Don't mention that four letter acronym!!

[Damian]

I visited a customer recently where the IT people in the environment cannot stand hearing ITIL. The manager has earbashed them with the term for the last 2 years, and made no real traction with developing any of the processes.

We talked through the ownership aspects ITIL, and the current association his staff have with the word. We are starting again, with a "Service Improvement Program", and have engaged the staff in it this time, rather than teasing them with the word.

This isn't the first time I've seen a customer where the staff have "ITIL phobia". Seems to correspond with management spouting the term, but not being able to articulate it, nor introduce it to the organisation.

Have any of you had this sort of experience?
Is ITIL really a dirty word?

Cheers,
_________________
Damian Driessen
-- Endpoint Consulting P/L
-- IT Strategy, IT Governance and ITIL process consulting
-- Email ddriessen @ endpoint DOT com DOT au

[mcardinal]

My personal opinion is that the problem you relate stems from an inherant fear in most people about anything new or different. In my organization "ITIL" represents something foreign or different from the established cultural norms. We call it the "fifty mile rule" or the "not grown here syndrome" If it was not developed or created within fifty miles of our HQ, we do not want to know about it. Most countries throughout history have experienced some kind of "anti-foreign" sentiment. Our organization is going through one of those waves now.

We have gotten around this problem by mapping our current processes or methods to the ITIL framework. Then we change the current vocabulary to the ITIL vocabulary to show people they have been doing "ITIL" all along. All we are here to do is standardize the vocabulary to best practices or industry standards. It seems to work pretty well.

Hope this helps

Michael

[highdiver_2000]

There are several ways to do this (quite similar to BPR).

One way is take out the drums and go on the road to show everyone the new way of doing things etc.

The other way is to subtly fine tune the processes to the ITIL way. Terminology will always be the different, as long as the processes are there it will be fine.

Like your customer will always call a help desk a helpdesk.

[walle]

Change always hurt, and yes ITIL is a dirty word!