Now that most of the prominent players have let a bit of steam off (and some have even tried to settle an old score) we may get back to the original topic: is SIAM a hoax? (read the original post on this if you've missed ROUND 1)

ROUND 2

I think SIAM is a hoax. I believe I’ve demonstrated in a very simple way that it’s used as a silver bullet, being ‘everything’ for managing a multi-provider environment – ranging from applied service management to a function, a model, a practical concept, a phenomenon, a management approach, and probably much more. It’s the next big thing! Well, it isn’t. Because there’s a nasty little secret out there: IT Service Management still is rather a mess in daily practice, in spite of 3 decades of ITIL and COBIT.

Now, I haven’t said SIAM is worthless, just like I never said ITIL or COBIT are worthless, and they aren’t. They are useful in their own way. I’ve even tried to demonstrate that in many books I wrote about ITIL, COBIT, and all the other frameworks. The point is that people keep making terrible mistakes using them. And if they do so for decades, this is either deliberate or they refuse to learn.

Back to my point. We all (!!) know that ITIL or COBIT should not and can not be implemented – we’ve heard that thousands of times, and all the ‘experts’ agree on this. It was also clearly stated that SIAM builds on ITIL. The new VHP book on SIAM confirms that. Nevertheless, everybody is speaking about implementing SIAM while they know that the basis cannot be implemented at all….

This is where my statement on the hoax comes from: if the prominent players know this, and still promote the implementation of SIAM…. we have two options:

  • They haven’t paid attention for at least a decade
  • They are deliberately misleading the audience

Which one would you go for? I took the friendly option, nr 2.

Quicksand

The reason why I wrote this blog in an hour, at a late Sunday evening, is that I was once again annoyed by the recurring fact that so many prominent IT people run off to a new solution without having solved the old one. Pretending that we’ve solved the ITSM challenge with ITIL and COBIT is an ignorant statement. But it seems that there’s always more money to be made in new domains, so let’s run off and grab it. Don't look back at the mess you've left behind, but go dig the new gold. We’ve seen that recently with DevOps, and now we have IT4IT and SIAM climbing the stage. There definitely are useful components in each of these. But they all build on the quicksand that we’ve left behind in 2 or 3 decades of developing this fascinating field of information management.

Then what is SIAM?

I think SIAM is an extension of ITIL-like practices, describing how you could act in case you need to manage multi-vendor sourcing situations. The inspiration is valuable, just like ITIL and COBIT provide valuable inspiration for managing IT environments. But if you start implementing these practices without having a decent management system in place, you’ll pay the price. You’d start at the wrong end of the stick (see the picture above). We've seen how that worked out in a couple of decades of using ITIL practices.

In their public toilets, The Romans used a stick with a natural sponge instead of toilet paper. When done, you’d use the stick, clean it in some running water, and put it back for the next person to use it. This is where the saying “grabbing something at the wrong end of the stick” comes from.

Even ISO20000 says it: you should have a management system in place, to achieve the requirements of the standard. Unfortunately ISO then provides a horribly redundant set of practices, building on the redundancy of ITIL, but still…

This is why I think SIAM is a hoax. It continues to lead us in the wrong direction, and I refuse to believe that intelligent people do not understand that we haven't solved the old problem. SIAM doesn't provide the management system that has been lacking in ITIL since the first book hit the shop. Instead, it builds on ITIL, inheriting all of ITIL's flaws - or should I say "all of the flaws of the ITIL consultants".

You can hang me for this, shoot me, stab a knife in my back, say I'm dumb, or whatever, but I'll keep saying it. I firmly believe that we should solve the old mess before we run off to fight another fire, or we'll never be able to grow into a mature discipline.

Some notes from the long list of comments, explaining why I haven’t understood what I was talking about:

  • [edited] One of the funniest responses I got was a new blog at LinkedIn, completely dedicated to my own blog, explaining why I was so completely wrong. Written by - according to her own profile - "Chair ATO Advisory Council, AXELOS Working Group" (not formally related to Axelos). This is the stronghold of vested ITIL interests…… The response even says “SIAM is practical CSI”. I should add that one to the list.
  • I’m obviously supposed to demolish and replace the past, and I’m lazy
  • Even if you understand that you’ve spent half your life working on the wrong things, it doesn’t matter, because the earth still turns.
  • SIAM now also is a framework
  • Several consultants advised to go on, apply SIAM, stop arguing about semantic discussions, et cetera. They clearly do not have an interest in solving something that would then ruin their business model of selling effort instead of value and results.
  • I’m obviously not making friends with blogs like these 😉