The Visible Ops Handbook: Implementing ITIL in 4 Practical and Auditable Steps

The information contained in this book is important. As an example, the book quotes Stephen Elliot, Senior Analyst with Interactive Data Corporation (IDC) as showing that on average 80% of IT system outages are caused by operator and application errors. The authors present many highly standardized and effective methods to control and continuously improve software systems. The topics discussed include issues and indicators, specific steps to solve issues, audible controls and many helpful hints. I highly recommend this book to engineers and Lean Six Sigma professionals, who are team members for IT development projects, are working on IT systems which need to be integrated within their process workflows or for quality assurance applications.

This is a well written book for anybody tasked with getting IT operations running in a highly effective and efficient manner. I would rate this a must buy as it provides a short and sweet set of ideas that will help you get started even in the most challenged of IT operational sites. This book is easily 5-stars, but the Kindle version had so many typos that it became difficult to read at points. On a limited size Kindle page, there would often be 2-3 clearly misspelled words. Amazon or whoever is taking the hard copy books and creating these Kindle books should get its act together. It makes me wonder how many more books I will buy via Kindle.

I'm not huge on a one size fits all. In IT there is an exception to every rule, but The Visible Ops is something that could help any IT group. The eye opening statistic is that 80% of outages are operator induced. That's a huge number and obviously leaves a lot of room for improvement. This book goes over the basic steps that are required to stabilize and improve your data center. It's short (95) pages and offers an ITIL compliant framework for making your changes (or more specifically, stopping them from being made with out forethought). I started as a system administrator and I hate the idea of following procedures instead of "just fixing things".Stability is what your customers look for in their computing environment as well as flexibility. Are you providing both?

This book was chock full of practical information and profound insights. It is obvious to me that the author team have a depth of knowledge and practical experience and the way in which they have framed the information is done so in a really useful way. With all the intelligence and experience bound up in this book, I am perplexed as to how they were convinced that the actual design of their product was somehow beneficial. I "get" that they wanted to make it a pocket reference and present it as a handy guide, but c'mon--has someone heard of Section 508 compliance [for those of us w/ visual and other sort of accessory impairments]? The material is almost inaccessible as the book is published in what appears to be 8pt. font. I started reading the book several times and had to put it down until I finally broke through the barrier of having got thru enough of the book to realize that the content actually made the migraine inducing fine print worthwhile. I think they've out-"cuted" themselves and yet I find myself endorsing the material as useful to pros interested in this field.

After 15 years as a professional system administrator and manager, I thought I had seen all the good books on the subject, but I have never before seen a short summary of what usually goes wrong and how to fix your processes so that things stop breaking. This book is invaluable to getting everyone rowing in the same direction with understanding how and why complex computer systems break.One of the things that is always hard to explain to both developers and management is the importance of managing change. It is almost always unplanned change that causes your major problems and Spafford explains this in a funny and accessible way. It is always a challange to "push back" at the business and make them understand the real cost of not having adequate testing and controls in place. This book really helped me both clarify your own thinking on the topic and make a good case to the developers and business owners. This book would especially be useful for someone who worked at a start-up or other unstructured environment and who didn't know where to start first.I bought 15 copies and gave one to every programming manager at my job as well as all my direct reports. I with I had gotten more!

Great little book. Very enlightening. I read just after The Phoenix Project. The concept of electrify the fence blew my mind and I'm already getting the benefits of this idea.

Excelente. Muy buen método para llevar a cabo la implementación de procesos ITIL. Plantea una firma básica de estabilización del servicio de Tecnología de la Información.

An excellent read on how to use the fundamentals of ITIL. It should be updated and re-released.

A very simple, straight forward, easy to read book that provides a proven best practice for getting control of your data center though the implementation of high value IT service management activities. The book breaks it down into four simple steps, with examples echoing what those in the industry see in the real world: 1) Stabilize the patient 2) Catch and release, and find fragile artifacts 3) Establish repeatable build library 4) Enable continuous improvement.A highly recommended book.

What's suggested to do and follow in the book is too old, almost 50% or it is useless, they either should update or remove the book from the market, lots of bad advice, things that are not being practiced currently there are many newer methods available now