Challenging Assumptions

The IT world makes a lot of assumptions upon which much of ITSM practices are based. Many of them hold true; but I suspect there are quite a few concepts we just take for granted without looking to see if they are now, or ever were, true. Being a bit of a closet rabble-rouser, one of the things I'd like to do with this space is look at much of the conventional wisdom in IT and ITSM. Most of what I post here will be things that I honestly believe to be contrary to conventional wisdom; but I may occasionally throw out a topic just to see how "conventional" the wisdom is. Let me know in the comments which topics you'd like to see discussed, and what assumptions I've missed. Assumptions I'd like to challenge, or at least investigate, in coming posts include:

• IT is a corporate service


• The central-point-of-contact (presumably the Service Desk) approach is the best to initiate service requests


• Starting a Service Desk and implementing Incident Management is the best way to start an ITSM journey


• The business needs to better understand technology


• IT has credibility with the business


• Only certain IT staff need to possess business acumen


• The most valuable IT staff members are the top technologists

I could go on for a while, but this is a good start. What do you think? Are any of these topics compelling enough to dive into right away? What critical (mis) assumptions am I missing?