Effective IT Service Management: To ITIL and Beyond! [Hardcover]

Rob Addy (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 12, 2007

This book offers practical guidance on delivering and managing IT services in an effective and efficient manner by extending the IT Infrastructure Library approach. It provides a candid look at the relative merits of the currently accepted wisdom regarding the provision of IT services. The book identifies strengths as well as shortcomings in the accepted status quo, presenting an unbiased view of current methodologies and products.

Editorial Reviews

Review

From the reviews: "By identifying and clarifying ambiguities within the ITIL framework, Rob distinguishes himself from the Kool-Aid peddlers and proves that he is a real contributor to the wider ITSM debate." - Charles Betz, Author "Architecture and Patterns for IT Service Management, Resource Planning, and Governance: Making Shoes for the Cobbler's Children" "A practical and informative guide that explains and expands upon ITIL theory." "The book extends traditional theory with practical experience to make ITIL even more valuable and pertinent." "Nobody writes ITSM like Rob. Maybe that's a good thing... But maybe that's why I like it." - Sven Strassburg, Head of Worldwide Sales Technology Office, IBM Tivoli "Going beyond best practice is the only way to gain competitive advantage. This book will help you do just that." "An excellent resource for new and experienced ITSM practitioners and their customers alike." - Danny Kellett, Principal ITSM Consultant, BMC Software "An invaluable reference for anyone working in the IT industry." "A handy volume that consolidates ITIL theory and distils it into a readily accessible form." "This book provides an invaluable foundation upon which any ITSM professional can build." - Brian Bell, Senior Vice President Worldwide Product Management, CA "Rob is a highly skilled ITSM professional that has worked for some of the biggest and best companies in the world.  This book allows everyone to benefit from his experiences and common sense approach." - Dick Cahill, Worldwide VP of Sales, IBM Tivoli "A pragmatic and comprehensive reference for anyone involved with the delivery and support of IT services." - James Rogers, Chief Marketing Officer, Troux Technologies "The Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) is a wide-ranging framework, and its theoretical nature makes it a challenging methodology to adopt in an effective manner. This book aims to help users who want to benefit from ITIL, by providing both an introduction and practical pointers based on the author’s experience with the methodology. … Overall, having all of this information in one place will benefit readers." (Riemer Brouwer, ACM Computing Reviews, October, 2009)

From the Back Cover

IT service management (ITSM) is the group of processes and functions that oil the wheels of the IT machine. Without ITSM, every IT project and system would deteriorate over time until failure. ITIL is the recognized best-practice standard for ITSM, and has been around since the late 1980s, with ITIL version 3 published just recently. However, many of today’s IT problems have been around for just as long - so in order to manage IT effectively, organizations must go beyond the ITIL framework. Rob Addy provides IT service managers and professionals with practical guidance on delivering and managing IT services in an effective and efficient manner by extending the ITIL approach to deliver proactive and pragmatic IT service management. His book is a candid look at the relative merits of currently accepted wisdom regarding the provision of IT services, using the principles of the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) guidance series. It describes IT service management processes related to service delivery and service support (as well as other non-ITIL areas), their objectives, shortcomings, and how these issues can be addressed in real-life situations. In addition, it delivers a workable definition of what exactly an ‘IT service’ is and how it can be defined and used in practice. Overall, he gives an unbiased view of the discipline, its objectives, major processes, and their benefits and shortcomings. Managing and mitigating IT risk is critical to the survival of every business. Success is an optional extra! Proactive IT service management can be thought of as risk management for IT: Can you afford to ignore it?

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 382 pages
• Publisher: Springer; 1 edition (October 12, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 3540731970
• ISBN-13: 978-3540731979
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,323,000 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Good, practical advise., May 4, 2009

By 

John Chapin (Jackson Heights, NY USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Effective IT Service Management: To ITIL and Beyond! (Hardcover)

This book is written in a direct, simple style that makes it very useful. The diagrams are ok, but it is the books prose which is really the value here. I've used a Visible Ops book and another by Pink Elephant, but I keep coming back to Rob Addy's book, and always get good advise.
The level of detail strikes a good balance, and I find the bullet points to be very helpful.
I especially like the "common mistakes" sections in many of the chapters.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars CD review, September 1, 2008

By 

Chris Davis "CD" (Des Moines, IA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Effective IT Service Management: To ITIL and Beyond! (Hardcover)

Very good at helping managers what it takes to define and implement a service framework.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Begin with a bang but degenerates to a muted whimper, November 29, 2008

By 

Robert D. Glover Jr. "robert-g-near-nyc" (Linden, NJ USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Effective IT Service Management: To ITIL and Beyond! (Kindle Edition)

The book begins strongly with a rousing introduction and a very interesting first chapter. From then on the book gradually degenerates into boring, long lists of bullet points, each accompanied by a few sentences about each point. If this book had been 100 pages I would recommend it. Unfortunately however, the author does not have enough to say to justify a book of this length. I think most managers will read the introduction and the first chapter and then lose interest and put the book away, never to be looked at again.