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The Visible Ops Handbook: Starting ITIL in 4 Practical Steps
THE CORE OF VISIBLE OPS Visible Ops is a methodology designed to jumpstart implementation of controls and process improvement in IT organizations needing to increase service levels, security, and auditability while managing costs. Visible Ops is comprised of four prescriptive and self-fueling steps that take an organization from any starting point to a continually improving process.
MAKING ITIL ACTIONABLE
Although the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) provides a wealth of best practices, it lacks prescriptive guidance: What do you implement first, and how do you do it? Moreover, the ITIL books remain relatively expensive to distribute. Other information, publicly available from a variety of sources, is too general and vague to effectively aid organizations that need to start or enhance process improvement efforts. The Visible Ops booklet provides a prescriptive roadmap for organizations beginning or continuing their IT process improvement journey.
WHY DO WE NEED VISIBLE OPS?
The Visible Ops methodology was developed because there was not a satisfactory answer to the question: "I believe in the need for IT process improvement, but where do I start?" Since 2000, Gene Kim and Kevin Behr have met with hundreds of IT organizations and identified eight high-performing IT organizations with the highest service levels, best security, and best efficiencies.
For years, they studied these high-performing organizations to figure out the secrets to their success. Visible Ops codifies how these organizations achieved their transformation from good to great, showing how interested organizations can replicate the key processes of these high-performing organizations in just four steps:
1. Stabilize Patient, Modify First Response - Almost 80% of outages are self-inflicted. The first step is to control risky changes and reduce MTTR by addressing how changes are managed and how problems are resolved.
2. Catch and Release, Find Fragile Artifacts - Often, infrastructure exists that cannot be repeatedly replicated. In this step, we inventory assets, configurations and services, to identify those with the lowest change success rates, highest MTTR and highest business downtime costs.
3. Establish Repeatable Build Library - The highest return on investment is implementing effective release management processes. This step creates repeatable builds for the most critical assets and services, to make it "cheaper to rebuild than to repair."
4. Enable Continuous Improvement - The previous steps have progressively built a closed-loop between the Release, Control and Resolution processes. This step implements metrics to allow continuous improvement of all of these process areas, to best ensure that business objectives are met.
112 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2004
90 people are currently reading
1,198 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 30 reviews
August 27, 2012
When i got this book I was pretty nonplussed. However now I've finished it I can tell you it's worth a dozen larger books of the same ilk. It's four step process is simply laid out, clear and well thought. It's the very off-putting size of this book that also makes it great, the authors haven't belaboured each step and their quotes section is pretty fascinating.
If I'm going to criticise there are two things to point out. The first is that some of the practices haven't lasted so well. So there's a distinct feel in here that developers shouldn't be part of the operations process. But that clearly wouldn't serve an established devops shop well. The second is that wierdly for a book that's about 100 pages long sections of content are repeated in the appendices so you get the feeling much of the early chapters is re-tread.
Overall, buy it, appreciate it, adapt it to your environment. You'll be better off if you can apply the lessons of this book.
If I'm going to criticise there are two things to point out. The first is that some of the practices haven't lasted so well. So there's a distinct feel in here that developers shouldn't be part of the operations process. But that clearly wouldn't serve an established devops shop well. The second is that wierdly for a book that's about 100 pages long sections of content are repeated in the appendices so you get the feeling much of the early chapters is re-tread.
Overall, buy it, appreciate it, adapt it to your environment. You'll be better off if you can apply the lessons of this book.
June 13, 2024
The book provides a good detail on ITIL and quite a few examples and approaches in how to introduce it in a simple way and quite intuitive.
May 26, 2013
ITIL is a "collection of best practices codified in seven books by the Office of Government Commerce in the U.K."
Visible Ops is a collection of best practices organized into four incremental steps.
Phase 1 - The primary goal is stabilizing the current infrastructure. In order to do this first the identification of the most critical IT systems is to be performed, followed by restricting the change access to these systems and ensuring that each change to these systems is viewed as potentially most impacting. This will also involve creating Change Advisory Boards and a Change Request Tracking System. The ultimate goal is to do more proactive work and reduce the Mean Time To Recover (MTTR). At the end of this phase there is a general increase in the confidence level in the IT systems.
Phase 2 - During phase 2 the focus is on identifying the most critical IT components (s/w & h/w), interdependencies between them and then prioritizing the most critical services.
Phase 3 - Release engineering as an essential component and a standard and quick deployment process is being looked at in this stage. Essentially the most experienced team members needs to be pulled out and their focus and attention diverted to the release engineering tasks and the relatively inexperienced people left in for firefighting.
Phase 4 - The final phase is the Continual Improvement. Here the goals are to improve the change success rate and increase the effective rate of change followed by continuous monitoring to measure any potential slip in performance.
If you just want a gist of ITIL, this is the book you want to go for. Based on the 4 steps provided in the book, it will become a lot easier for implementing ITIL in an organization.
Visible Ops is a collection of best practices organized into four incremental steps.
Phase 1 - The primary goal is stabilizing the current infrastructure. In order to do this first the identification of the most critical IT systems is to be performed, followed by restricting the change access to these systems and ensuring that each change to these systems is viewed as potentially most impacting. This will also involve creating Change Advisory Boards and a Change Request Tracking System. The ultimate goal is to do more proactive work and reduce the Mean Time To Recover (MTTR). At the end of this phase there is a general increase in the confidence level in the IT systems.
Phase 2 - During phase 2 the focus is on identifying the most critical IT components (s/w & h/w), interdependencies between them and then prioritizing the most critical services.
Phase 3 - Release engineering as an essential component and a standard and quick deployment process is being looked at in this stage. Essentially the most experienced team members needs to be pulled out and their focus and attention diverted to the release engineering tasks and the relatively inexperienced people left in for firefighting.
Phase 4 - The final phase is the Continual Improvement. Here the goals are to improve the change success rate and increase the effective rate of change followed by continuous monitoring to measure any potential slip in performance.
If you just want a gist of ITIL, this is the book you want to go for. Based on the 4 steps provided in the book, it will become a lot easier for implementing ITIL in an organization.
April 10, 2007
Great book if you are having to get started with ITIL. I personally know both Kevin Behr and Gene Kim and they do great work. The book is small, well organized, and very useful.
January 18, 2018
Overall summary for IT incident management starters. Very easy to follow and understand in order to enter the reign of ITIL v3 later.
December 31, 2018
Short but very practical advice on system stability, change management and continuous improvement.
Systems and Telecom Engineers worldwide should spend some time reading this.
Systems and Telecom Engineers worldwide should spend some time reading this.
Want to read
November 2, 2022Recomendado por The Phoenix Project
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 30, 2014
Very brief (& very dry) walkthrough for anyone who'd like to tidy up his operations the ITIL way. Clearly authors have aimed to make it a true essence, almost like a check-list of activities to perform & conditions to validate, but it's not without an impact on overall "readability".
Another thing I don't like (or don't even understand) is that authors mention (several times) that the content of this book is based stricly on their vast professional experience - I honestly believe them, but why didn't they put some real-life cases in the book then? It just says 'do this, do that' without considering why companies *DON'T* do this stuff - what are the actual obstacles & reasons that are typical excuses and how to _fight_ those. I may be a bit over-sensitive in this area, but I deal a lot with DevOps, Ops & overall evangelism about these topics & I have a really good idea of how typical discussions look alike :)
To summarize: I do agree with the content of this book, authors know their stuff & it's more than clear. I just think that it's far too dry for someone who's not yet SOLD to the idea.
P.S. I love the phrase 'to electrify the fence'. Appeals a lot to my imagination ;D
Another thing I don't like (or don't even understand) is that authors mention (several times) that the content of this book is based stricly on their vast professional experience - I honestly believe them, but why didn't they put some real-life cases in the book then? It just says 'do this, do that' without considering why companies *DON'T* do this stuff - what are the actual obstacles & reasons that are typical excuses and how to _fight_ those. I may be a bit over-sensitive in this area, but I deal a lot with DevOps, Ops & overall evangelism about these topics & I have a really good idea of how typical discussions look alike :)
To summarize: I do agree with the content of this book, authors know their stuff & it's more than clear. I just think that it's far too dry for someone who's not yet SOLD to the idea.
P.S. I love the phrase 'to electrify the fence'. Appeals a lot to my imagination ;D
July 6, 2016
Honestly, all these IT methodologies and certifications seems to be a huge scam to me. I'm not sure if anyone else benefits from them besides organisations that are busy with publishing new editions and preparing new examinations. And I thought creative industries are pro-bullshiters. Nope.
This handbook is a ray of sunshine - concentrated, sharp, really easy to understand and full of real time examples. I had no clue before what's the buzz with constantly crashing servers and after reading this book everything stood into right places. And, when my colleague tells that "we had to improve our change management a bit" it's finally clear what he means. Apparently, not the same thing I used to read in HBR about.
For more technical people, the ones who actually has a role in implementing ITIL and similar stuff, this seems to be a really useful tool. Clear, actionable list of steps how to create a well functioning IT organisation. In less than 100 pages!
This handbook is a ray of sunshine - concentrated, sharp, really easy to understand and full of real time examples. I had no clue before what's the buzz with constantly crashing servers and after reading this book everything stood into right places. And, when my colleague tells that "we had to improve our change management a bit" it's finally clear what he means. Apparently, not the same thing I used to read in HBR about.
For more technical people, the ones who actually has a role in implementing ITIL and similar stuff, this seems to be a really useful tool. Clear, actionable list of steps how to create a well functioning IT organisation. In less than 100 pages!
November 4, 2015
This book made me remember what used to make me excited about my job. Even though it is primarily directed at IT professionals, the lessons in this book can be applied to other organizations.
Here's what I took away from this book:
-Normalize your terminology (so that stakeholders have a shared understanding about the topic at hand)
-Communicate (about everything, all the time)
-Aim for transparency
-Be consistent
-Be proactive and preventative so that you don't spend all your time reacting to unplanned situations
-Create a culture that values shared rather than individual knowledge
-Create controls that increase efficiency
-Create a culture of change management
-Create an infrastructure that allows for smart changes to be made quickly and efficiently
Here's what I took away from this book:
-Normalize your terminology (so that stakeholders have a shared understanding about the topic at hand)
-Communicate (about everything, all the time)
-Aim for transparency
-Be consistent
-Be proactive and preventative so that you don't spend all your time reacting to unplanned situations
-Create a culture that values shared rather than individual knowledge
-Create controls that increase efficiency
-Create a culture of change management
-Create an infrastructure that allows for smart changes to be made quickly and efficiently
November 15, 2015
This book is a classic in the field for a good reason. It is brief, to the point, and focused on action in a way that makes sense to IT leaders that don't normally read books about process leadership.
A key reason this book works is because it is laser-focused on taking actions that reduce pain now and provide a foundation for later work. It provides reasons for maturing processes focused on value that will make sense to all stakeholders.
My only issue with the book is that it is a bit expensive for something so small and a decade old. Most people can get The Phoenix Project for less, and it is both newer and longer. The value is certainly worth it, yet if this book were $5-$10 it would be a no-brainer to buy for an entire IT department.
Highly recommended.
A key reason this book works is because it is laser-focused on taking actions that reduce pain now and provide a foundation for later work. It provides reasons for maturing processes focused on value that will make sense to all stakeholders.
My only issue with the book is that it is a bit expensive for something so small and a decade old. Most people can get The Phoenix Project for less, and it is both newer and longer. The value is certainly worth it, yet if this book were $5-$10 it would be a no-brainer to buy for an entire IT department.
Highly recommended.
September 26, 2013
The book is short, well summarized, easy readable(without all the paraphernalia of most ITIL books). The book have a lot of information about running a well-organized IT department. Most of the advices in the book are those we already know, but -sometimes- we are unable to see from the inside of an IT department.
I'll recommend this book to anyone who works as a IT management, starting with ITIL, or looking for a guideline to ITIL.
I work as a IT manager of a medium-size company, so this books gave me A LOT of information to think about, and a REAL guideline about how to implement ITIL practices. All the information of this book can be applied to small to medium size companies.
I'll recommend this book to anyone who works as a IT management, starting with ITIL, or looking for a guideline to ITIL.
I work as a IT manager of a medium-size company, so this books gave me A LOT of information to think about, and a REAL guideline about how to implement ITIL practices. All the information of this book can be applied to small to medium size companies.
January 22, 2015
I have long been a believer that books are to be shared. I spent a lot on this book with a weird format and less than 100 pages, and since I have done that, I have struggled to keep my hands on it.
In an organisation that is trying had to follow the ITIL framework, most of my colleagues are familiar with the principles, and applying them in practice. This book presents a simple way for those people to see real results quickly, and clarified things in a simple way for non ITIL trained people.
It's expensive, and the paper back was really bad quality, but I would still recommend the book (and yes, I have bought a couple of new versions for the library).
In an organisation that is trying had to follow the ITIL framework, most of my colleagues are familiar with the principles, and applying them in practice. This book presents a simple way for those people to see real results quickly, and clarified things in a simple way for non ITIL trained people.
It's expensive, and the paper back was really bad quality, but I would still recommend the book (and yes, I have bought a couple of new versions for the library).
Read
July 25, 2011I wish all IT organizations followed a few more of the steps in here--have strong change management, have a library of standard builds, put your top people into release management, have a problem management group distinct from incident management that reviews changes as step one of problem resolution, don't allow developers to have access to change production systems. This book is short, succinct, and to the point with simple, actionable steps to produce immediate gains.
August 7, 2011
A lot shorter than trying to read a shelf-load of ITIL books if you want to get the gist of what that's all about. My one concern is that practitioners will take it too literally wrt creating Change Authorization Boards and such, which may make things move too slowly in the web world. Continuous deployment appears to be the future, and we simply need the mechanisms involved to be able to automate the steps outlined here so that we gain tracability, reviewability, and undo-ability for changes.
April 21, 2013
This book should be read by anyone who manages a server in a professional environment. This book lists some steps at achieving better control of the servers and software related to them and reduce firefighting.
The book is short. Appendixes often repeated what was said in main portion of the book. I wish they had a more comprehensive list of software that is related to each step.
The book is short. Appendixes often repeated what was said in main portion of the book. I wish they had a more comprehensive list of software that is related to each step.
June 9, 2009
A compelling methodology for implementing IT best practices. I would give it five stars, but it is a somewhat bloated. I also recommend reading my full-book summary posted at
October 15, 2011
If you want a good book to get your IT Ops group back in line, this is the book. It's affordable (for the groups that don't have a budget for training material) and its a good primer to help you lead your group back to sanity!
July 17, 2014
Ever been "in the weeds"? Do you work everyday with layers of management, conflicting priorities, death march deadlines, and eating lunch at your desk? Start by reading this book. Then get your manager to read this book.
September 21, 2015
A very good introduction to beginning the process of creating a governance framework for your I.T. department. Good solid step for the most part. Short, sweet, to the point (a little dry) but worth the read.
August 11, 2009
Clear direction on implementing IT Service Management
March 3, 2013
Conciso y evidentemente util. Un poco obsoleto en algunos aspectos y demasiado radical.
September 27, 2013
Great book but dated in th cloud/mobile era.
January 8, 2014
Handbook on how to implement ITIL and fixing IT services.
June 12, 2014
Excellent technical guide
April 5, 2015
Excellent read. Clear ideas and presents steps on how to acheive them. Must read for every IT service, not just Ops. I'll be implementing this in my organization
Read
April 25, 2016This really is a Handbook. There are so many details that you have to get a copy to keep near by once you start implementing the ideas in the book.
June 5, 2016
Boss made me read this. Perhaps a good time to update the résumé :)
November 16, 2016
Super dry, but gets the core things right about how to fix a poorly-functioning engineering team (especially ops/infrastructure eng, but applicable to all).
March 25, 2017
Concise
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