Episode 37: Framed works

I'm scratching my head and trying to make sense of the mess of a diagram in front of me. It's the weirdest and most convulted object hierarchy I've seen since I last took a look at the Outlook object model.

Colin, who's been reading the comics again, wants to know what design patterns they've used.

'It's the spaghetti pattern,' I explain.

He nods appreciatively. 'Thought so,' he agrees.

I pick the phone up as soon as it rings.

'Joe,' the Boss gasps, breathless, 'I need to talk to you urgently.'

'Prickly heat playing up again?' I ask.

'What? No,' he snaps.

'Good, I'm glad it's cleared up at last.'

'No, I mean I never had prickly heat.'

'So what was it then? Something that antibiotics can sort out?'

'What are you talking about?' he demands. 'I need to find out about what development framework we're using.'

That sounds like bad news. Colin's not the only one who's been reading the comics.

'What do you mean by framework?' I ask suspiciously.

'What do you mean, what do you mean by framework?' he responds.

'Well, I thought we were talking about your prickly heat and now you're talking about frameworks. I'm all confused.'

'Are we using ITIL?'

'ITIL?' I repeat. Colin raises his eyes to the ceiling.

'ITIL. You have heard of it, haven't you?'

Spiky bastard. 'Obviously, I'm not as much of an expert as you are. Which version were you thinking?'

He's thrown by that. 'There's different versions?'

'Yep. Are you thinking ITIL 3, or possibly CMMI? What about Six Sigma. Or COBIT?'

'Whoa! Stop, stop!' he cries, frightened.

'Look,' I decide, 'why don't you tell me what this is about?'

'It's the Board of Directors,' he explains. 'They're on a big IT Governance trip at the moment. Some new guy on the board wants to make a splash, so I've been asked to present something - in the next 30 minutes - about where we are at the moment.'

'Can't you stall?'

'And risk being shown up? No way, Joe. Now, where are we? If we're not on the latest and greatest ITIL then why not and who's to blame?'

'Who's to blame?' I repeat, incredulous.

'It's not my fault,' the Boss affirms. 'Nobody even told me that there'd been an upgrade to ITIL.'

'Do you even know what ITIL means?'

'I'm not a technical person, Joe,' he reminds me. 'My job is management. Someone's been falling down on the job, and I know it's not me.'

Colin leans over and whispers to me. 'Tell him to eff off and die.'

'FOAD,' I repeat loudly. Colin's eyes go very wide, very quickly.

'FOAD? What's that?' the Boss splutters. 'Some kind of framework?'

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Continued at TechBookReport