It is one of my strongly held beliefs that what we do must provide some customer value. If it doesn’t, we probably shouldn’t be doing it. I don’t mean that we necessarily do something we can charge for (the goodwill we get by NOT charging for it can be benefit enough to do it), but rather that we inspect what we do to identify whether or not the customer benefits from it. Here are some examples:
(more…)Tag: DevOps
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The ticket cost funnel
A common misconception among end users is that we (i.e. the IT department) charge them per ticket. While I don’t know where that misconception comes from, let me say right out that my experience of more than twenty years in the industry is that this simply is not true.
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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 change them if there aren’t. Every so often, I’m met with arguments that aren’t really arguments at all, and which really should prompt a re-examination of the subject matter.
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Reviewed: the Unicorn project
A much-anticipated sequel to the Phoenix project, the Unicorn project was launched late last year. Here are my thoughts:
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(Re-)Reviewed: the Phoenix project
With the launch of the Unicorn project, I revisited the Phoenix project. Seeing as my previous review was a mite lackluster, I decided to revisit that, too.
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The Hacker attitude
For many years, the following has been part of my LinkedIn profile:
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From support analyst to DevOps thinker
The title of this post might seem a bit on the conceited side. After all, who am I to claim to be a DevOps practitioner, much less thinker? I will simply say that I am working to implement DevOps principles in my day to day life, am spending more than a little time reading, thinking, and writing about DevOps, and though I may not be considered a DevOps thinker today, I certainly aspire to join their ranks. The title, then, is a statement of aspiration, more than a statement of achievement.
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Let’s make work outside business hours the exception
When I wrote my blog post about important features of a service management tool, I wrote “I am increasingly coming to believe that the change management process is perhaps the most important one for success in ITIL – not to mention DevOps – adoption” – and I stand by that assessment. Not because change management is such a revolutionary idea in and of itself, but because of what true management of change means for a business.
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A basic understanding of DevOps
Just over a month ago, I wrote that DevOps is not another way to say cloud. I further argued that anyone who thinks the two are interchangeable certainly doesn’t understand the former (and probably not the latter, either). That, however, raises the question, What is DevOps? (more…) -
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 you have been following my blog for a while, it should be fairly obvious that I have drunk the ITIL Kool-aid. Simply put, I think any operations shop that is not implementing ITIL is doing it wrong.
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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 am preaching about my own level of perfection, know that this is not the case, and that I fail to do this more often than I would like to admit. This is not an admonishment; it is a level to which I aspire.