What is best practice within Knowledge Management and what is our practice?  ITIL (circa 2002) covered Knowledge Management in one of the books no one read (Application Management), so it was quietly ignored until v3 when it appeared as a “new process” within Service Transition (2007). The ITIL 4 summary (2019) is comprehensive, “Knowledge management […]

One of my firmest beliefs is that when we try new things, particularly when introducing new procedures, we should keep things as simple as possible. The ITIL 4 guiding principles back me up on this; “Keep it simple and practical”. But why? To help answer that question, let’s contrast simplicity and complexity. In general, simplicity […]

Hello ITIL Tattlers! This week finds us bringing you ITIL Tattle in unprecedented times and it’s now more than ever that process and routine can help people adapt to the strange world we find ourselves in. Most of us are trying to adapt to ways of working from home, whether that be working out a […]

“Where are you?” might be a common question, but how does that apply to processes?  The answer is “not at all”! Let’s consider a basic process.  Something will trigger the process, then there will be inputs, some sort of activity or task to perform, then outputs.  Good processes will have feedback loops, governance, etc. However, […]

In 1996, a PhD supervisor was in New Zealand on sabbatical and so guidance seemed impossible. Yet my email request for feedback, sent from Edinburgh, received a reply within under 5 minutes. This post is not a rant about email. Instead it probes the default assumption that service desks need to support email as a […]

      This week I’m getting the ITIL deLorean out and taking us back to 2015, when Gavin McLachlan our CIO first set out his plans for Service Management in Information Services (ISG) at the University of Edinburgh. It was Gavin who first introduced the idea of Service Management roles, focussing on 3 specific […]

In keeping with Betteridge’s law of headlines, the answer is of course, “no”.  However that’s only down to the inclusion of “just”! Processes indeed offer comfort, security and (re)assurance to organisations.  Going back to ITIL v2, the IT Service Continuity process had the “cushion of assurance” within operational management. Embedding operational processes (and similar organisational […]

Spring Is Just Around The Corner… Whilst cycling in this morning there was still snow on the hills but also signs of spring just around the corner… In nature spring is a time of rapid change and this change is often cruel and time bound. The crocuses in the picture are in a race against […]

What is a Forward Schedule of Change? In short, it’s a document that lists Changes and their planned implementation dates. Interestingly, the term “Forward Schedule of Change” hasn’t been used officially in ITIL since v2. For ITIL v3 it was updated (in name only) to “Change Schedule”, and that terminology has remained in ITIL 4. […]

The ITIL Team celebrates its first birthday on February 1st and this week we’re reflecting on our first year of existence and looking to what comes next for us. It’s been a busy old year, so grab a hot drink and settle down to read what we’ve been up to. The Team The one thing […]