Michael Keeling
Michael has been providing consulting and guidance in IT Operations, ITSM and SIAM to enterprise level organizations in many industries for more than 20 years, and has extensive background in data center and service desk operations, technical writing, mentoring, cause analysis and workflow improvement. He is known for bringing the view of a detective to these efforts, perspective he credits to education in crime scene investigation and over 10 years designing processes and performing risk management in the private security sector prior to his career in IT. A confirmed realist that believes no project can be truly successful unless all involved parties are grounded in reality, Michael is always prepared to paint ‘the elephant in the room’ bright yellow when appropriate….
Latest from Michael Keeling
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You’re Nobody Till Somebody Measures You
Once upon a time, Dean Martin told us that “You’re nobody till somebody loves you”. As I was reviewing yet another set of proposed metrics recently, I found myself humming that song, but substituting the word ‘measures’ for ‘love’ – because of course, in business, what’s love got to do with it? So it was
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Behavior in Motion – Sustaining Change
A recent discussion with a few names you might recognize if you are in the ITSM space started with whether DevOps was sustainable after the consultants went home. Some time ago it occurred to me that Newton’s Laws of Motion seem to apply pretty well to human behavior, so I ventured the following: “Actually, I
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The Project: A Possibly Recognizable ITSM Fairy Tale
One day, the boss forgot his password My name, for this tale, is Nate. I’m an ‘Admin’ (for people not systems). Note I said “the” boss; I work for eight of them and five are male, so technically I am not singling one out for any later “coaching” on the ethics of airing any issues
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Why Proactive Incident Management is important
What are you waiting for? Recently intercepted and decrypted conversation between Batman and Superman: Batman: “Luthor has a bomb planted in Metropolis Central Station, set to go off in 5 minutes; I’m on my way but can’t get there in time to stop it, but you can!” Superman: “I suppose I could, but you said
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How Do You (con)Figure?
What is configuration management? People (at least some people) have always been aware that knowing where things are and how things work together are good things to be mindful of. It’s why some have always been attracted to maps and puzzles (which are sometimes the same thing), and have that urge to disassemble and reassemble
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Reality Check – The (IT Services) Matrix
“The Matrix is everywhere; it is all around us, even now in this very room…” Many of you will recognize the above as the beginning of a scene from The Matrix, in which Morpheus asks Neo if he wants to know what “it” is. In the article to follow, I am offering you this choice
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ITSM – The Twisted Framework
Wednesday, 08:06am The coffee in my go mug was already cold when I left my apartment, so although I made pretty good time, considering the morning traffic, I was now 20 minutes grumpier before even getting out of the car. Spring was still struggling in, and I snugged my hat down so the chill breeze
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A Series of Symbiotic Events
Event the Third: One Hand Washes the Other Having earlier set the groundwork for why relationships are a fundamental part of successful event management, I can now discuss in more detail why I chose symbiosis as the basis for describing these relationships. The original usage of the word symbiosis had to do with communities of
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