Recycled Bullsh-IT

With the news that the organisation that owns ITIL (Axelos) is up for sale by everyone’s favourite outsourcer, Capita, I thought I’d gift you some free education that will be more useful than any ITIL certification you might pay through the nose for.

 ITIL Britain

It can be somewhat surprising to find out that the most widely adopted methodology for IT Service Management comes from that bastion of service excellence, Her Majesty’s Government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. For those of us who have been subjected to the indifference and incompetence of some, but I stress not all, of our public services, it is indeed puzzling.

 Transm ITIL

The IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) was commissioned and managed by the Central Communications and Telecommunications Agency (CCTA) in the late 80s after some high-profile public-sector IT project failures. Obviously, it has made little difference in preventing Government IT howlers since, although there are many other contributory factors, such as poor leadership, weak programme management, feeble contract management, and poor scope definition (but mainly political interference). ITIL has since been adopted by just about anyone wrestling with defining and managing the provision of crappy IT services to the ungrateful business customers that we all suffer from.

 Dool ITIL

However, it is worth reflecting on the fact that ITIL is a non-prescriptive framework that provides guidelines on what an idealised set of service management processes might look like. It is analogous to agile and cloud computing in that it sells you a dream and sniggers in the background, while you try unsuccessfully to actually deliver any real value – except to the consultants and product vendors on whom you will have spent a fortune finding this out. You can buy the books (about twelve inches of shelf space), take the training (half a wall of certificates), pay for assessments, roadmaps, strategies, designs, service process models, and a surprisingly inventive set of other toys, which the consultants have ingeniously developed by playing Bullsh*t Bingo with the ITIL terms. However, don’t expect this to deliver world class service management.

 Hosp ITIL Pass

I consider that the successful adoption of high-quality service management disciplines in your organisation is all about getting the right people to do the right things for the right reasons, which they understand and own. ITIL and the other related frameworks (ITSM, CoBIT, CMMi, ISO20000, etc.) are all useful bibles, in the sense that you can gain inspiration, guidance and faith from them, but not in the ‘world was created in 4004 BC and Darwin was the anti-Christ’ literal sense. Although, thinking about it, the threat of eternal damnation, judicious smiting, and a few miracles wouldn’t go amiss…

 John “Noncom ITIL” Moe