Doing IT Small

A while back I was passed a manuscript by a client who was asked to review it prior to publication. It was about implementing ITIL into small IT organisations, and was published soon after. But both of us were immensely disappointed in it for the same reason: it offered little practical help at all.

We'd worked together for a year introducing IT service management (ITSM) disciplines to an organisation that fit with the book's definition of a small organisation, yet few of the challenges we'd faced were even considered. It seemed highly theoretical and borne of someone spotting a publishing gap rather than trying to address a genuine problem. How can the quart of ITIL be accommodated when your IT department is the size of a pint pot?

This blog is a collection of my thoughts, ideas and experiences in approaching ITSM for smaller IT organisations. I'll qualify 'small' where necessary but I don't want to over-define it - after all, you're reading this because you consider your IT department to be small and a team of configuration analysts probably isn't a luxury you're entertaining.

I don't have all the answers, but hopefully over time your ideas and mine will compile into something more useful to those people facing similar challenges.