[mattyb]

Anybody here ITIL certified?

I did the Foundation training and took the exam. The test exam just before I got 35 out of 40, but I doubt that I'll get that in the actual exam.

Did it open any doors? Improve where you work? Anything else?

The company that I work at is trying to get ISO 20000 certified and is sending people on ITIL courses. We've got a few processes defined, but everything gets thrown out of the window when somebody calls the big boss.

[mattyb]

Can a Mod edit the thread title to make the letters in upper case?

Never did understand how people make the thread title in upper case, do I need more stars or something?

[andi*pandi]

I don't have enough stars either...

[ghporter]

The forum software does not allow all caps for titles, even separated by spaces. I tried.

[PB2K]

I am ITIL V2 certified. It's nice to see how well structured things could work out theoretically. However, you need an organization that is very disciplined to stick to the rules to make ITIL work. Like you mentioned, when the boss walks in ITIL is abandoned. Another example of bad ITIL is an IT department that uses the worst parts of ITIL but keeps on working like to used to in general : it is the IT organization that hides behind an SLA so they can say NO all the time. And deliver work late.

Happy news for organizations that struggle with their IT departments : ITIL is on the decline. The whole idea of a front and back office is of the last decennium. A service organization of the future should act as 1 platform instead of lots.

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by ghporter 

The forum software does not allow all caps for titles, even separated by spaces. I tried.

LOL, seriously, retire the hampstor

-t

[mduell]

I interned at a bank adopting ITIL... it's useful if you can get stakeholder buy-in (buzzword BINGO!) but entrenched forces will work against you even with high-level support.

[ghporter]

Originally Posted by turtle777 

LOL, seriously, retire the hampstor

-t

He works cheap, and we've invested all that money on hampstor steroids...


mduell's point is almost universal. It happened with the introduction of typewriters in business, with the introduction of mechanical calculators in accounting, and the introduction of computers everywhere. The few bold early adopters that really embraced the "new thing" benefited, and the ones that hated the idea of change wound up falling behind.

Now, the problem is that ITIL is being sold by use of buzzwords and hype, instead of just adopting the concepts and applying them appropriately. A friend works in computer security and his whole department is currently being "sold" ITIL by a person he's calling a "rabid cheerleader" for the program. Too bad this cheerleader guy is absolutely clueless and non-technical to boot. It's reminiscent of the whole Total Quality Management movement, a major tenet of which is that slogans and banners are a waste of time - but most companies that embraced TQM went off the deep end with slogans and banners!

[mattyb]

ITIL is, IMHO, a way of doing IT that non-IT people can understand. I don't like it, but the fact is that there are far too many people in IT who never started at the bottom and 'learned the trade'. People have gone to Uni or College and gone straight into positions of power in IT departments and organisations. I have a feeling that IT isn't the only industry where this has happened. There is also the need for companies or IT departments to be certified so that they can actually get external clients. Having people certified ITIL and the company certified ISO 20000 and 27000 is (in our market at least) vital to be taken seriously.

I want to stop doing the technical work - I'm fed up of on-call and working weekends, and ITIL is hopefully a way that I can do that.

[PB2K]

You mean a job as a service manager? I think it is also stressful to have a job that designs a system that works good on paper, but fails because of rebellious staff Around the beginning of this millennium ITIL was a very uncomplicated method, but since v3 it has become so clotted by describing extra services that it has lost it's character. V2 was good, but V3 is making things difficult so you need specialists to explain them to the organization.

I'm sure they will soon come up with V4 just to sell more books and train more people.

[mattyb]

Originally Posted by PB2K 

You mean a job as a service manager?

Not necessarily a Service Manager, maybe something else in the Lifecycle.

Originally Posted by PB2K 

I think it is also stressful to have a job that designs a system that works good on paper, but fails because of rebellious staff Around the beginning of this millennium ITIL was a very uncomplicated method, but since v3 it has become so clotted by describing extra services that it has lost it's character. V2 was good, but V3 is making things difficult so you need specialists to explain them to the organization.

I've heard this rebellious staff excuse before. I have to say (yes I'm biased) that these rebellious staff usually have to maintain as well as put in place new 'systems'. What (in my experience) seems to be forgotten by new service designers is that there are 50 other services to maintain, backup, monitor etc etc. With the move towards cloud based computing one cannot just think about service A or B, but how we manage services C to Z while integrating services A and B. It seems to be only those at the bottom of the food chain (aka techies) that think about these things.