A message to those who resist change

I wrote this on my IT Skeptic blog in response to someone ranting about ITIL

ITIL is a bureaucratic regime enforced on skilled IT people by non-IT management to shift the perceived sway of power and force IT to 'support' the business. It is not a set of rules, merely a framework of guidelines, aka a pile of shyte. And look who came up with it! Lordy lordy.

I said
I don't know how many people work for your organisation, Visitor, but if they adopt ITIL and you don't, it can only end one way. If 100 people say lets go this way and you say lets go that way, your opinion is so valued and your insight so superior to everyone else's that the company will immediate revert to your course right? And objecting to the course they want to follow is so important that you should sacrifice your job and financial security and future career for it by resisting to the end right? Even if it is stupid and misguided, you either dance to the piper's tune or you find another piper.

Actually most folk think ITSM's not stupid. There are three kinds of people: those who nake things happen, those who know what's happening, and those who cry "what the fuck happened?". And I'm not referring here to technology directions or Moore's Law or even new methodologies. I'm referring to cultural change in the industry and political change in your organisation. In the interests of your own satisfaction and future you owe it to yourself to be in one of the first two groups of people and not the third. I'm making asafe bet you are not one of the first group so be in the second. See it coming, be ready, have a plan, react to look after yourself. Your comments so far indicate you have no idea what is happening. You are angry, puzzled, resentful.

Once upon a time, people tolerated rugged individualism in IT (I've seen bourbon bottles on desks) because not only did we have a hero culture but few people understood any of it, we overly valued technical knowledge (I say JAPS Just Another Piece of Software - most smart experienced people can grok a new tool in a few days or weeks), and we expected failure and delay as business as usual - IT is tricky and unpredictable and delicate right?

Well guess what. It's not the 1980s any more. IT is a profession now. We do the job properly, we follow generally accepted practices, we share and reuse IP, we work in teams, we record what we did, we are accountable for our actions. It is a lot more boring - it is almost like a real job.

You can go one of three ways: you can work out what your employer wants from you and work to that, you can resist and buck and wonder why you get used less and never get what you want, or you can leave. There is a fourth option: mangement will go "holy cow! he's right. We're all going the wrong way. Our saviour! How brilliant. Oh thankyou thankyou". Figure the odds.