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Edward de Bono

I was listening to a great radio show this morning that featured Ed de Bono.  If you don’t know of him, then please look him up.  His many ideas include Lateral Thinking and Provocative Operators.  In the car this morning the “de Bono” neuron in my brain bumped into one of the ITIL ones, and the ITIL Tragic Quadrant was born.

As usual I thought I had been innovative but in reality someone had already beaten me to it when it comes to Tragic Quadrants.  But nobody has done an ITIL version, so here goes.

I think the reality of ITIL is not what you hear from the mouths of ITIL consultants and vendors.  For example, one reality aspect is the cost of “doing” ITIL is like an iceberg: we know it’s big, but how big is it really?  The consultants and vendors either don’t know or won’t tell.  The number is probably much larger than we think, but I already talked about that.

Is the reality of ITIL a good or bad thing?  Can you even call ITIL good or bad?  Perhaps it is intended for good, but it’s results are bad?  Who knows, because nobody, despite decades of existence, seems to have any data (except for the Consultants and Vendors, and who’s going to believe them?).

So what about measuring if ITIL reality measures up to the hype?  Could these be our X and Y axis?  Not living up to hype, well that’s like not getting something you really want and that could fairly be called tragic depending on how far off the mark it is.

So how far off the mark (tragic) is ITIL?  That’s a tough one, but a simple measure might be (and I emphasise might) comparing the hype to the reality: who’s doing the talking, and who’s doing the doing?

I tried to picture this in my first attempt at an ITIL Tragic Quadrant.  In de Bono’s words, this is a Provocative Operator: I don’t necessarily believe in the truth of this, but I do believe in it as a way of provoking debate to find…something?

ViewYonder ITIL Tragic Quadrant