I love having a blog – it’s a place where I can write my thoughts, opinions, views, experiences, jokes (funny or tasteless), and for today, my most recent analogy.  I see a physician that specializes in integrative medicine, and nothing more than to stay as 100% healthy as possible so I don’t have to deal with major illnesses down the road of life.  On my drive to work after this morning’s appointment, I was thinking about how it kind of sucks to have to spend my (very little) extra income on all this holistic medicine; supplements and proper nutrition are really not cheap these days.  But here’s another point of view; I’d rather put the time and energy into my health now, and greatly reduce the chances of major problems in the future.  At the very least, being 100% healthy means I can recover faster from colds and sicknesses, especially those that my son brings home from daycare.

If you’ve stuck with this blog post so far, I appreciate your tolerance for my ramblings.  Here’s where ITIL comes in as being integrative medicine for IT.  If you work for an organization that has aligned itself, or is currently aligning itself, to ITIL, then you probably know that it kind of sucks.  It takes a lot of time and energy to not only develop processes, but a (sometimes) huge cultural change is required as well.  These kind of changes are painful and if you work for a place that has very little extra “income,” there comes a lot of criticism surrounding the benefits vs. cost.  And I agree with the skeptic’s (or The Skeptic, if you will) that the benefits in ITIL can be hard to determine.  Here’s a second analogy I’d like to make; view IT as a body, a complex system with several smaller systems interacting and working together.  The entire body can’t function efficiently if one system isn’t functioning, but it can function, and since I’m becoming a subject matter expert on Grey’s Anatomy, I also know that when an organ isn’t functioning at 100% the effects sometimes can’t be seen for months.  On the same token, integrative medicine isn’t about fixing a disease, but rather making lifestyle changes that will have long-term positive effects.

Long-term; this is where ITIL and integrative medicine share common ground.  I’m not going to claim to be an expert on ITIL or ITSM, but I am of the “instant gratification” generation so my opinion probably has some value for describing what people may not like.  Not only do the changes for ITIL and integrative medicine take a while to make, it will also take even longer to really see benefits.  That’s not to say there will be no measurable results at all (we can always measure MTTR or MTBF), but rather a general feeling that the business really is functioning more efficiently and people start to think “hey, this ITIL and ITSM stuff isn’t just all crap.”  It’s much like my own health; I can stop eating doughnuts and in a few weeks the labs will show a drop in cholesterol, but it may not be until I catch a cold that I notice I’m feeling much better and getting rid of those delicious, fried, sugary round gems really was the best choice.  On another note; no, I really did not quit eating doughnuts and right now I’m making myself very hungry for one.  Or two.  Or three….

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Started working in IT in 1999 as a support desk analyst as a way to help pay for food during college. Studied Electrical Engineering for two years before realizing biochemistry was more fun than differential equations, and so ultimately graduated with a Biology degree in 2006. Having (reluctantly) failed at getting accepted into dental school, embraced working in IT and has gone broke becoming an ITIL Expert. Likes to jog, sing camp songs, quote Mel Brooks movie lines and make dumb jokes and loves working for an Israeli tech company where December 25th is a regular work day.