February 09, 2010ITIL vs. MOF: Find the best IT framework option for the midmarket
ITIL vs. MOF: Find the best IT framework option for the midmarket
By Niel Nickolaisen, Contributor | Feb 18, 2009
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PrintI love ITIL … I just don't use it anymore.
Please let me explain. I have spent much of my IT career in turnaround assignments: Someone decides that IT needs to be "fixed" -- and I'm the fixer. This is grueling work. I often need to repair the IT/business relationship while improving methods and practices, all while keeping the wheels moving. The net result of this is that I am a very high-mileage IT practitioner.
In my first turnaround role, I looked for but could not find some type of IT framework I could use as a set of ready-to-use best practices. I toyed with the Capability Maturity Model, but it did not help me much with processes, tools and methods. I explored CoBIT, but its focus was (and is) too narrow. I needed something that would describe how I should deliver IT products and services to my business customers, something that covered the range from governance to implementation to maintenance to enhancement.
In short, I needed something that gave me a shortcut for running a reliable, credible IT organization.
As that assignment ended and the next IT turnaround started, a friend told me about ITIL version 1. I did my own research and liked what I found. ITIL, unlike other IT frameworks, was put together by IT practitioners: people who had run an enterprise IT organization and knew how to deliver high-quality information and technology products and services. These practitioners had, in ITIL, assembled a set of best practices I could use as my base line. I obtained the standard and immersed myself in the wonders of ITIL.
During this second IT turnaround, ITIL was my primary source for process and method information. When we realized we needed to improve our production change process, we implemented the ITIL model for change management. Rather than invent our own approach to service level management, we adopted the ITIL model. ITIL and I did a mind-meld. I viewed the world from the perspective of service management.
Then ITIL released version 2. Version 2 still had great stuff, but now the inherent simplicity that attracted me to ITIL was being lost in additional complexity. The standard started to bifurcate into exceptions that I intentionally wanted to avoid. My ITIL honeymoon was over.
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