ITIL Intermediate Lifecycle Stream: Service Transition

I decided to speed up my timetable a bit and took this exam today.

I know I sound a bit like a broken record in every one of these posts when I say that "this was the most difficult yet".

Well, here we go again. This was the most difficult of these intermediate ITIL exams that I've yet to take.

I barely passed with a 73%. This strikes me as a bit troubling. As mentioned I know the material very well. I've read the core books several times. I have a strong grasp of both the theory and practice of ITIL. And yet I could only eek out a 73 on this exam. That's only a 3% passing margin and makes me really uncomfortable. I took almost the full amount of time allowed for the exam, which is 1.5 hours.

I'm bracing myself for the mass disappointment of students who take this class and then fail the exam. I'm teaching this course in October. It's a 3-day course with the exam at the end. We'll see how it goes.

The format is 8-question multiple-choice. Each question is scenario-based, and requires that the ITIL material be applied to the situation described. In this case, Service Transition is about controlling and managing configurations, understanding and managing change, and releasing and deploying new services.

That's now 6 down with 3 more of these to go. I am taking the next exam tomorrow, which is the Lifecycle exam for Continual Service Improvement. Can't wait for that!

I could easily finish up the remaining two that I have unscheduled within this month, but honestly right now I'm not sure what I will do. Nine exams in a two-month period is really aggressive, even though I know the material. However, part of me just wants to trooper through it and be done with it.

About all I can say on this one is good luck on it if you ever take it.

MS

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dynamik

Congratulations!*

*(on being an ITIL whore)

eMeS

dynamik wrote: »

Congratulations!*

*(on being an ITIL whore)

Yeah, but CBJ only, so I'm a whore with some dignity.

MS

dynamik

Wow, that earned a serious laugh. Thank you Urban Dictionary!

Edit: I'm not sure why the earlier poster removed his post, but eMeS does ITIL consulting/training, which is why he's "collecting" so many. I believe the other question was, would ITIL certifications be useful to people getting into networking/systems engineering or if they are better suited to management.

eMeS

knwminus wrote: »

Congrats. I have been meaning to ask you this for a while: What is your overall goal? Are you trying to catch em all (pokemon!:D) or is this for something work related (like is this required for your job)?

I own a consulting and training company. Over the past several years I've done quite a bit of ITIL adoption consulting and ITIL education delivery. When version 3 came out in 2007 all of the certifications and requirements changed. I quickly transitioned my ITIL v2 Service Manager's certification to the v3 equivalent, which is called ITIL Expert (I was one of the first 100 worldwide to do this).

However, now that the ITIL v3 courses have become available, a requirement was set that in order to deliver any of the classes, you must hold the certification for that specific class. In version 2 this was not the case; i.e., if you held the highest level certifcation (ITIL Manager's Certificate in IT Service Management), you could deliver any of the lower level classes.

There has been a recent upswing in people and organizations looking for the ITIL v3 Intermediate classes, and so I've had to go "collect" all of the v3 intermediate certs in order to be able to deliver those classes.

I have such as huge investment of time and money in ITIL, that spending a couple of grand more to keep doing this work is the sensible choice.

knwminus wrote: »

Is ITIL more business related or is it IT related.

First of all, ITIL is actually a reflection of what is actually occuring in various business around the globe. It is not "make believe" nor is it pure theory. Rather, it is a reflection in terms of "best practices" about what organizations are already doing to manage IT services throughout their lifecycle.

The answer to your quesiton is both. ITIL is a collection of best practices that can be applied to design, create and manage what are called "IT Services" throughout their lifecycle in line with business expectations.

In terms of the Intermediate level ITIL certifications, there is the "Lifecycle" side, which tend to be more business and management-oriented, as well as the "Capability" certifications, which tend to be more hands-on oriented.

knwminus wrote: »

I have done a quick google search on ITIL jobs and they seem to be like IT/business management type of jobs. More like CIO or CTO or middle management types. I guess I am asking would ITIL be worth it for someone who wants to get into Network Engineering or is this something for managers?

It really depends on what it is. Someone in the UK can speak up, but ITIL Foundations is probably at this point an assumed requirement for many jobs over there. Not so in the US, but it is defintely becoming more popular.

The reason you see ITIL jobs focused in management areas in the US is because ITIL is still on the upswing in the US. It's not nearly as mature a market as the UK, and people here are still trying to "figure out" how to adopt ITIL best practices.

One of the big benefits of ITIL at an individual contributor level is that it helps get everyone in the organization using a common language to describe different aspects of IT services. Additionally, ITIL speak at length about common standardized processes and how these help organizations to become more efficient and effective.

What I think is the biggest benefit, but is tougher to achieve, is the understanding that everything we do in IT is because of some business requirement. We don't just have servers, routers and switches because we like them. Those things exist to meet some business need, and their use must be aligned to that business need.

There are many other benefits, and we defintely don't have time to get into them at the moment.

BTW, I'm a bit of a rare bird in the high-end ITIL consulting realm, as I have significant direct hands on technical experience with various technologies and products over the years, and continue to do direct hands-on work. The other significant work that I do, in addition to ITIL, is focused on consulting and training around various IBM product lines. WebSphere, Rational, and recently Tivoli are all areas where I do quite a bit of work.

Thanks for the question, and best of luck.

MS

eMeS

dynamik wrote: »

Wow, that earned a serious laugh. Thank you Urban Dictionary!

Edit: I'm not sure why the earlier poster removed his post, but eMeS does ITIL consulting/training, which is why he's "collecting" so many. I believe the other question was, would ITIL certifications be useful to people getting into networking/systems engineering or if they are better suited to management.

Yeah, I was wondering if you would know it...

I'm not sure either why the post was removed, because I think they were great questions. I answered prior to the post being removed, so we're all good.

MS

coffeeking

Congrats eMes. Keep on with it...congrats on this one and good luck with the coming ones.

Bl8ckr0uter

EDIT:

I read the sticky on this forum and it answered all of my questions and that is why I removed my post because you already answered everything

.

The job that I have applied for (and I am hoping to get) is a network tech job and they wanted ITIL "knowledge" and that made me curious. I have heard the term several times but I don't really know what it is. It may be something I need to read up on to help my career out a bit.

snadam

Grats eMeS!!! Our company is slowly migrating towards an ITIL standard, so I have gotten a bit of exposure to it. Which to me makes your pass even more commendable

eMeS

knwminus wrote: »

EDIT:

I read the sticky on this forum and it answered all of my questions and that is why I removed my post because you already answered everything .

The job that I have applied for (and I am hoping to get) is a network tech job and they wanted ITIL "knowledge" and that made me curious. I have heard the term several times but I don't really know what it is. It may be something I need to read up on to help my career out a bit.

I wouldn't worry a lot about asking the same question that's been answered in prior threads.

If we were really concerned about that here then there would only be:

1 "What do I need for my CCNA Lab?" thread
1 "What is CTT+?" Thread
1 "How do I register for A+?" thread
1 "Is <insert online school here> a good school?" thread
...

MS

Bl8ckr0uter

I went to the website you posted a link for (ITIL) and as I was reading this stuff it seemed very high level in multiple ways. It seem A: Geared towards managers and B: Geared towards high level engineers. I am thinking about doing the foundation, after I get a few of the certs in my sig.

goforthbmerry

This reply is really just to thank eMeS for keeping the ITIL forum alive. It is a field that doesn't quite have the recognition yet that I believe it will. I am going to get my Foundations later this year. I am using it to help me along in my management track. My company still uses it only as a "management level" requirement which surprises me because they insist on using project management terms in documentation to employees. It seems to make more sense to have many more employees receive the foundation level training so they can understand what is being given to them. I find the biggest irony in the documentation they provide to "clarify roles" filled with terminology the majority doesn't understand. Yet they still hand out these documents like they are the greatest things the company has yet developed and expect the employees to be thrilled with it as well.

Any one can feel free to correct me but it seems that a more mature model of ITIL adaptation would include at least mid to high level tech people to have foundations, managers to have one or two mid level certifications in their area and project managers to have the higher ITIL cerifications. Currently at my company only project managers might have a single mid level ITIL certification.

To be fair, PMI certifications are fairly common among the project managers. Most of the Directors and project managers are PMPs.

Not trying to dog my company - it really isn't a bad place to work - I just think some things can be better.

Once again eMeS for keeping this forum alive (I did say that was the reason for the post after all)

rsundararajan

If any one having the materials of service transition 2011 please provide the files or provide the site address to download.