My daily tasks include reading Midgard Planet and that way I dropped into Tero Heikkinen blog entry. At first I wanted to comment it there, but Captcha in his net.nehmer.blog component didn't seem to work.

I know Tero as Midgard contributor and newly aquired developer and have met him a couple of times on Midgard Meetings. Once I even heard him singing Finish anthem which sounded quite nice... or I just had a great time there in Finland having beer and sauna :) But it is still not the main clue...

Having myself re-oriented on IT service delivery and management I have been forced to meditate a bit on those various aspects. My current job is focused on specialized inner web hosting service delivery within GSK and I can now clearly see how important the philosophy is. Taking Tero's 10 point I would say:

1. Making software becomes as challenging as IT service environment gets closer and closer real life.. Modenr technologies allow more and more detailed and accurate reflection livng things on IT layer. This of course implements complexity but hey! we still got few Americas to discover!
2. Good processes are key to success. And we got good old ITIL rule: adapt and adopt. You don't have to blinldy obey any regulations. The point is in understanding underlaying ideas and implement them they way they suit your organization.
3. PDCA - a Plan-Do-Check-Act philosophy ensures that IT organization will always deliver a stable service that is guarded by continous improvment process.
4. Quality assurance is done by thorough change/release management. While incident recovery is only a temrary remedy, documented and tested change gets rid on errors and allow future developers to get involved quickly.
5. Risk management covers also outside environment and continuity planning and disaster recovery. Those are essentials of good service delivery and cover all other areas.
6. Implement best practises from ITIL standards and you feel how good your IT is.
7. Incident and problems are inevitable and must be calculated in. The point is in maintaining proactive tools that help controlling them
8. Problems controlled by respective process are things that move service into continous development.

Of course, you can't close all essentials in 10 or 8 points. IT organization must individualy decide an extent to which it will implement processes. What is sure, is that you have to keep discipline to hit the goal. And remeber, no matter what they say - there is no perfect software.

Good luck with your exams, Tero.