[pguerin]

hahaha this reminds me of a discussion I just had today with a student at the business school of my university. He was pissed off at the "IT people" because they know nothing about management and never finishes on time their projects. The way he talked to me was as if it was all our fault and that we were simply lazy. He was agressive to me even if he never worked with me and told me to check the "new york" methodology and the "ITIL" best practices for doing IT services. I haven't found them on google, does someone know anything about that?

It's great to live in a world where management loves and respect us! A world where they try to understand what is hard about software development instead of thinking about how much time it takes to "place a button there" :)

[whatusername]

ITIL is pretty standard for managing IT Infrastructure. So standard in fact that http://www.google.com.au/search?q=itil maybe returns 1 result that isn't about ITIL in the top 50.

If you can't google for something as basic as that - then maybe the bus. guy was right about you being lazy.

[gaius]

ITIL is pretty standard for managing IT Infrastructure.

It's pretty standard for managing the government IT infrastructure. They're what, GBP 20Bn over budget on the NHS alone... And it seems every week there's a story in the papers about them losing a million people's personal data. ITIL is a red flag on anyone's CV IMHO.

[qohen]

FWIW, Google.com has the Wikipedia link up top: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_Technology_Infrastr...

Though it is interesting to see that ITIL originated in the UK, which might explain why not everyone has heard of it.

BTW, here's an article from '05 describing ITIL use in the US (and ITIL's history): http://www.govtech.com/gt/articles/95672

[daleharvey]

My first job out of uni was developing itil training software.

It was soul sucking.

I am in the UK, but hadnt heard of ITIL prior to the job, noone I know that can program has heard of it, I occasionally meet some business guys that have though.

[whatusername]

True. It's not a Programming standard - as it is a way to manage IT Infrastructure which should be HW/SW/staff/etc to promote the goals of the business.

Remember everyone - there's a whole world of companies out there who don't know or care what AJAX or Python or Ruby is. They want to make the stuff they need to make, server their customers, and use computers as what they really are - a tool that should make stuff easier - not harder. (And it's in those industries that there is a lot of opportunity).

Oh - and don't take this as a post glorifying ITIL.. I think it's overdone and too verbose for an awful lot of companies.. (what do you expect coming out of a gov dept.) What I haven't seen is much of an alternative.

[gaius]

He's upset that they don't know about his specialist subject, yet is completely ignorant about theirs. And I bet he doesn't get why none of his employees respect him either.