V3 Service Operation resit

fmcroberts

I failed the V3 Service Operation exam first time round and have booked a resit for the end of this month. I will be going over my books again but I don't think I failed due to lack of knowledge, even if it was open book I would have struggled to pass. This despite getting 100% and over 90% in the two mock exams during the course, the actual exam was a different beast altogether, a view shared by my classmates at the time and I have read a couple of similar comments on these forums.

With that in mind, does anyone have any tips other than knowing the subject material? I work in SO (helpdesk manager) so this should be easy for me! I thought my exam technique was good - putting a tick against the answer points I believed to be true, a cross against any false. The part I struggled with was identifying which were true and false from the scenarios. All tips and suggestions welcome!

Claire Agutter

Hi

Sorry to hear you didn't get the result you needed - the Intermediate exams are tough. The first thing to note is that you work in SO which is good....but can cause problems. Make sure you don't make any assumptions based on how you do things in your current organisation that might steer you away from the right answer.

Here are some exam tips we share with our delegates:

Don't get waylaid by a brilliant ITIL answer to the wrong question i.e. the answer has all the right words but addresses nothing in the scenario....a perfect change implementation when they wanted problem!!

Business focused answers with bsuiness agreement are right 95%+ of the time...
Policy ALWAYS comes before process
"Vision, baseline, targets, getting there, we've arrived, staying there" - service improvement should follow this sequence

Assume nothing...so many answers make broad brush assumptions without ever investigating or assessing. If the scenario doesn't say it DON'T assume it

Implementing a process that isn't covered in the course is seldom the right answer

Good luck with the resit! Be careful not to second guess yourself when you approach the new paper - I have lost count of how many delegates have told me they wish they hadn't changed an answer

Claire

fmcroberts

Thank you!

Claire Agutter wrote: »

Implementing a process that isn't covered in the course is seldom the right answer

It's good to know this. I felt a little unsure where to draw the line between looking at the bigger picture or focusing on what was covered in this specific course. Also very good point about not changing answers, I think actually this might have been a big part of where I went wrong.

fmcroberts

I passed! Thank you for your advice. It was the same paper as last time (paper 6) but obviously I did better this time. I still found it difficult - I was able to pick the distractor answer but thought there often wasn't much to choose between the other three. Whereas in the sample papers it was quite easy to put the answers in order of correctness. Anyway, I am very happy and relieved.

Claire Agutter

Congratulations! That's fantastic news

I don't know if you're going on to do further Intermediate exams, but if you do you will find the technique you learned during this course and exam will be very useful.