27th August 2011, 04:48 PM
Quote:the advantage of ITIL was that it was adhered to by all sections of the IT industry not necessarily just the services
ITIL is about IT service management. Not all sections of the industry adhere to it - it's voluntary. Not everyone in the IT industry follows ITIL. Some companies use ITIL, some have in-house standards, some have none at all. ITIL is voluntary and in *some* areas of business it can give you a competitive edge. But it very much depends on what the client is looking for. If having ITIL accreditation looks like it'll cost you ?xx thousand more, then many clients will opt for the cheaper services without the ITIL logo attached.
Standards cost, at every stage. Training, accreditation, service provision, service purchase... I'd love to see something like that in archaeology - but who's going to pay? Essentially, the good practitioners will just be adding a financial overhead to a contract to cover their compliance costs, as they'll already be doing the work to that high standard anyway. No client's going to wear that. They probably wouldn't have before and they certainly won't in the current climate. Less rigorous practitioners won't be bothered about standards, and if their clients aren't bothered about standards now, then they aren't going to be unless a third party does a miraculous sales job.
Also, I've never known ITIL withdraw accreditation from a non-compliant organisation, which claimed to be following ITIL but wasn't. If you're looking for a way of policing archaeology and enforcing good practice, ITIL isn't a good model anyway. It just shows that you've been trained on how to deliver good service - it's not a cast-iron guarantee that you will actually deliver it. Which means I've argued myself round in a big circle and disappeared up my own posthole.
Try this instead, if you really can't sleep tonight: http://www.itil-officialsite.com/AboutIT...sITIL.aspx
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm taking my hideous career flashback down the pub until it wears off.