A new “point/counter point” session format was added to the mix of presentation types this year at EDUCAUSE. It turned out to be my favorite format of all sessions this year. Mostly, this is due to the presenters involved. My favorite session of EDUCAUSE 2008 was titled “The Community Source Model: Promise or Peril for Higher Ed?”. In the one-hour session, Dr. Brad Wheeler and Adrian Sannier discuss the issues facing higher education’s software sourcing options – community sourcing model vs. proprietary sourcing model.

Kelley Anderson of Carnegie Mellon University presented a session titled “Development of a Project Management Office. The presentation gave insight into the current status of project management at Carnegie Mellon by discussing the critical decisions that were made over the past year. For example, should you take a “top down” (portfolio management) approach or a “bottom up” (project management) approach when you have limited FTEs dedicated full time to project management? CMU opted for the top down approach.

EDUCAUSE 2008 was hosted in Orlando, FL from Tuesday, October 28 to Friday, October 31. On Tuesday, four members of Yale’s ITS department held a preconference seminar titled “Understanding ITIL and Applying It to Your Organization”. According to the presenters, this was the first pre-conference seminar to fill up! Tuesday’s preconference seminar was split into morning and afternoon sessions. In the morning session, presenters discussed the general overview of ITIL and talked about the different phases of an ITIL implementation.

Now at the end of my work in studying ITIL, I have been considering the work as a whole and what I have done, and why I have pursued learning and becoming certified in ITIL. I think it is a reasonable question to wonder why a college study would want to learn and become certified in ITIL, and then apply that knowledge. I think in general it is uncommon, it is uncommon at Wake, and at most liberal arts universities in the country. But I think there are a number of really good reasons to pursue a certification like ITIL.

Safari Books Online now offers the ITIL v3 lifecycle suite, plus the introductory guide and a couple of other ITIL publications. They have an ITIL portal for the books.

I've heard about Safari Books Online from a few years ago, when our systems administration team looked at their collection of technical guides such as the Perl cookbook. That said, we don't have a subscription.

Today Jim and I met to understand possible publications and conferences interested in Universities and IT Service Management. Here's what we came up with:

• EDUCAUSE
• EDUCAUSE's regional conferences
• itSMFusion
• itSMF LIG meetings
• Pink Elephant's conference

Know of any others?

Carlyn Chatfield, Manager – IT Technical communications at Rice University, has been using Confluence for their enterprise-wide wiki for a couple of years and presented a really nice poster display of their success with the tool. Their wiki is rooted in sharing IS-related information, but future expansions will include content from all departments.

Check out Rice University’s wiki implementation: https://docs.rice.edu/confluence/dashboard.action

Also, check out their wiki-related podcasts: http://itpodcasts.rice.edu/

Jim Haustein and Vick Dean of Cornell University delivered a presentation titled “Process Improvement in Higher Education” that discussed the process improvement program. Since mid-2007, Cornell has been using ITIL as a framework to create a more process-focused and service-focused organization. This was an excellent presentation filled with lessons learned and tips for people to take back to their institutions.

Here are a few quick points worth repeating:

Continuous management support is key to success.
Change Management was their first win.

The Information Technology Infrastructure Library is a framework of good practices. As I have noted before, one of the primary criticisms of ITIL is that it is not complete, and is lackluster in a some areas. As a framework, especially a contemporary one, I don't think that ITIL can ever actually be complete. I consider this a natural consequence of the nature of frameworks. I don't think, though, that the naturally positive qualities of a framework are often addressed.

As I have been asked to do an assessment, I have been considering the nature of assessments, their methods, and general benefits and drawbacks. The experience that I bring to the assessment is about two years in the Information Systems department, general knowledge of IT, and as of recently, knowledge of the ITIL framework. I brought this experience to a series of interviews that form the foundational knowledge that I am expressing through an assessment template.