The Best Pizza Evar (or "How ITIL fails")

Suppose I approached several dining outlets with a simple challenge:

You know what? Could you totally cook me like the Best Pizza Evarr? One that makes me be like "Oh my God.. this is awesome!"...?

Okay, so not being a vocabulary-limited teenager or a Faahx Nooos presenter I probably wouldn't use that exact phrase. And as not all chefs are created equal, it's unlikely I'd receive identical results... yet there would still be some measure of commonality throughout their delicious offerings, for example:

• a thin base, pressed out by fingertips rather than rolled (thanks, Patsy!)
• the tomato layer wouldn't be simple tomato purée but a rich herby sauce made by fastidiously cooking down tomatoes with hints of garlic and olive oil
• the cheese would include a smattering of cheddar throughout the soft mozzarella for a subtle bite
• the toppings would combine the crunch of onions, sweetness of roasted peppers and the distinctive smokey flavour of pepperoni

Hence I arrive at a recipe for the Best Pizza Evarr and - sure enough - the results are great!

My Dinner Parties

Feeling that others should participate in my enjoyment, I arrange several dinner parties to sample my Best Pizza Evarr. However, I don't blindly follow the recipe - instead, I tweak ingredients and method according to particular diners:

• for my vegetarian friends, I'd substitute mushrooms for pepperoni. Possibly decorate the top with a layer of rocket.
• for my Jewish friends, I'd also perform the same swap, but possibly add chicken into the mix. Oh, and garlic bread, too.
• for my mother (and Asian friends) I'd add chilli and prawns to the topping - maybe thinly-sliced smoked bacon into the tomato sauce for an additional kick.
• for business meetings I'd probably drop the garlic and reduce the oil content. Potentially look at buffet-sized slices for easier transportation.
• for my neighbour's children, I'd make the diameter smaller, chop the peppers and onions more finely (almost to disguise them in the cheese) and not invest as much effort in the tomato sauce (since they smother everything in ketchup anyway).

Here I employed a "converge and diverge" method to cooking:

1. I collate information from multiple sources and converge the results down to a single recipe
2. I use this single recipe as a basis but diverge to multiple results according to specific requirements

And how did the dinner parties fare? Well, it's the Best Pizza Evarr, so it's bound to be good... right? No, the proof is in the pudding. Wait... what? Not pudding... pizza; the proof is in the pizza. Or rather, those that ate the pizza - after all, success is measured not by what the chef believes but by what the diners perceive - it's their opinion that really counts.

Luckily, feedback was largely positive: most liked it, some even suggesting minor changes: parmesan shavings over the rocket salad, thinly-sliced roast garlic embedded within the topping, a minor dusting of dried mixed herbs before serving, etc - for which I noted down as ad-hoc deviations to utilise when the situation demands.

And almost all asked me for my recipe, for which I was glad to share. And that's when the problems began...

Their Dinner Parties

Unfortunately, things didn't go too well...

• the vegetarians said their friends didn't touch it due to the meat content,
• my mother complained of the blandness when she cooked her own,
• my neighbour mentioned there was waste from the overlarge pizza, and her kids often picked off the veg before eating.

So what was the issue here? They stuck rigidly to the recipe, what could possibly go wrong? And yet it yielded disappointing results. Undeterred, they tried again, repeating the same process.. and encountered the same disappointments.

So they all arrived at the same conclusion: the recipe is wrong.

Of course, it didn't help matters when they learned the recipe I provided differed from the preparation for their dinner party. They demanded to know why they hadn't received the "correct" one, and were even more furious to learn this single "correct" recipe... didn't actually exist.

But that's the point: it's all about the diner, not the recipe. The recipe itself didn't fail, the cooks did: they were too focussed on the recipe to see the reasons why they were cooking in the first place: their diners. Had they thought a bit about their intended audience they could have adapted the ingredients accordingly; the recipe exists for inspiration, not instruction.

What Did We Learn From All This?

The ITIL geeks among us will all be grinning smugly (or nodding ruefully) at the familiarity of the situation here: my Best Pizza Evarr is really about Best Practise, and the goal of Best Practise is not just to understand it, but adapt it specifically to your situation, with focus upon who this is intended to benefit so you can review and readjust your approach accordingly.

Because that's what ITIL is really about. ITIL doesn't fail - those who stick to it compulsively will fail.

Worse still, they'll find some reason to blame ITIL for their own failings.