ITIL is not an enterprise architecture
Attended the Shared Insights EA Conference this past week and had a LOT of discussions of ITIL. Everyone in the architecture community now seems aware of it; at my presentation (about 80 people) 100% of hands went up when I asked who had heard of it.
Architects being curious people, a lot of folks are also reading it. The overwhelming point of view I heard repeatedly:
"ITIL reads like it was written by and for operations folks, with pretensions of covering all IT but no credibility or substance in IT strategy, planning, portfolio management, enterprise architecture, or solutions delivery."
Yes, I presented this point of view - but also heard it independently from many other opinionated folks who get paid to make up their own minds on such matters ...
A related point of view making the rounds is that "ITIL is an enterprise architecture for IT." Far from it. Those who say such things, do not know what an enterprise architecture is. ITIL is a verbose narrative with a lot of bullet points. It has no structured analysis methodology underpinning it. At best, it might be construed as a useful (if incomplete) statement of requirements. Peter Herzum's excellent Applying Enterprise Architecture provides a good overview on what an enterprise architecture actually is.
-ctb
Amen. Your thoughts influenced my recent criticism on the narrowness of ITIl's contribution base http://www.itsmwatch.com/itil/article.phpr/3640461. In a classic emperor's-new-clothes situation I had the same feeling but did not feel expert enough on EA etc to speak out. I'm glad it wasn't just me :-D
Posted by: The IT Skeptic | October 29, 2006 at 03:02 PM