ITIL Tips

So there's this thing, a set of work principles and practices, called ITIL -- IT Infrastructure Library. I did some ITIL training today, meaning I'm one third of the way toward a Foundation Certificate in ITIL, or something.

Luckily for you I've aleady got some tips to share:

• Pass the buck after 11 minutes
  Our instructor told us that in some ITIL implementations, when an Incident is passed from one department to another more than once within ten minutes, a "buck passing" alarm goes off. So if you want to bounce a tricky problem to someone else, make sure you keep it for 11 minutes before batting it on to the next sucker.
  
• 
  Pass the buck at 79% of allowed time
  Another common alert is when a logged Incident gets to 80% of the alotted time to solve it. If your system gives you 24 hours to resolve an Incident, management get an alert if it goes to about 19hrs 12mins with no solution.
  
  So, if an Incident you're working on gets to about 19hrs long, pass it on to someone else. Then when the alert email goes out, it's that sucker who gets the call from management.
  
• 
  Vendor = Time out
  The countdown stops if you have to refer the Incident to a vendor. Need an extra day off to recover from your Sunday recovery party? Put your work on pause by "accidentally" referring all your Incidents to Microsoft for a day or two.
  

So, there's some ITIL hints. More tomorrow!