Put a Stop to Standards & Best Practices for Profit!

I must be really missing the boat on all the so-called standards and best practices relating to software asset management, copyright compliance / anti piracy, and technology asset management. I was under the (evidently mistaken) impression that standards were designed by people who actually DO the work to help other people become more effective at doing the work. (Wow... Now, there's a serious disconnect.)

Recently I've been reviewing standards and best practice programs as references to a series of professional development seminars, and (once again) I discovered that a majority of  these "aids" are NOT what we would expect them to be. Here's my list:

1. Many standards are apparently being developed by representatives of the technology industries as not so subtle pressure to "buy our products" or "buy our services" instead of helping practitioners gain competencies.
2. In many cases, standards and best practices have very little resemblance to what real people do in the real world. Rather, the standards development teams represent massive corporations that can afford to apply large well-qualified teams to implement highly complex and lengthy solutions.
3. Instead of being based on the experience of practitioners, many standards or best practices are being blatantly developed to provide a proprietary income to a specific group or organization. This severely limits competition as well as locks practitioners into the proprietary programs.
4. Along with the proprietary perspectives are the incredibly unrealistic costs being applied to standards and best practices - costs that the majority of enterprises simply cannot afford to pay.
5. I've also seen multiple standards and best practices that, rather than being based on genuine practitioner experiences, have simply taken advantage of openly posted materials downloaded from the Internet and merely re-written by the standards or best practices editors into their own proprietary packages.
6. And, finally, all too many asset management standards and best practices are attempting to shoe-horn asset management into the technology, services, or other enterprise functions to add to the responsibility realm of technicians rather than building the profession itself.

It's time to put a stop to this kind of activity in the SCCA, SAM, ITAM, and IT Portfolio Management fields. The Institute for Technology Asset Management invites you to become part of its unique open source standards, best practices, and professional development programs - programs that real people and real enterprises can actually afford. As usual, the Institute was the first in the industry to put the power of standards and best practices into the hands of actual front line practitioners, rather than merely convert the agendas of the software industry into a revenue stream version of pseudo-training coupled to over-night certifications.

The Institute does not take money from the software industry players - either via corporate memberships or sponsorship. Instead, we work directly with individual practitioners to build the asset management professions, standards, and practices. Our Guide to the Technology Asset Management Body of Knowledge (TAMBOK) is based on the competencies needed to genuinely DO the work of an asset manager - and the book is freely available online at a price you can afford. (In fact, we're working on the next TAMBOK release. Want to become a reviewer? Sign up now.)

The Institute's professional development programs are the only non proprietary programs in the industry that are based directly on asset management competencies - openly available competencies that have been proven by people working the front lines of asset management - rather than what the software industry wants you to know.

Of the six training options for software asset management, the Institute is one of only two that are not being driven by the software industry, their associates, or hired guns. Of those two, we are the only non profit program that is genuinely driven by practitioner member expectations.

Maybe its time you took a look at The Institute for Technology Asset Management.