The Security Blog

by David Moskowitz (written 3/09, revised 7/09, 9/09)

This may sound strange, before ITIL, I wasn’t convinced that individual certification was worthwhile (with the exception of PMP). So, why am I writing about the value of ITIL certification?

The answer is simple, I’ve seen the results. Though this specific posting is to keep a promise I made to Vicki who asked the question (Q&A article last week) that I’d re-purpose this piece for the ITIL series on Ariel’s blog.

Background on ITIL Certification

Any certification process involves some study followed by demonstration that you know something about the material. I am not suggesting the individual is an expert, just that they spent study time and passed the test. In fact, this has been the source of my concern about certification. My problem with most certifications is that it’s possible to pass the test and still not know anything of practical value about the subject matter. I’ve hired people with various vendor certifications only to discover that in the real world, the individual’s capability didn’t match expectations created by certification.

ITIL is different. How? ITIL certification is not about specific job related skills. It doesn’t mean that you know how to program or that you know anything about infrastructure. Instead it says that you’ve learned a common vocabulary and varying levels of application to a service lifecycle. Hopefully, it means the individual who earned the certification understands People, Process, Technology: It’s people first! ONLY after the people issues get some measure of resolution is it time to move on to process and finally technology.

So, what’s the value in ITIL certification to the organization?

Because ITIL is not proscriptive, the certification process isn’t about doing; it’s about knowing. Adopting ITIL requires that people have a base-level understanding about what ITIL represents for the IT Service Lifecycle. It takes buy-in from every level in the organization — buy-in aided by a reasonable understanding about what ITIL is and what it represents. Make no mistake; ITIL is as much about a cultural shift as it is about IT good practice and ITSM. That’s another reason certification makes sense. The certification suggests the individual knows something about the vocabulary, about the process, and about the goals for ITIL.

For ITIL adoption to succeed, the people involved in the change need both a common language and a common basis for success in the small iterative and incremental projects that are part of effort. Adopting ITIL involves a learning process as continual improvement is applied. The certification indicates someone is attempting to learn about ITIL; that knowledge is a component of successful ITIL adoption.

All ITIL certifications are personal; organizational "certification" is handled by ISO 20000. There are two different types of value forITIL certification: value for an organization, and value to the individual. This is an important distinction. The benefit derived by an organization is use of the information and knowledge employees, consultants, and contractors gained from pursingITIL certifications allowing the organization to better follow a path toward achieving IT Service Management. Value to the individual comes from the satisfaction/gratification of passing the certification examinations and from their increased marketability.

Just to make a point about marketability, About.com lists the 15 highest paid certifications showsITIL V2 Foundation in the 4rd slot, and ITIL V3 Master (sic — I think that should be ITIL Expert, the ITIL Master certification hasn’t been released, yet) in the 7th slot.

A Real world example

I mentioned that I’ve seen the practical value of ITIL certification. Here are the details. Early 2005 I was a consultant on a client’s architectural team for a huge project. Without going into specifics, the client decided to outsource a significant portion of the development because the skills and capabilities required were totally outside their core competency. I helped them narrow the list of suspects and select what appeared to be an appropriate outsourcing company.

Fade out 2005, fade in late Summer 2007. The client called because they were at odds with the outsourcing company. The client was thinking about canceling the entire project. It took several months to uncover the real issues, to separate symptom from problem, to understand what was really happening. By early Fall (still 2007) I had my own completed ITIL V3 Foundation certification (as part of an instructor’s bootcamp).

One of the things that surfaced, while attempting to get at the root cause of the differences between the two organizations, was that ambiguity in language was a major factor. Consider the following: What is a service? Do we mean the service in Service Oriented Architecture, or the service in Software as a Service, or the service in Web service or… So the fact that there were communication issues between the two companies should not be a surprise. (I posted additional examples of this type of ambiguity in the first article in this series.)

I had just complete own ITIL V3 Foundation certification. From course material and personal experience, it was clear that there were both the lifecycle and vocabulary implications. On a whim, I suggested that they spend an incremental amount of money to get the people involved in the communication between the two companies trained and certified in ITIL at the Foundation level — all of them, not some. The second aspect would be to enforce the use of an ITIL-based vocabulary in the communication between the organizations so that there would be agreed common meaning. The ticket of admission to talking to the other party would be an ITIL V3 Foundation certificate.

The client was talking about canceling the project. This would mean a write-off for the total spend (including vendors, partners, internal, direct, and indirect costs) close to $100 million. So the prospect of spending less then $100 thousand (i.e., less than 0.1 percent) to see ifITIL certification made a difference was acceptable to all parties.

The result: by the end of first quarter 2008 everyone involved in communications was properly certified. By the end of the second quarter it was clear the project had more progress than in the previous year. It was still behind, but at least the finger pointing was seriously mitigated, and both parties agreed that they were on a successful path to completion. By the end of the 2008 the disagreements and the blame game were history and the project was back on track.

Is there value in ITIL certification? Both of these companies believe there is. Without the ITIL, both sides agree, the project would have been canceled.

Bottom line: ITIL certification doesn’t say you can do anything. It says you have (even at the Foundation level) knowledge of ITIL vocabulary, understand the service lifecycle, that the first consideration has to be about and for people, and then ITIL recommendations for good practice processes. Don’t make it more (or less) than it is.

Next week I’ll have a commentary about the state of the ITIL and it’s acceptance (or lack thereof).

Comments or more questions:
David.Moskowitz@gmail.com
Follow me on Twitter @DavidM2

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