The five constants of IT asset management

I have worked in that field for many years, and TLDR ?

1) Validate / Understand your data

2) Demonstrate Value

3) Do the minumum you can get away with

4) Trust your colleagues

5) Risk Management ?

Overall. Ensure goal congruence.

Summary - No content here.

Keeping it under control

> imagine how good I could be with something that does the job better

And when you find a way of measuring the "betterness" objectively, then you can start to have a conversation.

The problem with all these functions: Asset management, Disaster Recovery, Capacity Planning, Change control, Security .. pretty much everything that's covered by ITIL and all the other management methodologies is that it's impossible to say whether they are value for money.

The amount of process that is appropriate depends massively on the size of the organisation,the legal & regulatory requirements and the skills of the people involved (the lower the quality of people, the greater the amount of process needed). However, since process is inflexible and expensive: both in the number of people it takes to do it and the amount of time it adds to a project or a change, there is a good argument to keep it to the absolute minimum - however you determine what that is.

One thing she said is right: automate as much as possible.

What a nice little article by Eira and what a shame it was not possible to hear Kylie sharing her thoughts. Perhaps I missed the controversial element of the report or perhaps you really needed to be there.

The narrative I find troubling having spent thirty plus years sweeping up debris - "Your data sets may start off as inaccurate but you can work to make them more accurate. The data owner will be more willing to keep it up to date if they know someone is relying on it to make decisions.” Where is that conscientious data owner then? It would be wonderful if this were the case sadly with so many constraints the quality of the data is perceived to be resolved by deploying automated collection tools that range in extreme from capture all to capture little. The tool does nothing if you have not clearly set out the old what, when, why, how and where questions first; so by all means automate using a plan that gains the maximum improvement for that delivery and their supporting budget.

As financial constraints continue to bite reliance is placed on tools as it is perceived to do it "cheaper, faster and more accurately". For good measure a poorly constructed process is wrapped around it, resources receive some training while some form of external accreditation is sought to make it all seem better.

I agree it is important to listen to your data but hey, how about we make sure that we only capture the data we actually need to deliver an effective, consistent and repeatable service aligned to the business s imperatives that service supports. I might have missed the controversial element as I believe the message is not new, on the positive it was good to see some media coverage.

Not much biting of hands here - middle age coming on?