ITIL? That’s a tough one, but a simple measure might be (and I emphasise might) comparing the hype to the reality: who’s doing the talking, and who’s doing the doing?
I tried to picture this in my first attempt at an ITIL Tragic Quadrant. In de Bono’s words, this is a Provocative Operator: I don’t necessarily believe in the truth of this, but I do believe in it as a way of provoking debate to find…something?
ViewYonder ITIL Tragic Quadrant
Related posts:
- Is ITIL ‘Gerin Oil’ for IT?
- ITIL Certification is an oxymoron
- The ITIL believers are massing, Pink with embarrassment?
- Is the ITIL make-over like putting lipstick on a pig?
- ITIL is about Technology Adoption
Funnily enough, we do have some data – independently procured and currently being analysed. Even though I have questioned the longer-term validity of ITIL on my own blog, the data does suggest that ITIL shops are in some ways better off than non-ITIL shops. This shouldn’t be surprising, in that ‘some structure’ is (hopefully inevitably) better than ‘no structure’ when it comes to most things.
Whether or not consultant-led ITIL is achieving its full potential, that’s another question which we don’t have the answer to!
Can’t wait to see the data, Jon. However, what’s always missing from the data is both measurable outcomes AND a provable link between ITIL practices and improvements in those outcomes. If we take the mean to be a well run shop, does ITIL improve things? If we take a badly run shop, does ITIL improve things? What if two similar shops do ITIL – do they get the same predictable outcome, or different?
I just don’t believe that anyone is taking this kind of simple scientific approach to something as important as this… but if you guys are, I’m really interested.
It would seem that you have a proposal in mind, would you care to share?
Well, Ed de Bono reckons that a Provocative Operator (this blog post) shouldn’t need an answer or need to suggest a “better” alternative… perhaps there isn’t one? Or at least not yet invented? That shouldn’t stop critical views… I think IT can be and is done perfectly well without ITIL. I think ITIL is fuelled by people who put their own rewards above that of the IT organisations they purport to help.
I wouldn’t suggest an alternative unless I had science to back it up, otherwise I’d just be as bad as ITIL with its abstract nature and unprovable claims.
Thanks for commenting, Ron!
Steve, I think a lot of places treat ITIL like one of those ‘magic’ pictures made of pink and orange dots. If you stare at it long enough everything is supposed to become clear, where the chaos dissolves and a new order emerges. Everyone stares at ITIL, Uri Geller style, and IT is supposed to be reshaped.
For a lot of organizations, sadly, the fruits of the concentrated effort are largely team rebranding, powerpoint slides and collective headaches. Then people wander away and deploy another CMDB or swap service desk tool vendors. The costs would appear unfavourable compared to the return; especially as this type of organization is trapped in ‘the ITIL cycle’.
I like the humour of the tragic quadrant but it’s not the truth either. If a company used ITIL as food for thought and took only the parts of the framework which can be used in their environment then I’m sure ITIL would show benefits much sooner. I’ve seen a rational approach to ITIL that has had some success, for reasonable costs.
I think I mean ITIL isn’t good or bad, but it’s implementation can be either!
Thanks for the comment, Spen… the only purpose for this Quadrant is to get people thinking… I think the right place to be is in the middle of the ITIL wannabes and technology has-beens…