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links for 2005-12-13 December 13, 2005

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What is ITIL? December 12, 2005

Posted by Gary Slinger in : ITIL, MindMapping, Process , comments closed

Well, literally, it’s the “Information Technology Infrastructure Library”, but that’s not very helpful in and of itself, is it?

ITIL is a comprehensive collection of consistent and coherent best practices focused on the management of IT service processes. It’s intended to promote a quality approach to achieving business effectiveness and efficiency in the use of business systems. It has a subsection known as IT Service Management, which is concerned with delivering and supporting IT services that are appropriate to the business requirements of the organization.

It’s popular, it’s used worldwide, and it isn’t aimed specifically at large organizations – it works equally well for large, mid-size or smaller IT groups. It doesn’t tell you exactly what to do – it’s a set of best-practice guidelines that you customize as you implement them within your own organization, taking advantage of your local knowledge. You can use ITIL in part, or in whole, it’s up to you, and your individual requirements. ITIL originated in the United Kingdom, and the home page of the Office of Government Commerce, who “own” process definitions, can be found here.

There are a number of high-level sections to ITIL, and I spent a lot of time working within the IT Service Support and IT Service Delivery areas – the diagram below (created in MindManager) shows the top-level working areas addressed within these two sections. I’m expanding that MindMap currently, including definitions, goals, benefits, risks and KPI’s, as well as descriptive notes for each area, and I’ll publish specific sections of each of those over the next days & weeks. If you want a particular MindMap in full-form, just let me know in the comments.

ITSM

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Edit/Update: A later post of mine, which can be found here, has the “complete” mindmap I have done on ITIL Service Support & Service Delivery.  Help yourselves…

links for 2005-12-12 December 12, 2005

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links for 2005-12-11 December 11, 2005

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links for 2005-12-10 December 10, 2005

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links for 2005-12-09 December 9, 2005

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Blogmad? December 9, 2005

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BlogMad!

“Taskforce” Meeting Template December 8, 2005

Posted by Gary Slinger in : MindMapping, Process , 4comments

To me, a “Taskforce” meeting is one where a variety of folks are called together, and told to “fix that problem”, whatever that particular problem may be. I’ve just been asked to form such a group, to address an application performance issue at work, and in setting up the meeting, I brought together a number of my current notes and templates into a single MindManager template, for re-use. Thought I’d post it here – if you find it useful, have any comments, or want a copy of the template file itself, just let me know.

When I hold the meeting tomorrow, I’ll give out copies of the map, with the “Notes/Thoughts” section collapsed, but everything else expanded, for the participants reference. The “Notes/Thoughts” section is for me, as the meeting lead, to remind me of “discussion methods” that can be useful for these kind of things – simple brainstorming, the Six Thinking Hats, and SCAMPER.

During the meeting, I’ll make notes on the whiteboard, on my copy of the agenda, and on regular paper as I see fit. As it’ll be a fairly interactive meeting, I’m not going to try and take digital notes, either in OneNote or straight into MindManager, as I might under other circumstances; instead I’ll update everything into the MindManager map as appropriate after the meeting, and then send out both the map itself, and a Word document generated from it, for participants reference.

Agenda Large

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Update: I realised that although I can’t use the MindManager web embed option, I can load the file up to WordPress for those of you that have MindManager itself, and want the file. I’ve got no way of tracking that, so if you take it and like it, or have any other comments, do please let me know in the comments section. Thanks.

Update 2: Well, apparently not. It worked in testing yesterday, but WordPress.com won’t allow me to upload a “.mmap” file now. I don’t know if that is a deliberate change, or a temporary thing. I’ll check again later. So, the original still applies – if you want the file, just let me know.

Final Update: Kai reminds me in the comments below that I was going to embed the Mindmap using the MindJet viewer plugin once I had things up and running on this new site.  Well, I’ve been trying…  I can embed the map, and it works perfectly – that really is a good plugin.  Displays great in IE as well.  Trouble is, it completely destroys the page layout for every post below it in Firefox – completely removes the formatting and such that is applied through the theme here.  Now, someday/somewhen, I’ll spend a bit more time understanding the inner workings of what’s going on here, and I’m sure I can work around it, but in the meantime, I want to focus on producing content for the site, rather than dealing with the mechanics of it.  So, old school approach:

Click here to download the “Taskforce Template MindMap” (Requires MindJet MindManager, or their free viewer).

links for 2005-12-08 December 8, 2005

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links for 2005-12-06 December 6, 2005

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links for 2005-12-03 December 3, 2005

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RIM/NTP Lawsuit – Blackberry Shutdown? December 2, 2005

Posted by Gary Slinger in : Blackberry, Technology , add a comment

The folks at Blackberry Cool have this most succinctly in their post titled “Calm Down Folks, No Possibility of Blackberry Shutdown”.

I don’t know if I’d go so far as “no possibility”, because there’s always an outside chance, and strange things have happened in the world of litigation before, but generally speaking, I agree with them – that’s why we haven’t gone any further at my company with our contingency plans, which involved the Windows Mobile 5.0 devices. In the post above, they say:

Our prediction is that RIM and NTP will settle for a huge amount, possibly in the 1 billion range so that both parties can move on from the case that has latest for 5 years.

I think they’re right – the only variable is going to be the number. Will this affect RIM long-term – yes, how can it not? Right out of the gate, that’s a lot of cash to pay out. But in the longer-term, will it make them want to innovate, compete, and maintain their market share? Again – how can it not? I have to admit that I’m looking forward to the end of this dispute, and everyone getting back to the business of technology, instead of the business of law.

Related Links Around The Web:
Michael Sampson – Thoughts on RIM vs NTP
Mobile Enterprise Weblog – The biggest story for enterprise mobility in 2005
Mobile Enterprise Weblog – RIM: The Buzzards Are Watching (timeline of events)
Patently-O: Patent Law Blog – Blackberry Patent Settlement Found Unenforceable (includes links to the court documents)

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New Category – Blackberry December 2, 2005

Posted by Gary Slinger in : Blackberry, Technology, Uncategorized , add a comment

I’ve added “Blackberry” as a sub-category to “Technology”, as I seem to be writing about it regularly.  I’m going to go back and update previous posts to reflect this category, in addition to “Technology”.  Hopefully, that won’t push those back out to the RSS feed – sorry if it means you get dupes; it’s just a one-off correction.

links for 2005-12-02 December 2, 2005

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links for 2005-12-01 December 1, 2005

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