The Visible Ops Handbook: Implementing ITIL in 4 Practical and Auditable Steps
Product Description
The Core of Visible Ops Visible Ops is a methodology designed to jumpstart implementation of controls and process improvement in IT organizations needing to increase service levels, security, and auditability while managing costs. Visible Ops is comprised of four prescriptive and self-fueling steps that take an organization from any starting point to a continually improving process. Making ITIL Actionable Although the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) provides a wealth of best practices, it lacks prescriptive guidance: What do you implement first, and how do you do it? Moreover, the ITIL books remain relatively expensive to distribute. Other information, publicly available from a variety of sources, is too general and vague to effectively aid organizations that need to start or enhance process improvement efforts. The Visible Ops booklet provides a prescriptive roadmap for organizations beginning or continuing their IT process improvement journey. Why Do You Need Visible Ops? The Visible Ops methodology was developed because there was not a satisfactory answer to the question: “I believe in the need for IT process improvement, but where do I start?” Since 2000, Gene Kim and Kevin Behr have met with hundreds of IT organizations and identified eight high-performing IT organizations with the highest service levels, best security, and best efficiencies. For years, they studied these high-performing organizations to figure out the secrets to their success. Visible Ops codifies how these organizations achieved their transformation from good to great, showing how interested organizations can replicate the key processes of these high-performing organizations in just four steps: 1. Stabilize Patient, Modify First Response – Almost 80% of outages are self-inflicted. The first step is to control risky changes and reduce MTTR by addressing how changes are managed and how problems are resolved. 2. Catch and Release, Find Fragile Artifacts – Often, infrastructure exists that cannot be repeatedly replicated. In this step, we inventory assets, configurations and services, to identify those with the lowest change success rates, highest MTTR and highest business downtime costs. 3. Establish Repeatable Build Library – The highest return on investment is implementing effective release management processes. This step creates repeatable builds for the most critical assets and services, to make it “cheaper to rebuild than to repair.” 4. Enable Continuous Improvement – The previous steps have progressively built a closed-loop between the Release, Control and Resolution processes. This step implements metrics to allow continuous improvement of all of these process areas, to best ensure that business objectives are met.
The Visible Ops Handbook: Implementing ITIL in 4 Practical and Auditable Steps
January 26th, 2010 - 17:02
This is a great book. I recommend everyone going towards ITIL or just improving IT to read it. It is a quick read, fun stories and anecdotes.
Rating: 5 / 5
January 26th, 2010 - 17:58
This publication will definately help anyone that is struggling with how to apply ITIL Operations Services. It is definately geared towards a server based enviroment and not towards programming, midrange systems or mainframe operations. However, once you apply the ITIL ops to your server and desktop environments it can be easily adjusted to enhance all IT operations. It’s a great way to get started. I recommend reading through it.
Rating: 4 / 5
January 26th, 2010 - 20:47
I have long been a believer that books are to be shared. I spent a lot on this book with a weird format and less than 100 pages, and since I have done that, I have struggled to keep my hands on it.
In an organisation that is trying had to follow the ITIL framework, most of my colleagues are familiar with the principles, and applying them in practice. This book presents a simple way for those people to see real results quickly, and clarified things in a simple way for non ITIL trained people.
It’s expensive, and the paper back was really bad quality, but I would still recommend the book (and yes, I have bought a couple of new versions for the library).
Rating: 5 / 5
January 26th, 2010 - 23:05
The leading cause for down time is poor process management and user error. This small and easy read provides real and applicable suggestions for reining in and ultimately transforming cultures that have traditionally caused the most downtime in your production environments. This is a must read and a must keep.
Rating: 5 / 5
January 26th, 2010 - 23:45
The Visible Ops Handbook was given to me by a friend and professional associate. I am glad he did. While a lot of the current body of knowledge covering ITIL discusses the benefits and the theoretical improvement to be achieved, The Visible Ops Handbook provides a clear and pragmatic guide for putting key ITIL elements into play.
More importantly, it provides great guidelines and meaningful metrics to help IT departments and professionals gauge the impact of such implementation.
Perhaps most important is that it is not too long. This is good because the organizations I serve need to put some positive tools in place quickly. A 400 page tome is not what they need. What they do need is Visible Ops.
Rating: 5 / 5