The Visible Ops Handbook: Starting ITIL in 4 Practical Steps

Visible Ops is the result of more than three years of studying high-performing IT operations and security organizations by the Information Technology Process Institute (ITPI). Visible Ops illustrates how interested organizations might replicate the processes of these high-performing organizations in just four steps. Each of these steps has the following characteristics:
– Definitive Projects – each step is a project, with a clearly defined objective and … [ Read more ]

Unified ITIL

The Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) is a treasure trove of best practices. Comprised of several thousand pages, it is a daunting challenge when printed and stacked on a desk! The downside is that it is “descriptive” of the processes it documents meaning that it tells what to do but not necessarily why or in what order. The purpose of this article … [ Read more ]

Learning to Ask IT the Right Questions

Centuries ago, Socrates put forth what is known today as the ”Socratic Method”, and it’s useful in the IT context. Essentially, Socrates asked his pupils questions designed to help them arrive at the answers. Thus, he didn’t necessarily need to know the answer to everything, but he did need to know the questions to ask and the underlying logic that created them.

This method is very … [ Read more ]

The Visible Ops Handbook: Starting ITIL in 4 Practical Steps

This document starts off without a good introduction and seems a bit weak, but if you read on you will find a very good analysis of the importance of change management in IT along with prescriptions for setting up an effective Change Advisory Board (CAB). Whether you are in IT directly or not it would be a good idea to ask if your IT organization … [ Read more ]