Complementary Qualification - ITIL Service Catalogue

This week is an interesting week for me. On behalf of a customer I have agreed to attend a class called "ITIL Service Catalogue". They're paying me to take this because they're wanting someone that can deliver this course in the future on their behalf. In the odd accrediting schemes that come with ITIL, I am required to attend this class and pass the exam in order to deliver this class. It's nice to have a few days where I get to sit in a class and listen to someone else talk for a change. I also think I get CEU's for it, which makes life easier.

Although they've been slow to market, ITIL v3 includes what are called complementary qualifications. The one that I'm taking this week is: APMG-UK - Service Catalogue .

I really don't know what to expect from the class, or the exam at the end. The complementary qualifications are intended to be "foundation-level", so it should be fairly straightforward.

We'll see how it goes, and I'll report back regarding the exam.

MS

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dynamik

Hopefully this one will be more practical and not as high-level as the other ITIL courses you've taken. I think you're rather out-of-touch with how things are done in the trenches, and you really need to augment your skill set with more practical techniques. Essentially, you just need to determine what information you need, find a product that does that and implement it.

HeroPsycho

Yeah, and for goodness sakes, take a little passion in what you do. Otherwise, your opinions are invalid, even compared to people who have no knowledge of the subject!

eMeS

dynamik wrote: »

Hopefully this one will be more practical and not as high-level as the other ITIL courses you've taken.

I'm going to guess that this is not the case. I did meet the instructor this evening; decent guy, tons of experience, still, these ITIL classes have the tendency to come off as very high-level. One thing I'm always careful about is to give practical examples of this stuff, because I remember what it was like to be on the other side of the room.

dynamik wrote: »

I think you're rather out-of-touch with how things are done in the trenches, and you really need to augment your skill set with more practical techniques. Essentially, you just need to determine what information you need, find a product that does that and implement it.

I almost ejected a Dorito through my nose when I read this. "Dorito" is a vegetable, right?

My foremost need - More BBBJs

Please tell me the product that does this and I will implement it post-haste...

MS

HeroPsycho

eMeS wrote: »

My foremost need - More BBBJs

Please tell me the product that does this and I will implement it post-haste...

Closest thing I could think of would be a Fl3shl1ght...

eMeS

HeroPsycho wrote: »

Yeah, and for goodness sakes, take a little passion in what you do. Otherwise, your opinions are invalid, even compared to people who have no knowledge of the subject!

Not to turn all serious, but it's funny, for many years early in my career I used to wonder what was missing and what was wrong with me for not being passionate about things like installing NetWare or whatever. I felt like I was supposed to have some kind of intrinsic motivation that made this stuff "fun". In many ways I envied people that seemed to have it.

Then, about 5-7 years in I realized that there was nothing wrong; I simply don't have much intrinsic motivation for really anything. Even for something like exercise I've never experienced any kind of intrinsic motivation. Who knows why this is, but I'm sure it's something developmental. For whatever reason, my motivators are purely external; I've known this for quite some time and I'm glad I found this out about myself at a relatively young age. Knowing what blows up one's skirt really makes decision-making a lot easier.

Someone (Socrates) once said, "know thyself".....

MS

eMeS

HeroPsycho wrote: »

Closest thing I could think of would be a Fl3shl1ght...

Like most solutions, my requirements are about to change mid-stream....

Is it just me, or does that thing seem to be a sad attempt? It's 2010, there should be something better by now.

Dynamik, do you like your Fl3shl1ght? You do know that it goes around your member, and not in your rear?

MS

HeroPsycho

I regret making the Fl3shl1ght joke now officially.

eMeS

mikej412 wrote: »

We'll all regret it when the Internet S*x Shop and Pron spammers notice this thread in the internet search engines and decide Techexams is a great place to spam

What I find funniest is that when I look at this thread a banner ad is shown that leads to ITSM Frienldy . (misspelling theirs).

Regardless of what we all think about ITIL, I think we can all agree that it needs more "ITSM Friendly Stress Balls".

MS

eMeS

I'm in my third and final day of this class at the moment. Days 1 and 2 were rigorous, but largely contained information in the class that I already knew. I was to study and do practice exams last night, but didn't get to because I had to get a proposal off to a customer.

I finally took the practice exam just before class began this morning. I scored either a 26 or 27 of 40, which is passing, but just barely. IMO, this is significantly harder than a foundation exam and on-par with some of the intermediate-level ITIL qualifications. The exams are really rough and need much improvement.

We're finished with the material and I'm taking another practice exam soon...hopefully my scores will increase. At the moment I'm not 100% certain that I will pass this test, and I don't really know what I'll study should I fail.

MS

Fugazi1000

I can't believe you are think there is a chance of failing, or that you got such a low score on the practice! Either the questions are so badly written, or you are over analysing the questions. This course (I haven't done it) is supposed to be aimed at Foundation level people!!

My take is that there is still no real clarity (in V3) of just what a service catalogue should look like and so any training becomes abstract and irrelevant (like a comment intimated above). I have seen a few implementations of tools and with varying results. BMC SRM has potential but no content. NewScale have content but badly executed.

If you haven't already seen it, Service Portfolio and Catalog Language - Public review site for SPACL documents. is worth looking at....

(belated) Good luck on the exam!

eMeS

Fugazi1000 wrote: »

I can't believe you are think there is a chance of failing, or that you got such a low score on the practice! Either the questions are so badly written, or you are over analysing the questions. This course (I haven't done it) is supposed to be aimed at Foundation level people!!

The questions are terrible on the two practice exams that were given. I received clarification. Technically this is considered an "intermediate level" qualification, according to APMG, and thus harder than Foundation.

I've finished the exam and am back home now. I can say that it was harder than Foundation. However, the live exam was much easier than either of the practice exams we had. I'm certain I passed without any problem. Odd, because usually the practice exams are easier than the live exam....

Fugazi1000 wrote: »

My take is that there is still no real clarity (in V3) of just what a service catalogue should look like and so any training becomes abstract and irrelevant (like a comment intimated above). I have seen a few implementations of tools and with varying results. BMC SRM has potential but no content. NewScale have content but badly executed.

BMC = Bring More Cash

The best catalogs that I've seen are custom and very focused on automating the request process. We did one many years ago that was excellent.

I'm very impressed however with ServiceNow overall. I think theirs has potential.

Fugazi1000 wrote: »

If you haven't already seen it, Service Portfolio and Catalog Language - Public review site for SPACL documents. is worth looking at....

Thanks, I haven't, but will take a look.

Fugazi1000 wrote: »

(belated) Good luck on the exam!

No worries...I'm certain that I passed it. I had to rush through it because of a meeting with another customer. I took about 35 minutes overall for the 75 minute exam. I felt very confident when I handed it in. It had a few questions straight from a Foundation exam, but overall I would say that the bulk of the questions were a lot like the old v2 practitioner style questions.

MS

eMeS

Happy to report that I received my official results today.

I passed the exam with an 88%.

MS

earweed

Congrats, no big surprise since you are an ITIL Guru

astorrs

eMeS wrote: »

I passed the exam with an 88%.