When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro. - Hunter S. Thompson

28 February 2006

Light, lumpy blogging ahead

Bags are packed, waiting for the car to pick me up and take me to Newark Airport...

Yep, blogging will be on "travel schedule" for the next few days, meaning when and if I have the time to get to it.

Just to leave you with something to think about while I'm in the air...

Here's a classic example of why you need writers and editors who understand the subject matter they're writing about:
After almost 20 years languishing on the shelf, large companies are beginning to adopt ITIL, the Information Technology Infrastructure Library of IT services best practices guidelines (the British pronounce it "it-ill," while Americans say "eye-till"). Forrester Research predicts that 40 percent of large organizations will rely on ITIL by 2006 and 80 percent by 2008, up from a mere 13 percent that had implemented it by 2004.
[Ed. note: Hand-waving and hype about the future numbers, which are anybody's guess, and there are plenty of people in Europe who would point out that ITIL has hardly been "languishing on the shelf for 20 years," but probably more accurate than not. So far, so mediocre.]
Addressing ITIL and related IT management frameworks COBIT and ISO, a recent Forrester report notes...
Bzzzzzz! Wrong. "ISO" stands for "International Standards Organization," and you don't even want to think about how many numbered ISO standards there are, more than 99% of which have nothing whatsoever to do with IT service management. "ISO," to put it mildly, ain't a management framework.

Such a little thing.

Such a massively important thing--if you're trying to sell somebody on the idea that you know what you're talking about, you just blew it.

I know that Forrester Research has better writers and editors than this, so I'm pretty sure that somebody over at "Intelligent Enterprise" dropped the ball here.


The writer, by the way, most likely intended to reference ISO 9000 (quality management) or, if exceptionally hip, ISO 20000 (IT service management) though there are other possibilities as well.
Governance Gauge: Don't Worry, "ITIL" Be Alright [sic] (Intelligent Enterprise.com)

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