some info on ITIL

coffeeking

Hello Folks,

Following are some of the questions I have about ITIL certs, will appreciate the answers, thoughts, suggestions:

1- Are ITIL certs more for the IT managers than a regular IT guy, I am just starting out in the filed with a degree in IT as my background.

2- Do you need to have a certain number of experience to make a move for these certs.

3- To me it seems that these certs are more focused on everyday IT stuff then on a certain technology in IT, is that correct?

4- Do you think its compulsary to have some tech certs before moving on to ITIL certs?

I will greatly appreciate your response. It would definately help me decide to make a move, and who better to ask than someone who's been through it.

Thanks in advance.

eMeS

Hi Coffeeking,

I'll do my best to answer your questions. These are excellent questions that I think many people often have about ITIL certs. Although ITIL v2 certs are still being offered, I'm going to answer in terms of ITIL v3 because v3 is where everything ITIL is headed.

Also, an authoritative source for ITIL v3 qualifications is http://www.itil-officialsite.com/Qualifications/ITILV3QualificationScheme.asp

coffeeking wrote:

1- Are ITIL certs more for the IT managers than a regular IT guy, I am just starting out in the filed with a degree in IT as my background.

1 - Yes and no. Certifications for ITIL v3 are granted at 4 levels.

Foundation Level
Intermediate Level (Lifecycle Stream & Capability Stream)
ITIL Expert
Advanced Service Management Professional Diploma and/or ITIL Master

Foundation level is intended for anyone in IT. The point of foundation level knowledge is that everyone is speaking the same language relative to IT and how the business uses IT.

Intermediate Level is also intended for anyone in IT, but this level of knowledge is likely more useful if you regularly conduct work in a specific process or lifecycle area. For example, if your function in the organization is first line incident response, a certification at this level focused on incident management can likely be had. The knowledge gained in such a class would primarily be related to gaining efficiency and effectiveness in incident management by employing ITIL best practices.

ITIL Expert this level of certification is intended for those people implementing ITIL in an organization, those people in an organization who are accountable for the delivery of IT services, or consultants.

Although I have listed three target groups here, it is likely that the true target audience is consultants. If someone holds there ITIL Manager v2.0 certification, there is a method by which taking a 4 day "bridging class" and passing an exam at the end will earn the "ITIL Expert" certification. This is exactly what I did in April to bridge my ITIL Manager v2.0 cert to ITIL Expert. I am told (but unable to verify) that this bridging class will not be offered after 2008.

Under ITIL v3.0, to earn ITIL Expert from scratch, requires a total of about 30 days of training (actual in-class training). This doesn't include all of the study outside of class required to pass the exams. In my opinion it is unlikely that many organizations will find value in having key people attend 30 days of training outside of the office when they could hire a consultant to do the work for them. Missed work + ~12k training + travel and expense = not cost-effective, especially when that person might complete the credential and leave for more money.

I am told that there are currently less than 100 ITIL Experts in the world.

Advanced Service Management Professional Diploma and or ITIL Master

They keep changing the name of this one. This is the new top level ITIL v3 certification. It will likely only be held by consultants. Currently no one holds this credential, as the requirements are currently undefined.

In summary, Foundation - everyone, Intermediate - everyone specific to their function, Expert - likely only consultants, and Advanced - definitely only consultants.

coffeeking wrote:

2- Do you need to have a certain number of experience to make a move for these certs.

Foundation - Experience is not required.
Intermediate - Experience is not required, but it would be helpful to have some experience.
Expert - Experience is required. I question the verification practices, as it is often left to the training providers to conduct verification (at least it was in v2, and I don't see anything indicating a change). Just my opinon, but do the people selling the training have an interest in disqualifying candidates that are willing to pay $10k+?
Advanced - It's unlikely that anyone will be able to achieve this without having worked through at least one verified implementation.

coffeeking wrote:

3- To me it seems that these certs are more focused on everyday IT stuff then on a certain technology in IT, is that correct?

I agree, nothing about any of the certs discussed in this post tells you what technology should be used to solve a specific problem. We would be on ITIL version 3000 if this were the case. (However, there is some component of the ITIL library that does talk about specific technologies, but that's a wormhole we shouldn't get into in this post).

The basic intent is that IT cost-performance and quality improve through the implementation and regular use of best practices. ITIL (regardless of the version) is a a set of best practices. For example, one best practice that can be taken from ITIL is that IT releases should be tested before release into the live environment. Not groundbreaking stuff, but it's really amazing to me what some organizations do and don't do, and how simple improvements can make a huge difference. Another best practice is that technology organizations should have a "Service Catalog", that explains what services they offer, the cost, and how the customer can receive the service. Also not groundbreaking stuff, but very few organizations do a good job at this one thing that sounds very simple.

I like to think of ITIL as a collection of "things" that have been shown to help different organizations improve efficiency and effectiveness of their IT. Additionally, there is plenty of detail available in v3 as to how to achieve these "things".

coffeeking wrote:

4- Do you think its compulsary to have some tech certs before moving on to ITIL certs?

No. I don't even believe it is compulsary to have tech certs to do technical jobs. I interpret "compulsary" to mean that the certs are required by employers and that having the cert implies some level of performance that the employer can expect.

However, my personal opinion is that moving into the high-level ITIL certs without hands-on technical experience is pointless. These people are easy to spot, because they are simply theorists who have a lot to say about what should be done, but little to say about what it actually means in an organizational context.

I have a favorite quote about this very topic -

Robert A. Heinlein wrote:

Obscurity is the refuge of incompetence.

I have been involved in implementations where consultants will propose things that sound great, without realizing that the organization doesn't have the capacity to achieve those things. For example, I was involved once with an organization that wanted to define their desktop as an IT Service, and mange it according to ITIL processes. A consultant had convinced this company that to do that would require knowing the real-time capacity available on all of the 40,000 desktops in their organization, simply because ITIL says that you have to manage capacity. What was missed is that even if this organziation was capable of doing that, what is the benefit to the business? There is none. This particular consultant was getting about $225 an hour for gems of wisdom like that. The true metric that was important to the business was how quickly they could have a new desktop that met a standard requirement deployed.

Because that particular consultant was incompetent (and I don't think he knew he was, as the most incompetent never do), he sought to obscure his lack of knowledge by sending the organization towards and unachievable goal. He could bill an unlimited number of hours, and always point to the ITIL books as proof that his advice was correct. A lack of technical experience early in his career led to his incompetence.

This is one of the many reasons why I much prefer results-based or fixed-rate billing, because, as a consultant, if I bill hourly what incentive do I have to ever help my customer reach their goal? Let's save this dicussion for another post....

My opinion, get the technical experience and keep it and use what you know technically to achieve results in things like ITIL above and beyond what others are able to do.

Summary

I hope I've answered your questions.

If I were recommending something for you, I would recommend taking a Foundation class. First, this is the basic level of knowledge about ITIL. You know much more after this class than before, and with that knowledge you can decide whether pursuing any other ITIL certs is right for you. Second, the fact is that having an ITIL Foundation cert is a good thing to have on your resume, especially if you're just starting out.

But...if I were paying myself and my choice were between ITIL Foundation and VCP...I'd pick the VCP. You'll get more bang for you buck out of it.

If on the other hand, implementation of best practices suits you, then my recommendation to you is to go for it, but in a manner that makes you as multi-disciplinary as possible. Particularly if you intend to start your own company or work as an independent consultant. The more things you have done, can do, or can prove that you can do the greater chance you have at booking yourself the best engagements.

MS