ITIL / Change control

Is it that the Team has grown to accommadate ITIL though, or is it that by implementing ITIL and set processes you have enabled your Team to grow in a manageable fashion? I currently work for a company that is on the cusp of moving from being a smallish company to a midsized one and it became obvious that without proper structure and process you cannot grow a team properly. Its been a bit painful and I think like most other engineers I see the absolute necessity of having change control when other engineers are doing something, its just that I don't like doing it for myself :D

Gets a big thumbs up from me though

danielanthony said:
OMG.

ITIL and its ilk are designed to give non-engineers jobs in an engineering environment.

When I started working in support we had 8 engineers and one manager. We now have 50 engineers and 15 managers (Change, Problem, Availability, Capacity, CSIP, Incident, Service Support Managers) plus an army of analysts and other hangers-on.

I needed to reboot a switch last week, took three days for loads of 'managers' who weren't technical to give it the ok. The work took 10 minutes. So much for reacting to the needs of the user.
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Just did my ITIL foundation exam today- Got 36/40 in the mock, but found the real thing A LOT harder- I know I got 20 right for sure.... but not sure if I have done enough to pass!

FWIW it's not relevant to my current role, but thinking back to my last job (2nd line support for a large confectionary company in York), I think it is a great basis for any support organisation, and hope I can take it to the next level.

Incidentally, if I fail, what is the cost of the re-test?

Thanks
 
It is quite sensible to have change control - I'm a firm believer.

But a lot of companies will go and clone a process they've found somewhere or buy a sw solution rather than sitting everyone down and designing something for them that fits with their company.

I've had quite a bit of experience working with different companies change procedures - and companies seem to consistantly pick the worlds most unsuitable "approvers" - which massively reduces change controls effectiveness, and makes everyone else hate chage control - even if they do think it has merits
 
Bes said:
Just did my ITIL foundation exam today- Got 36/40 in the mock, but found the real thing A LOT harder- I know I got 20 right for sure.... but not sure if I have done enough to pass!

FWIW it's not relevant to my current role, but thinking back to my last job (2nd line support for a large confectionary company in York), I think it is a great basis for any support organisation, and hope I can take it to the next level.

Incidentally, if I fail, what is the cost of the re-test?

Thanks
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Hey i'm on York, i presume you mean Nestle ?

Don't suppose they use contractors do they ? ;)

A nice VMware gig in York would suit me nicely.
 
We have fairly decent change control procedure, helps all infrastructure changes are made in a planned works window weekly. We keep in fairly basic (request, reason, rollback, affected systems) and rarely have any problems. Some of the tech support guys have a problem with not being able to reboot stuff on whim but that's their problem not mine.

I and a few others have the authority to approve 'emergency' requests to be carried out immediately but it doesn't happen too much.

A lot of it is to track changes as much as approve them...
 
bigredshark said:
We have fairly decent change control procedure, helps all infrastructure changes are made in a planned works window weekly. We keep in fairly basic (request, reason, rollback, affected systems) and rarely have any problems. Some of the tech support guys have a problem with not being able to reboot stuff on whim but that's their problem not mine.

I and a few others have the authority to approve 'emergency' requests to be carried out immediately but it doesn't happen too much.

A lot of it is to track changes as much as approve them...
Click to expand...

Yeah, its the audit trail that's the useful thing, auditors love audit trails :)
 
lol i was saying the other day that i spend less time being a techie and more time being a beurocrat these days.

It can take weeks to get a server rebooted.
 
I too live in York, what's your BG in VMware might have a project for you. VCP qualified?

Documentation is my bread and butter, before you consider CMDB's ensure you have everything from support agreements, contact numbers, configurations / diagrams, what moniors you have on the device documented - I know it's obvious but people always get carried away with these new 'Buzz' words thinking it will change the world and they don't even have their house in order.

The big boys have the time to fully implement change management, there would be nothing for the techies to do otherwise :)
 
Got foundation V3 myself, we use our own implimentation of it. Occasionally get people trying to bypass it, there's a balance between good practice and red tape which has to be met. :)
 
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