Category: ITIL
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Red flag arguments
One of many things I care about is improving the world around me. That is why I’m a union representative, it’s one of the reasons why I like my job, and it’s why I raise questions to find out if there are good reasons for things being done the way they are – and to…
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The importance of Service Level Agreements
Most IT operations shops establish some sort of service level agreement (SLA) with their users and customers. To my mind, these are equal parts commitment and expectation management. To a commercial vendor, the former is usually the focus, whereas the latter is typically the focus for an in-house vendor. Let’s use onsite support as an…
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Change is high-risk behavior. Nevertheless, it must be done
Change is arguably one of the riskiest behaviors within IT. Whenever we make a change, things tend to break. It is in no way coincidental that one of the foci of change management is post-change incidents, i.e. the errors introduced by the changes we make. I would go so far as to say that the…
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Keys to ITIL implementation
ITIL is an excellent framework for running IT operations. It offers tools and process management to help you improve on what you’ve got. Unlike what many consultants would have you believe, however, it is not a panacea. You cannot simply implement all of ITIL and call it a day. If you were to try, you…
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Risk management is at the heart of change management
One of my many roles at work is that of change coordinator for a large subset of our customers. I have learned a lot in this capacity, and have come to feel that, while Incident Management is the natural first step in ITIL implementation, until you start implementing Change Management, the majority of your effort…
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Applying Kanban to IT support work
Ask anyone who has a glancing familiarity with Kanban what they know of it, and one of the (if not the) first things they will mention, is the use of a kanban board. This is true; the kanban board, whether physical or digital, is one of the most visible parts of the Kanban method. It is…
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The supposed incompatibility between DevOps and ITIL
I have, for some time now, been reading up on DevOps. One thing that, for some reason, keeps coming up, is that people seem to think that there is a fundamental incompatibility between DevOps and ITIL. The more I read, however, the more it becomes clear that there is no disparity at all between them. If…
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Spend it to save it, or: do it right the first time
When performing a task, one will often be in the position to choose either doing something quickly, or doing something right. In many cases, either example is fine, as the job gets done satisfactorily. Still, I believe that you are better off with doing it right each and every time. Now, before you think I…
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Service Management: the importance of the right tool
The first time I worked IT support in a professional setting, I was seventeen years old. I had gotten an internship (one day per week) with my uncle’s firm as part of my third year of vocational training, and spent a day per week with them. In the beginning, I was mostly hanging out with…
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Peering into the crystal ball – or maybe throwing down the gauntlet?
Trying to predict the future is a mug’s game. But increasingly it’s a game we all have to play because the world is changing so fast and we need to have some sort of idea of what the future’s actually going to be like because we are going to have to live there, probably next…
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Kanban in an IT Operations setting
A while back, I participated in a discussion about the application of Kanban in an IT Operations setting. Here are some of my thoughts on the matter: I strongly believe there are three keywords to keep in mind when thinking about process design: Practicability – What is the learning curve for using the process? Repeatability – How well is…