The power of ITIL and the problem with the guru
Recently, ITIL, a library of best practices in the field of information technology management, has been added to my field of interest. This library began to be created in the late 80s of the last century, underwent several revisions, got to the third version and reached the peak of popularity. In my plans to do some video lectures on basic ITIL concepts, the first one you can watch on the Youtube channel:
In the meantime, I offer you a translation of the article “The Power of ITIL and The Problem with Gurus”.
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Briefly about the article. The article identifies several problems inherent in organizations that randomly implement IT services, briefly lists the advantages of ITIL and suggests a proprietary tool for solving some problems. I am sure that there are alternatives in the market (possibly free), so I want to focus your attention more on the text of the article than on the tool.
Thank you for attention. - Approx. translator.
Is it still enough to be a good [expert] in your work?
For a long time, only the results were important. As long as you gave them away, people were not particularly interested in how they were reached. It was not important whether you achieved results at the last minute, having worked all night, or rebuilt everything that could have been rebuilt in the system. You were a kind of black box in which [people] put certain needs, but on the other hand pulled something that satisfied them.
Much can be said about the need to possess such skills (especially in an emergency), as a way of doing their job, but in everyday work this approach to performing tasks “on the knee” has a lot of problems. For example, what if a specialist who knows how to perform a magical act leaves the company? If your only duty is to achieve a result and you do not know how to achieve it, you are not very lucky. On the other hand, what if this specialist doesn’t make a mistake one fine day? He will press the wrong button, enter the wrong code and everything will fly to hell? All of us, as we already know from our own experience, are primarily people.
Undocumented [difficult] processes are very, very difficult to repeat, and also to figure out what went wrong. This is why ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) is so important. It is a library that offers a framework for identifying, planning, providing and supporting IT services. In addition, this framework was not created by a lonely guru, ninja, rock star, or whatever we are calling them today. No matter how great a man is in his field, he cannot know everything. Because ITIL is based on best practices developed and improved by many people in different branches of human activity. In other words, problems were considered from different points of view.
As a result of such activities, processes, procedures, tasks and questionnaires emerged that allowed IT-services to be integrated into the organization’s strategy, while at the same time providing more valuable services and supporting competency standards. This approach allows us to demonstrate compliance with [requested services] and measure and evaluate improvements.
What is wrong?
Yes, it’s just that, there are just a lot of problems in the process of implementing this library, and there are questions about how people use and use it at all. Attempts to solve these problems take a lot of time and resources, which are better spent on getting benefits from using ITIL, and not on how it [the library] is used.
If only there was a way to automate it. If there was one program that would allow in real time to make sure that ITIL by hundreds and thousands of consumers is used correctly. It would be even better if this monitoring was carried out constantly, so that you would not have to wait for the next audit or events that would reveal problems attention. And since we are dreaming, let this program automatically update the definitions of ITIL for all the devices it controls and let it all be seen on one console and be controlled from it. After all, since we are fantasizing about what you say about a program that is capable of everything out of the box, how about spending hours instead of days, weeks, or months?
And now the author of the article proposes one of the solutions. I repeat - I think that alternative solutions exist, but the task of finding and describing alternatives to the translation of this article is irrelevant. - Approx. translator.
In fact, this is not a dream. This is IBM Endpoint Manager. Instead of pinching yourself, checking whether you are sleeping, it is better to follow the link to get more information.
In the meantime, I offer you a translation of the article “The Power of ITIL and The Problem with Gurus”.
')
Briefly about the article. The article identifies several problems inherent in organizations that randomly implement IT services, briefly lists the advantages of ITIL and suggests a proprietary tool for solving some problems. I am sure that there are alternatives in the market (possibly free), so I want to focus your attention more on the text of the article than on the tool.
Thank you for attention. - Approx. translator.
Is it still enough to be a good [expert] in your work?
For a long time, only the results were important. As long as you gave them away, people were not particularly interested in how they were reached. It was not important whether you achieved results at the last minute, having worked all night, or rebuilt everything that could have been rebuilt in the system. You were a kind of black box in which [people] put certain needs, but on the other hand pulled something that satisfied them.
Much can be said about the need to possess such skills (especially in an emergency), as a way of doing their job, but in everyday work this approach to performing tasks “on the knee” has a lot of problems. For example, what if a specialist who knows how to perform a magical act leaves the company? If your only duty is to achieve a result and you do not know how to achieve it, you are not very lucky. On the other hand, what if this specialist doesn’t make a mistake one fine day? He will press the wrong button, enter the wrong code and everything will fly to hell? All of us, as we already know from our own experience, are primarily people.
Undocumented [difficult] processes are very, very difficult to repeat, and also to figure out what went wrong. This is why ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) is so important. It is a library that offers a framework for identifying, planning, providing and supporting IT services. In addition, this framework was not created by a lonely guru, ninja, rock star, or whatever we are calling them today. No matter how great a man is in his field, he cannot know everything. Because ITIL is based on best practices developed and improved by many people in different branches of human activity. In other words, problems were considered from different points of view.
As a result of such activities, processes, procedures, tasks and questionnaires emerged that allowed IT-services to be integrated into the organization’s strategy, while at the same time providing more valuable services and supporting competency standards. This approach allows us to demonstrate compliance with [requested services] and measure and evaluate improvements.
What is wrong?
Yes, it’s just that, there are just a lot of problems in the process of implementing this library, and there are questions about how people use and use it at all. Attempts to solve these problems take a lot of time and resources, which are better spent on getting benefits from using ITIL, and not on how it [the library] is used.
If only there was a way to automate it. If there was one program that would allow in real time to make sure that ITIL by hundreds and thousands of consumers is used correctly. It would be even better if this monitoring was carried out constantly, so that you would not have to wait for the next audit or events that would reveal problems attention. And since we are dreaming, let this program automatically update the definitions of ITIL for all the devices it controls and let it all be seen on one console and be controlled from it. After all, since we are fantasizing about what you say about a program that is capable of everything out of the box, how about spending hours instead of days, weeks, or months?
And now the author of the article proposes one of the solutions. I repeat - I think that alternative solutions exist, but the task of finding and describing alternatives to the translation of this article is irrelevant. - Approx. translator.
In fact, this is not a dream. This is IBM Endpoint Manager. Instead of pinching yourself, checking whether you are sleeping, it is better to follow the link to get more information.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/314528/
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