The IT Skeptic

A menu is not a service catalogue

skeptic — Mon, 21 May 2012 02:25:53 +0000

A menu is not a service catalogue. Please can we desist with this awful analogy. It makes people think automated service requests is an "actionable service catalogue". It's not. It's an actionable request catalogue.

6 years old and still growing

skeptic — Wed, 16 May 2012 04:07:34 +0000

It's six years since this blog flickered into life. Not bad for a site that was going to be a six month experiment to learn how blogging works. I'm giving away a few books to celebrate.

Why COBIT wins in a showdown with ITIL

skeptic — Fri, 11 May 2012 01:29:49 +0000

I like ITIL. I use it quite a bit. But it puzzles me why ITIL is the default source of ~~best~~good, generally accepted practice for IT ~~processes~~practices. Often people talk as if it is the only source.

My default source of IT good practice is COBIT. It wins over ITIL, hands down.

COBIT 5 copyright terms confirmed. And the name may be used.

skeptic — Tue, 08 May 2012 10:25:03 +0000

Not long ago, I blogged about how COBIT 5 looked like it would be a much more accessible framework for consultants to use, without the restraints of ITIL. It is true. Castle ITIL should take note, but will they?

Just who are ITIL V3 certification and accreditation for?

skeptic — Wed, 02 May 2012 03:02:43 +0000

APMG have released ITIL Master certification. The ITIL certification edifice grows higher and heavier. As with accreditation (prISM), I'm left wondering who they build these huge structures for.

1:1 Phone Call to Ticket Ratio

bwash70 — Sun, 29 Apr 2012 22:51:27 +0000

Hi.

I am a Service Delivery Consultant and have a question about something that I regularly come across in my dealings with Service Desks.

9 out of 10 service desks that I am brought in to 'fix' have a phone call to ticket percentage of between 50% - 60% (i.e. of 100 phone calls received at the Service Desk only 50 - 60 new tickets are generated).

The cult of innovation

skeptic — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 22:40:07 +0000

IT is currently gripped by a Cult of Innovation: novelty is king; development/improvement a headlong rush into the future; only the bleeding edge survives. We ought to know better.

Microsoft Office dependency

skeptic — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 22:15:55 +0000

All my company really needs MS-Office for is to comply with other organisations when they share media. Is that enough reason to stay stuck on it? Can I reasonably ask for other formats?

The IT Skeptic's company, Two Hills, inches ever closer to the goal of being a totally cloud-based organisation. OK I missed the 2011 target, but the second-to-last obstacle fell when I moved the company financials to Xero. What's left? MS-Office.

What do I need MS-Office for?

Service Management for Chartered Accountants

skeptic — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 03:12:23 +0000

4.41 MB

Recorded for the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Australia and published in Chartered Accountants Business in Focus monthly audio magazine for April 2012.

Eating the ITIL elephant one leg at a time

skeptic — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 11:26:36 +0000

It is ridiculously common for advice about ITSM to talk about which ITIL process to do first, or what order to do the processes in. Even the official books Planning to implement Service Management and ITIL Lite are built on the premise that an ITSM initiative is assembled from the ITIL processes. Wrong wrong wrong.

New Service as a Service offering raises some questions

skeptic — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 03:36:14 +0000

The IT Skeptic is not sure what to make of recent leaks about Google's upcoming extension to Google Apps: Service as a Service (SaaS+).

Wonderful sponsorship opportunity for ITIL reveals what?

skeptic — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 22:32:28 +0000

What's going on with translations of ITIL 2011? We get an intriguing clue from a recent call-for-sponsorship.

A new look

skeptic — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 10:31:09 +0000

The IT Skeptic website has a new look.

We have a bunch of cosmetic detailing to do and a few known bugs:
Old newsletters don't look good or don't work at all
Audio (podcasts) untested at this point
There ~~may be~~are some missing graphic files
The ITIL Wizard is ~~on holiday~~back.

itSMF Communications

skeptic — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 02:36:37 +0000

Whilst there are some promising signs, communications out of itSMF International to their constituent members are still limited and patchy.

Organisations have failed their IT like bad parents

skeptic — Sun, 18 Mar 2012 20:14:27 +0000

Fed up with the modern failures of IT being all IT's fault, I thought it was time to do something about it. So here is a white paper aimed at educating the business world to their responsibilities for IT. The world has really messed up owning IT (Information Technology), like a bad parent messing up a child's upbringing, letting them develop bad habits. We need to do better. We can do better. We need to do it soon, as modern IT requirements become ever more complex.

COBIT 5 will be released in April

skeptic — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 23:28:34 +0000

ISACA have announced to members that COBIT 5 will be released in "mid-April".

The release includes three publications:

COBIT 5 (Framework)
COBIT 5: Enabling Processes
COBIT 5 Implementation

...and a "toolkit", an undefined "set of resources". I smell spreadsheets.

Cost to ISACA members for the pdf version? Nada. Free. Suck on that Cabinet Office/TSO/itSMF.

And ISACA is providing a separate download server for members so as not to have to compete for bandwidth with the great unwashed masses.

Jedi Problem Management

skeptic — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 04:53:47 +0000

After my last post, I feel we need something lighter. So here is Jedi Problem Management:

itSMF behaviour beyond the pale

skeptic — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 21:49:47 +0000

I'm all for a little infighting in itSMF: it keeps everyone on their toes and it keeps this blog entertained. But now somebody has gone way beyond the pale with behaviour that is utterly unacceptable in any civilised business community. In fact it is probably legally actionable. I call on ITSM community members to deal with it. This is a long post, but if you are involved in itSMF, please read it. We have a nasty problem in our midst.

which part or discipline of ITIL applies to a helpdesk?

TheITILWizard — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 22:01:27 +0000

Dear Mr Wizard

We are setting up our helpdesk team and I just wanted to ask which part or discipline of ITIL should I start looking at?

Thanks, I appreciate your thoughts on this.

How and why I use Twitter

skeptic — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 01:49:12 +0000

Recently I copped some flak regarding my Twitter usage policies. So now we've all calmed down I thought I'd whip the storm up again by explaining why and how I use Twitter: this technique might be useful for you.

When I started on Twitter I followed quite a few people but I found the flow overwhelming. I'm not a compulsive reader and I don't like to devote too much of my scarce time to social media, so I'm never going to get through them all.