Pink President's Blog

Don’t “Implement ITIL” And Don’t Expect Tools To be “ITIL Compliant”

I was so impressed to see this article by Aiden Lawes. He has summed up in a relatively brief and eloquent one page piece what I’ve been saying for many, many years - ITIL is not a methodology or a standard, it’s just some good ideas for you to pick through and adopt. Use it where you see a benefit.

This is exactly why, with the PinkVerify program (for assessing how software tools match up to the processes and activities in ITIL) we say “here’s a list of tools that are compatible to ITIL”. You can never say “compliant” - because that’s where you start down the oxymoron path. You need a fixed methodology to describe a supporting tool as “compliant”. And - if you think that “compatible” is a synonym for “compliant” - please take a look in the dictionary, there’s a world of difference:

Compliant: conforming to requirements; produced in accordance with a specified body of rules

Compatible: capable of living together in harmony; able to exist together with something else

If that’s still not clear enough for you then answer this question “When you pick a life-partner, are you looking for compliance or compatibility?” See the difference now?

With PinkVerify we set out to provide - free to practitioners (we charge the vendors a fee to cover our costs) - a list of tools that we’ve checked for compatibility. It’s as simple as that. Use the list as a first point of reference to help draw up your shortlist. Furthermore, contrary to what I’ve read in a few blogs the past few days, there’s no mysterious way that any tool gets on the list. It’s nothing to do with who “Pink’s favourites” might be - that’s not one of the criteria! Look at the PinkVerify web page and download the free assessment to see how a tool gets on the list.