How good are your Disaster Recover plans (DR plans)? Of 10 companies that don’t have DR plans, only 1 will be in business for more than 10 years. Is it because the other 9 companies experience a major event for which they are unprepared? No, most likely it is because those 9 other companies have …
Read more
Want to start a heated discussion with an ITIL Expert? Ask them to define the term “Change”. ITIL v3 defines a Change as: The addition, modification or removal of anything that could have an effect on IT services. The scope should include changes to all architectures, processes, tools, metrics and documentation, as well as changes …
Read more
Many years ago, I worked for a company that specialized in producing slides from PowerPoint (remember slides, those little translucent pieces of plastic you would shine light through?). We were a Microsoft partner and what the industry called “in the box” with PowerPoint (remember when software came in boxes?). When you installed PowerPoint, the installation software …
Read more
IT prides itself on ensuring that our services are highly available. We measure availability to ridiculously high levels of precision. Indeed, we have a magical number that represents availability nirvana. We call it “Five Nines”. The term Five Nines indicates that our systems are available for 99.999% of the agreed time. Notice that I said …
Read more
The true test of an IT organization’s maturity is how it reacts when a significant issue occurs. By significant issue, I mean that a large portion (or even the entire) organization’s ability to function is severely impaired due to an IT-related failure. What happens isn’t a test of any single group or process – it …
Read more
I was in a meeting the other day and someone mentioned that each attendee had a different idea of what constituted a Standard Change. Josh had his idea of a Standard Change, Doug had his idea of a Standard Change, Corey had his idea of a Standard Change, and of course I (Mr. ITILtopia) had …
Read more
Which of the following two descriptions for Service Desk employees is the most accurate? Service Desk employees are: The first line of support for IT. Entry level IT staff. Young up-and-comers looking to get their start in IT. Incapable of solving complex technological issues. The lowest cost IT employees. — Or — Service Desk employees …
Read more
