The Security Blog

by David Moskowitz

What does the ITIL Certification Mean? What is the value?

In the first article in this series we said that ITIL was descriptive not proscriptive. Certification in the the ITIL similarly indicates knowing about, not practical experience. Certification in any aspect of the ITIL indicates knowledge about the subject matter of the test. It means the individual has spent the time and energy to learn about an overview of the Library (Foundation level) or more in depth of either the service lifecycle (aka the 5 core volumes of the ITIL), or capabilities that combine aspects of the lifecycle into specific.

The value of certification depends on the individual and the organization. The basic concept is that passing any of the certification exams demonstrates the potential for the individual to contribute to improving the IT Service Management (ITSM) maturity of the organization. On a personal level achieving any professional certification should provide some level of satisfaction for a job well done!

Champions and supporters for an effort to adopt (or improve) ITSM are more likely to emerge from people who actually know something about the Library and what it represents.

Consider this from the Service Operation Volume:

Champions are often created or heavily influenced through formal Service Management training, particularly at more advanced levels where the potential benefits to an organization, and to the individuals who make a career path in Service Management, can be fully explored.

Most of the failed ITIL adoption efforts I’ve seen have some common markers. I covered contra-indicators for ITIL adoption in the last article. What I’m talking about here is different, not contra-indicators per se, but a way to gauge the probability of both success and failure once the effort starts. There are no guarantees either way.

One of the challenges facing many adoption efforts is a dearth of people who have a reasonable understanding of IT Service Management and the ITIL. It’s hard to provide a universal quantification of "reasonable understanding" which is why this area has to be considered as part of the, "Planning to Adopt." effort. Another failure marker is not having enough good technical people who are able to handle both the technical and the service issues, who have demonstrated ITSM knowledge; that does not mean that having everyone trained and certified is a guarantee of success. There are people dynamics and the occasional hidden agendas that training usually won’t mitigate.

Training in ITSM is a critical part of any ITIL adoption effort. As noted above, Champions can evolve from Service Management Training. it can also help convince some borderline folks of the benefits for the effort. This does not mean that training only 1 or 2 key people is sufficient. Each lifecycle area, each process area, should have people appropriately trained in their area. Excellence in Service Management doesn’t come from using technology tools. I don’t know who said it, but it’s true: A fool with a tool is still a fool. In fact, this is another marker for failure: Reliance on tools rather than people. The tool is never a replacement for individual knowledge and understanding ITSM objectives and organizational goals.

Several categories of training should be delivered. Note, most are not specifically ITIL related:

• ITSM training, not specifically about ITIL, but the importance of developing a service culture — the basis for ITSM
• IT Staff need training in existing business process that will be inventoried as part of the initial planning
• ITIL training in the areas of their responsibility
• People skills. This is actually almost mandatory for people in customer facing roles (e.g., Service Desk personnel)
• Appropriate tool training
• Customers need to understand how to work with IT once ITSM becomes real. This could take the form of self-help screens. The key is that customers need to understand the changes and how to work with them (e.g., how to find and access services, submit requests for service or change, how to report incidents, etc.

The ITIL Certification Qualification Scheme

This article focuses on the ITIL V3 certification scheme. This site, the official site for the ITIL contains the information about the entire ITIL qualification scheme (direct link here . Currently, there are 11 possible certifications/tests available as part of the ITIL V3 certification scheme. There is a point system associated with each certification.

What follows is a brief overview:

Foundation

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