MikePadgett.com

It’s a jungle out there: the formalisation of IT

— In the last few years here in the United Kingdom, we’ve seen increased formalisation of IT services in both the public and private sectors. Projects are subject to the PRINCE2…”

In the last few years here in the United Kingdom, we’ve seen increased formalisation of IT services in both the public and private sectors.

Projects are subject to the PRINCE2 process model, the business of managing IT is rammed into a tight-fitting implementation of the ITIL Framework. There are unfathomable job titles, bigger programmes and new costs.

According to the moneymaking arm of the Civil Service, the OGC, “ITIL® is the only consistent and comprehensive documentation of best practice for IT Service Management”. Somewhat more modestly, the Office tentatively suggests that PRINCE2“is now the UK’s de facto standard for project management.”

ITIL and PRINCE are commonplace in IT today. Their practice has created new types of jobs in the marketplace. The unflattering drama of some balding fuddy duddy squeezing uncomfortably into the role of Change Control Manager has already earned rave reviews nationwide. Meanwhile the spotty kid called Kelvin who went on to study Zoology darkens our door anew as a consulting Project Manager.

I can see the thinking here. Zooboy and his grandad are the new guardians of IT, on the payroll of every Board that wants IT to toe the line. IT is out of control and entirely foreign. Even the cost model is bizarre – pay off external mercenaries until they cease to be useful and then pay them some more; completely overhaul your hardware environment whenever Chewbacca comes out of the server room once a year; take away all employees’ chairs to minimise the costs of per seat licensing.

So take back control, says the Board, because this company is haemorrhaging. It’s a tough task, they tell Zooboy – call me Kelvin – we sent in an Audit Party into the jungle last week. Some of our best Finance people. They never made it back.

So, Kelvin they send him armed only with a PRINCE2 Process Model Reference Matrix and a box of paperclips and he manages to find a desk in the wilderness, on the edge of a giant coffee stain delta.

He’s so far away from the native tribe that he can only hear them conferring in whispers and it’s unnerving. He has to hide his shaky hands and clear his throat so he doesn’t talk high-pitched like that time when he inhaled bromine by accident.

He approaches the nearest native, a dark, sweaty man whose desk partitions are wallpapered by last year’s charts. Zooboy can see that the native has garnered an impressive collection of territorial markings on his clothing – cup-a-soup and steak and ale pie are certainly among the signals discernible on the heathen’s apparel.

“I come to organise this tribe”, says Brother Kelvin, his twitchy nose flickering light in the lenses of his glasses. Zooboy gets brave. He must ‘put in’ some form of formal management structure for these urchins to follow blindly. The bliss of their primeval existence must end.