I was recently reminded what I once heard from a CIO of a fairly well-known, multi-billion dollar retail company. Back in January, this CIO stated “We don’t practice ITIL. For us, we follow it more in spirit.” This may not be the exact word-for-word quote, but he specifically did say “ITIL” and “spirit” in the same few sentences. Needless to say, it was kind of a downer to hear. First, I’m an ITIL V3 Expert, so my bank account does not like to hear about companies who generally do not want to be associated with ITIL (I don’t blame them, but it doesn’t help my never-ending American need to make more and more money in employment endeavours). Secondly, it’s ridiculous for someone to state that they don’t follow “good practice” processes that have been published, in some form or another, since 1989.
So, let me get this straight. If a company follows ITIL in spirit, does that mean they only resolve incidents in spirit? Also, does that mean their change management really is just a spirit, and not an actual tangible process with policies and procedures? When it comes to such a company, I’d really like to sit in a CAB meeting and see if any of the members try to talk to the “spirit” to see if a change should be approved or rejected. I imagine such a meeting to have a ouija board, a few red candles, and maybe people in cloaked robes chanting in an ominous fashion.
If you think such a scene is ridiculous, so is a statement to follow practices in “spirit.” In reality, as a company with IT needs, there’s no spirit to some of the day-to-day activities. You’re fixing things that are broken, trying to manage changes to the infrastructure, and maybe every once in a while finding root causes to common problems. It doesn’t matter if you refer to ITIL or MOF to define these activities. Each of these frameworks have been written from real experiences and practices by people that have been in IT since, well….probably before I was born. So people may look at ITIL as being theory and many of the critics, and even some of the non-critics, don’t want to identify with ITIL in any way, shape, or form. But please, I really beg of you, don’t go on to degrade the value of IT practices so much as to say they should only be followed “in spirit.” If that mentality goes on for long, I’m wondering if the idea of following best practice in spirit will simply lead to that company becoming one.

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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.