The Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) is a framework for IT Service Management.  If you haven't heard of ITIL yet, you will soon.  From the ITIL website:

ITIL is best practice in IT Service Management, developed by OGC and supported by publications, qualifications and an international user group.

ITIL is intended to assist organisations to develop a framework for IT Service Management. Worldwide, ITIL is the most widely used best practice for IT Service Management.

...and...

IT Service Management is a top-down, business driven approach to the management of IT that specifically addresses the strategic business value generated by the IT organisation and the need to deliver a high quality IT service. IT Service Management is designed to focus on the people, processes and technology issues that IT organisations face.

ITIL started out in the UK as an effort to collect and publish IT service management best practices.  It is managed and published by the UK Office of Government Commerce (OGC) at  http://www.itil.co.uk.  There are other organizations that have great websites on ITIL and IT Service Management, but for today's post, I will focus on resources available to you on the official ITIL website.  The intent of this post to provide those who have little or now knowledge of ITIL pointers to pages and resources provided by OCG that would make a good beginners map.

ITIL Frequently Asked Questions

http://www.itil.co.uk/faqs.htm
This FAQ gives you the who, what, when, where and how answers for using ITIL as a framework for IT service management.

ITIL Glossary

http://www.itil.co.uk/glossary.htm
We data management people just love terms and definitions.  This glossary, available after you agree to their terms of use, is extensive.  It contains hundreds of terms and abbreviations relevant to ITIL.

ITIL Publications

http://www.itil.co.uk/publications.htm
ITIL's framework is described in a series of relatively pricey books and CDs.

ITIL Best Practices

http://www.get-best-practice.co.uk/
Via an external link, you can subscribe (annual fee required) to ITIL and Prince2 (Project Management) Best Practices online content.

ITIL Successful Delivery Toolkit

http://www.ogc.gov.uk/sdtoolkit/
The OGC also offers a free Successful Delivery Toolkit that includes sections targeted at various IT roles.  There are references, case studies, documentations templates and role based views.  Some of these are focused on Requirements Management, which may be of interest to our members.

With the above overview of resources on the ITIL websites, I've given you some great places to start your learning in ITIL.  My take on ITIL is that in a way, it is much like the Zachman Framework -- not in content, but in how both frameworks describe concepts that are already being done but probably not done well because most people don't even know they exist.  John Zachman is often quoted as saying that an enterprise's models exist, they just exist in everyone's heads. I believe that IT Service Management exists in organizations, it's just not well managed, mentored, trained, budgeted for, formalized or recognized.  The ITIL Framework provides a tool for managing  mentoring, training, budgeted and recognizing IT management.

Watch for future posts on ITIL Certifications: Myths and Misunderstandings.

Ok, as much as I hate being a conduit for an ad, but I'm gonna to do it anyway....

Microsoft has some really funny ads promoting Visual Studio.  Some of the print ones are not that imaginative, but the video clip ones are definitely worth checking out.

For instance, Difference #346 is about using a whiteboard for data modeling ....or is it?  I think I've had to resort to similar boards....

http://www.400plusdifferences.com/index.aspx?diff=346

BTW, there are 16 videos and 400 text reasons, so be prepared to waste a bit of your day.

One of the first sections I read when I open up my ComputerWorld Canada (and ComputerWorld in the United States) is "Shark Tank".  Shark Tank is a column compiled by ComputerWorld staff of anonymous anecdotes and IT-related blunders.   These snafus are contributed by readers and the publisher promises "not to publish your name or any details that would identify you".

These blurbs make for entertaining reading.  My recent copy tells a story of a help desk call from a user that their ERP system isn't working.  It turns outs that after escalating the call, we find out that the user has a pop-up blocker installed and that this 'safety' software caused the problem.  At this point, we readers, I guess, are supposed to collectively nod our head, sighing "those stupid users".   But when I read these stories, I almost always think of a hundred thing that IT should have been doing to mitigate these sorts of blunders.  I do chuckle at the stories, but I'm guessing that most readers fail to see the irony of an IT story reflecting poorly on the IT side just as much as  it does on the business users.

I'd think that most of the causes of these mishaps is education.  User education, but also IT support staff education on prevention and risk mitigation.  Who really cares whether a user knows that the cable coming our of their computer is called an Ethernet cable or, as the user in one of the anecdotes called it, an "e-mail cable"? Why is it funny when they use the wrong terminology and what makes a professional think that it is the users fault when they don't know our terminology?   Perhaps we should start quizzing the support technician on the intricacies of double declining balance depreciation or testing programmers on the nature of high pressure gas lines and then publishing their answers in accounting and engineering magazines.

As bad as these stories still make us IT pros look, I still read them, first thing, either when the paper copy shows up at my mailbox or in the daily feed I get for CW via Avantgo on my PocketPC.  Why? Because reading how our work leads to user mistakes makes me think harder about anticipating what a user might do.  We IT pros don't do nearly enough self-assessment of how we contributed to a IT problem, even if the user shared part of the blame.  In fact, being a fairly new profession, we are perhaps the only one that does not study our failures and publish the reasons and contributors to those failures. 

I am all for the studying of IT failures, but let's not be so hard on the business users.  If they screw up using our systems, it could be our fault, not theirs. 

A recent article in The Archtecture Journal, "Taking Governance to the Edge" does a good job of addressing a question that has been lurking in the back of my mind:

What is the difference between IT Management and IT Governance?

When I read about IT Governance, a small voice keeps nagging me - why is all this governance stuff called something other than good management?  I don't see articles about Engineering Governance, or Medical Governance, do you?   Maybe these terms are different because IT has grown up as a craft and most people in the business seem to think that structure and formality mean innovation is constrained.

In this article, Philip Boxer and Richard Veryard cover this need for achieving innovation while managing order in design.  Their short answer to the above question is:

..management is about getting things done, governance is about making sure the right things are done the right way.

I've always believed that making sure the right things are done the right way was part of leadership and management. 

The authors also address the concept of Shared Commitment with an example of a business user who has developed a spreadsheet.  They highlight the fact that the more complex the spreadsheet, the more likely the author's own personal style and culture influence the ability of data in the spreadsheet to interoperate with other systems as it used in new and unanticipated ways.  We data architects see this effect all the time.  Shared commitment requires a negotiation of shared meanings and permitted ignorances.

Check out the Journal.  I believe it is a free subscription for most who register.