[LINK] Is it really that good?!

[Frank O'Connor]

Pretty much mirrors my last year or so on the job - five years back.

I was always a big one for prototyping, impressing some mega-suit with what I, or the person who had the idea, or whatever suit wanted to do it,  and working from there. The documentation bunnies got going after the first couple of iterations and we documented the final iteration pretty meticulously.

Then the ITIL and other process bunnies got involved in the act. A quick prototype was now out. Documentation and process occupied my time to the exclusion of all else ... before I'd even written a line of code or even imagined the GUI, I/O, security features, back end functionality, networking architecture, bandwidth requirements or whatever.

I found my self drowning in pointless paperwork, attending a plethora of mandatory weekly meetings that served no purpose, and stuck with large teams of developers when previously I'd simply done it myself with regular feedback from users, management and the like. In short my life became documentation and process hell. 

The productivity, in terms of actual concrete output, of my last year at work reach such abysmal levels it bordered on the Stygian. It had sunk to the level of whale poo.

Needless to say, my job satisfaction hit stratospheric levels the day I retired ... I was riotously and happily smashed for a week.                 :)
---
On 21/09/2012, at 3:31 PM, grove at zeta.org.au wrote:

> Hi,
> I have been thinking a lot about my job recently.  Marghanita's thread
> has obviously got me started.   That and the fact that I am now located in a dead end office, away from the rest of the people I work with, due to
> our office being relocated 50km away to another campus and I do not drive
> an automobile.  As I have some current health problems, as well as some serious health issues with my partner, I am on a work plan that means that I now work only 4 days a week and am reserved from traveling to the new location until January or so.
> 
> My few experiences traveling out there tell me that once my "work plan" comes to an end, so in effect will my career here, at <some_uni>.
> 
> So, while sitting in my dreary little office on my own, an outposted team
> of one, I am able to sit back and take a 20,000ft view of things and I am not so sure that IT departments all over the world aren't being had.
> That or I am turning into an obsessive nutjob..... :/
> 
> At my workplace, we have implemented ITIL, ITSM and ServiceNow all as the tools and methodologies within the IT workplace.  I am not so sure
> these work as well as they are being sold.  I note the plethora of doucmentation writers, Project Managers and Consultants, all cheerfully going about and organising us all into neat little siloes that fit the view of the world according to the Version 3 manual.
> 
> And, watching commensurately, the systems administrators and technical folk finding far less to do, as I mentioned in my thread the other week.
> 
> And so I find myself reading an email this morning, regarding minor changes, BAU and so on.  All are now wrapped inside "Processes".
> 
> And in this email is the helpful information vis:
> 
>>> - All Standard Changes have their own RFC template and must have an associated Standard Operating Procedure (SOP).  Every time a change of this type is performed, it must be logged using the appropriate template. No additional approval required.
>>> - Minor Changes must be logged as an RFC every time - no exceptions. These are approved by the Team Leader.  It is very easy to request that a given minor change be converted into a “Standard Change” within the system (you would do this whenever you feel that a given minor change is something that will keep coming up on a regular basis).
>>> - Normal Changes (two versions) go to CAB for approval  We currently have a two-step approval process for these – first step is “approval to build” the change, second is “approval to implement” the change.
>>> - Emergency Changes – generally urgent changes. Before going to the Emergency Change level, consider whether the change potentially fits the risk profile of a “Minor Change” because you are able to authorise minor changes yourself, meaning that you can get these through the system just as quickly as an emergency change in most cases.
>>> - In theory, staff should now not be making any changes unless:
>>> - they are part of a CAB approved set of Operational Changes (BAU Activities), or there is an RFC associated with the change logged in to ServiceNow.
> 
> So, looking at what I am doing today, I now feel utterly paralyzed with a need to do something, but feel I cannot, as the tasks I want to do would actually take less time to implement than logging into the system and going through "The Process".  The risks in what I am doing are nil.  I am just writing shell scripts, partly for work purposes and partly as "entertainment" and enabling and clearing up the Lights Out systems on various servers.  Basically logging in and clearing old logs etc and resetting the processing &c.
> 
> But getting bored with that and I decided to see (and here is the nub of my missive), if there were others that felt as strongly about these methodologies
> as I did and if there were those that had been affected by them some how and had the same mistrust of them as I have started to.
> 
> And you know what?   This must truly be a first because, no matter how far I search on Google, I can find barely any mention of how these methodologies have had a negative impact on IT or the technical staff that work in the field of sysadmin and similar.   This has to be first.  If I type into Google, for example "hate <apple|microsoft|coca cola|foxtel>" etc, the searcher would be bound to find hundreds of listings, blogs, sites
> and so on, dedicated to a negative feeling about these products or services.
> 
> But a similar search for "ITIL" or "ITSM" and so on, seems to produce nary a whimper. Yes there are blogs and sites, including "IT Skeptic", which
> on the surface appear to be critical of these methodologies, it in fact
> endorses them and the arguments put forward against them are weak.
> 
> Time and again when I went looking at various sites attempting to arm myself
> and cheer myself up with criticism of these processes, it indeed seems to be a never ending cheer squad for these methodologies.  It is like the Internet has drunk the kool-aid and even those who are mildly critical always seem to end up supporting them by the end of the entry.
> 
> Now, I am not searching out Conspiracy Theories, I supposedly have enough of that with Cory Bernardi and his links with the American Legislative Exchange Council which is a tale for another time.
> 
> But I do find it strange that a methodology
> could have so many supporters cheering it on, with hardly a skerrick of critique, on teh interweb, which usually has a forum for critique, concern or even haters of <insert_meme_here>.
> 
> Am I truly going loopy in my too-cold room at the end of the corridor - are these methodologies that brilliant that everyone truly adores them so much?
> Is it possible that ITIL and the associated gubbins is truly a panacea for world peace, or is it that tightly bound up in trade marks and copyrights
> and so on, that it is impossible to write about negatively in any context
> and get away with it?   I was going to mention something about it being similar to Scientology in that regard, but thought better of it...
> 
> I am concerned, because everything I thought I knew about the Internet is coming apart!  I thought I would find a kindred spirit in a blog or forum somewhere, but it seems that the pickings in this area are truly scant. Usually on the web, you can find a site that is totally vehement about something, but ITIL seems to only invoke feelings of "mild annoyance"
> in the zeitgeist of a Google Search.
> 
> Are people studying these methodologies replaced by a doppelganger when they attend one of the many F2F forums or conferences or are their minds fried in some sort of C'thulu type thrall after reading the 800 page Red & Blue books of incantations?   Or am I marginalised and sad, so I must
> stop this internal dialogue and instead embrace the voices in the office
> saying "join usssss, join ussss"?   Am I doomed?!
> 
> 
> Thanks for reading this far in my Friday Rant. I assure you I am completely sane....  :/
> 
> --_______________________________________________
> Link mailing list
> Link at mailman.anu.edu.au
> http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/link