Reply to: Holy Cow! I Thought ITIL Foundation Was Easy?

[original PM]

ain't that the truth

it seems to me many processes introduce obscure names/TLA's etc for previously quite obvious words and phrases.

e.g. turn it off and on again ----> reboot -----> recycle your power

so you are not really learning anything you did not know just the right language to speak - which can have postive and negative benefits I suppose

[Sysman]

They also got their grubby mits on "procurement".... so we (Dept of Energy at the time) had to spec our H/W and S/W requirements in small lots (a couple of Monitors or PCs at a time) to keep under their limits - or else we had to go through "Competitive Tender" ie Had to ask about 15 suppliers to quote and go through all sorts of hoops before eventually buying the kit.... and we couldn't change the order part way...... cos it would have to re-start "CT"......

Because we couldn't always get under the radar - we ended up with some XTs some ATs, some Apricots, some Olivetti's and some PS/2s all with different M/F emulation cards and even a few IBM PC/3270s (with built in M/F emulation) - and these guys were supposed to support "Standardisation".

*shudder* I managed to avoid them with one customer, but they were trying to get involved. Later on there was EU grant money involved and they were desperately trying to push an ICL solution on us. The end customer managed to find some software which only ran on the kit he wanted, and managed to slip that in as mandatory. There seemed to be a whole black art in getting what you actually wanted.

For those old enough to remember an IBM PC/3270 was a low spec XT with a built in Coax card and (Blue) M/F Emulation.
It was great... It 1/2 Loaded DOS for Keyboard and some other drivers... then rebooted with CP/M to load the M/F emulation... then (re)rebooted in DOS....

It cost about 3x a 3279 (Colour Terminal) and emulated a 3278 (Mono) with about 3K of RAM left for its PC apps...... It was Tulip!!

Sounds dreadful. The last green-screen-only environment I worked in had some flavour of 3270s and DEC VT520s. Those 3270s took so long to warm up/boot that the weekly time sheet bashing session was worthy of its own half hour slot. Solved when I discovered an emulator that ran on the VT520s.

[xoggoth]

I need a course in understanding acronyms.

Anything seems dead easy when you alreasy know it. I find C, VC++, VB.net, jscript pretty simple now but was trying to knock something up in php recently from odd bits off the intenet without really understanding it and doing daft things like trying to parse mysql records before I'd opened the database.

[Drewster]

It had its origins with the CCTA in the 1980s (if anyone remembers them).

I think they used to be in a Tower on Vauxhall Bridge....
They also got their grubby mits on "procurement".... so we (Dept of Energy at the time) had to spec our H/W and S/W requirements in small lots (a couple of Monitors or PCs at a time) to keep under their limits - or else we had to go through "Competitive Tender" ie Had to ask about 15 suppliers to quote and go through all sorts of hoops before eventually buying the kit.... and we couldn't change the order part way...... cos it would have to re-start "CT"......

Because we couldn't always get under the radar - we ended up with some XTs some ATs, some Apricots, some Olivetti's and some PS/2s all with different M/F emulation cards and even a few IBM PC/3270s (with built in M/F emulation) - and these guys were supposed to support "Standardisation".

For those old enough to remember an IBM PC/3270 was a low spec XT with a built in Coax card and (Blue) M/F Emulation.
It was great... It 1/2 Loaded DOS for Keyboard and some other drivers... then rebooted with CP/M to load the M/F emulation... then (re)rebooted in DOS....

It cost about 3x a 3279 (Colour Terminal) and emulated a 3278 (Mono) with about 3K of RAM left for its PC apps...... It was Tulip!!

[MarillionFan]

i thought you were a crystal reports guru, what does ITIL have to do with that ?

Actually I'm a BI Manager/consultant these days.

As it happens though this is a BA/crystal dev role and it's Service Delivery MI.

The ITIL part is teaching me to suck eggs

[vetran]

My experience (My Employer is now worshipping at the ITIL Altar) is that as you say that its common sense wrapped into a thick layer of BS.

All frontier towns need laws but the lawman is important too. Too much emphasis on procedures not enough on people. Still it has made the level of service I get from corporate consistent. 1 year to build 3 virtual servers. A year to be allowed to install 2 real servers etc.

I do get the opportunity to go to a lot of meetings or conference calls though.

It's like quality & Health and Safety if done right its an asset, but many officious idiots and Accountants get involved.

[Sysman]

ITIL originated from the UK government, so, needless to say, government agencies do use it. (MOD and NHS included).

It had its origins with the CCTA in the 1980s (if anyone remembers them).

[cojak]

ITIL originated from the UK government, so, needless to say, government agencies do use it. (MOD and NHS included).

[SuperZ]

I bet the MOD and NHS are heavily into it.

You're right actually (in the case of the MOD at least)

[cojak]

You don't have to convince me, Mal...

As far as I'm concerned it's a necessary stepping stone to getting my ITIL Master*

*@All new/non-ITILers - don't ask...

[malvolio]

The question still stands - how can you be an Expert in one module of an interlinked set of 15 or so, all of whom are interdependent? And let's face it, if your CV doesn't demonstrate adequate knowledge of ITIL. then whose does?

As usual we're suffering from box tickers driving a market they have absolutely zero knowledge in.

[cojak]

Unfortunately I've been getting "do you have ITIL Expert" queries from clients, apart from the fact that I've been acknowledged by the authors in one of the V3 books. So I'm off to tick that box next week...

As for the books, there's 'The Official Introduction to the ITIL Service Lifecycle' and 'The Foundation in IT Service Management' which is all you need if you want to prep before the exam.

[Sysman]

IMHO, V3 is to benefit the training agencies, who have added a whole extra layer of qualifications and require you to pass several exams on detail subjects rather than the old Managers, which was about making it all work. Compare the original map of ITIL - ten interlocking jigsaw puzzle pieces - with Fox IT's "ITIL on a page" diagram - a whole sheet of A3...

I see a pattern here. During the recession of the early '90s it was ISO 9000 (coming hard on the heels of BS 5750).

[dspsyssts]

Thanks for that input Malvolio, it confirms my suspicions somewhat.

[malvolio]

Point of order chaps...

I learned ITIL from the people that wrote and the people who made it work orginally, like Don Page and Chris Armit. I've been working on ITIL-based process work for around 20 years. I did Foundation some 18 years ago (except ISEB have no record of it...) and have coached at least thrity people through the exam. ITIL works, it is basically common sense written down, just like Prince and SSADM.

V3 is not ITIL. The documentation is academic and divorced from reality. It is often contradictory. ?The idea of life-cycle management is fine, but it doesn't need or warrant the complexity that ITIL v3 gives it.

IMHO, V3 is to benefit the training agencies, who have added a whole extra layer of qualifications and require you to pass several exams on detail subjects rather than the old Managers, which was about making it all work. Compare the original map of ITIL - ten interlocking jigsaw puzzle pieces - with Fox IT's "ITIL on a page" diagram - a whole sheet of A3...

Current client is knee deep in a V3 programme. Two years in they don't have a working Service Catalogue, nor a CMDB. They do have Chaneg Management (how, without a CMDB??), a pile of qualifications and projects to implement various modules... Meanwhile, I'm doing it for real with the support teams.

Anyone anywhere close to Service Delivery needs to understand the basics, and the best way to do that is on a Foundation course (not just reading the books, they're a waste of time, you need the discussion the course provides). Beyond that, I really wouldn't bother.