ITIL
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Loading ...Last week I attended an ITIL v3 Foundation Training course. Non technical training courses usually leave techies a little bored and uninspired but for me this definitely was not the case. All the stories I have heard from colleagues in the past is that ITIL is a bad thing, has huge overhead and costs huge amounts of money to implement. From what I was taught last week I think this is a reflection on the way ITIL has been implemented and not a criticism of ITIL itself. One of the cornerstones of what we were taught last week is to pick up the pieces from ITIL that are relevant to your business and change/apply them to your needs, this seems like a very good philosophy to me.
Anyone who has done much looking into these kind of frameworks will tell you the cost is high mainly due to the expansion in human resources which can be huge and it is certainly true that looking through the course notes (and if you are really sleepless the ITIL books themselves) that it seems to be a job creation scheme, there are new roles all over the place, however they are just that ‘roles’ many of these tasks can and should be taken on by somebody who has another job and can dedicate a little of their time to this ITIL role to ensure that things are running smoothly from an ITIL perspective. Of course this depends on the size of the organization in question, but in the case of Nominet I would imagine that one person could indeed take on several of these roles, the important thing is that the roles and responsibilities are clearly defined.
ITIL version 3 has expanded from the previous version to now include Service Strategy and Service Design and as these were new topics there was quite a lot of focus on them in the three day course. These subjects however I believe are of more interest to a management and/or software development audience, my interest mainly was on the Service Operation angle of the course as it is in that area that I have spent the last 13 years of my working life. I was very interested in ITIL’s take on Incident, Problem and Change Management, these are all critical areas within the operation of any critical service (IT or Non IT) and doing these efficiently in a repeatable manner as ITIL suggests is very important for any service based organisation, to be fair I was already aware of this but ITIL does enable you to easily spot any weakness in the way you operate and most importantly use the experiences of other people.
July 24th, 2008 at 12:25 pm
Interesting post Brett. What I want to know is, how is it possible to criticise ITIL if not by looking at the success or otherwise of its implementation? If it is the case (and I’m not saying that it is) that the majority of organisations get very poor return on the investment from implementing it, then surely that would be a criticism of ITIL itself?
I’m fond of dodgy analogies, so please bear with me. It is almost like you are saying “I’ve read Mr Marx’s book on Communism and it seems like a great idea. I’ve heard about problems in China and the USSR, but these were just down to a poor implementation of the ideology. The worker’s utopia is surely just around the corner…”
July 24th, 2008 at 4:48 pm
Having been involved with ITIL from V1 through V2 and V3 I think I can play bit of devils advocate here. Of course there is a cost involved with the implementation of ITIL (as there is with any form of tool / process) but that cost has to be off set by the value returned to the organisation from the implementation. A lot of the value is likely to be intangible but there are occasions when tangible (and considerable) benefits can be achieved. A failure can surely only be identified when absolutely no return is achieved from an implementation. The organisations desire to implement / change is prime driver to achievement of benefits / success rather than failure. I do not believe that success or failure can be laid completely at the door of ITIL.
July 24th, 2008 at 6:02 pm
I am glad to hear that the course changes your mind about ITIL, I am a strong “believer” in using all best practise process frameworks as a supporting resource. In all cases (eg. PCF, eTOM, SCOR, etc.) it isn’t the best practise which is the issue, it is organization’s often lack of pre-project implementation preparation. Often enterprises jump at any new “buzz” which they hear on the street, which ends in more cost than actuall longterm value. Companies need to first understand where they are today and then run a gap analysis to see the amount of work to get to where they want to go, instead of acting on an impulse. I found a company which has laid out all the ITIL V2 & V3 libraries into a complete process framework which can be used as the initial benchmark and future target. I recommend you take a look, it will definitely decrease the “scarry” cost associated with ITIL implementations. You can find it here:
ITIL Processes
Let me know what you think - Scott Armstrong
July 24th, 2008 at 6:07 pm
Here’s the link to the page where I found it on interfacing technologies Corporation’s website: http://interfacing.com/bpm-Framework/ITIL-framework I’m not sure why it disapeared… all the best with your ITIL projects, Scott