Episode 9: Downtime is Forever

Brandon Lane CIO blinked. He was still recovering from the visit of the Ghost of ITIL Past, and now the Ghost of ITIL Present stood in front of him. The blinking having not worked he tried a heavy sigh.

Jimbofin, for such it was, raised an eyebrow and said nothing. Eventually Brandon gave in.

“I guess I’m still dreaming?”

Jimbofin smirked.

“Of course you are, but you are in good company. Look outside your office door.”

Brandon got up and looked outside the door. He was greeted by the sound of loud snoring and the sight of his IT department slumped over their desks. Everyone that is except the help desk staff, they were still hard at work answering calls. Jimbofin and Brandon walked up to them. Brandon spotted Kelly walking towards them and was about to ask her if she’d noticed anything odd, when she walked right through him.

“I don’t get this” said Brandon, “What’s going on?”

“Well, let us start with your help desk first. They can’t afford the time to dream, but they are so busy dealing with the reality of the impact of poor service on the users they also can’t afford to take any notice of management. It is as if you don’t exist to them.”

There was a commotion as one of the help desk agents collapsed at their desk.

“I thought you said they were too busy for dreaming?”

“They are, he’s not dreaming, he’s just collapsed from exhaustion. It is a totally different phenomenon. You know it is funny, but it can be hard to tell two things apart that look similar but underneath the surface are totally different. Look at this for instance...”

Jimbofin had wandered over to the desk of Richard, the help desk manager, who unlike the rest of his team was clearly dreaming. Jimbofin was pointing at a large pile of books on Richard’s desk.

There was something both familiar and strange about them. “What are they?” Brandon asked.

“Behold ‘ITIL 2011 Edition’ in all its weighty glory. Richard never stops telling anyone who shows the slightest sign of interest that this is an ITIL v3 shop, if you could see into his dreams you would see him standing up in front of an audience at an itSMF conference telling the world how this is the first organisation to become ITIL 2011 Edition compliant thanks to his initiative”

“Really? That’s....interesting...what would it mean?”

“On the basis that the difference between v3 and 2011 Edition is that all the inconsistencies and mistakes have been taken out then someone as literal as myself might suggest it would mean you’ve stopped being inconsistent and  blindly following what ITIL says even when it is mistaken. In reality of course it means nothing at all, especially since your department can’t get the basics right. For instance, what did you ask Richard to do when you spoke to him earlier?”

“I told him to get out here and find out what the issues with the changes to the MFD IP addresses were.”

“Did you? That sounds sensible. I’m sure he dashed back here and set up an online conference to get to the root cause of it all, having stopped only to brief the helpdesk team on a consistent message to give out to callers. Shall we have a look at what is on his screen?”

Brandon leaned forward to look. Then he stood back and looked up to the heavens, before looking back to Jimbofin.

“What should I do?” He asked, “It is so much worse than I realised.”

“Oh I don’t know, I think he did quite well to get ten euros for his old ITIL books on eBay.” He paused. "Perhaps it was unfair of me to use your account to make the bid."

Brandon glared at him.

“Oh don’t worry, it isn’t like we are in real time here. We are in the IT department time-zone, things are different here. For instance down here if there is an hour’s downtime one week time heals itself so that the IT department forget about it as long as they still meet their SLA at the end of the year. Not in the business though, up there that one hour becomes indelibly etched into the corporate memory and stretches into an infinite perception that the systems are always down”

“Well thank goodness that this is just a dream. It would be dreadful if whilst everyone was dreaming down here the rest of the organisation was trying to get on with its normal business.”

“Yes that would be quite awkward wouldn’t it, er, yes. Did I actually say that? Remember what I said earlier about the help desk being too busy to dream? Perhaps you’d better listen in on one of these phones...”

Brandon raced to the desks and picked up the first headset he could find

“AT LAST. CAN SOMEONE DOWN THERE PLEASE TELL ME WHAT ON EARTH IS GOING ON?”

Brandon sighed. He would recognise the sound of the CEO’s voice until the last syllable of recorded time.