Should ITIL certification exam multiple-choice questions test one's knowledge of the holy writ of the ITIL books or one's knowledge of the principles of ITIL or one's skills in mental manipulation and logic? I'm told by someone with photographic memory that one of the ITIL Foundation exam questions looks something like the following, which is quite similar to a sample question we discussed before.

I'm always banging on about how COBIT is a superset of ITIL. So where does ITIL Knowledge Management fit in COBIT? I don't think of it as Configuration Management even if some of the documents are CIs: KM is a much higher discipline than that. Is this one aspect of ITIL that COBIT doesn't address?

As I have said before, probably the biggest gun in the ITSM skepticking field right now is Aiden Lawes. Once again he has turned the flamethrower onto the ITIL Software Scheme, with a blistering post on his blog: "people with vested interests increasingly seem to find a ready platform for their propaganda... The software assessment service springs to mind as a prime example. Purported to be launched in the interest of the procurer, it seems to be much more in the interests of the small group (OGC, APMG and SMCG) involved in its secretive development." I'll let you read it there. Apart from agreeing with Aiden that a standard that is secret is lunacy (the kind of lunacy that only the British could invent), I'd like to pick up on some points that Aiden didn't address.

[Update: For the record, the IT Skeptic does not believe that there is anything illegal or dishonest about the ITIL Software Scheme. I do allege that it has been conducted in a manner that is inept, naive, unnecessarily secretive and without proper consideration for most of the stakeholders. It seems to me to be about as far from best practice in setting standards as one can imagine.]

Further to our discussion around the real cost of ITIL certification, readers are reminded that there still exists a fast track to Expert status that is quicker and cheaper. It still isn't that quick or cheap, but it is better than the primary path. And it won't be around for long. The ITIL Qualifications Board's latest survey shows them bunching muscles, gathering themselves for the final spring, to kill off ITIL V2 certification once and for all. (For pity's sake, have your say to try and make that as hard as possible for them). In the meantime there is another way

Can anyone who was at the Gartner conference this week confirm what I saw on Twitter? "Major takeaway from Gartner IOM event is less than 5% of fortune 2000 have an active CMDB installed "

A forum post on LinkedIn asked us what will IT be like in 2011? I checked the police website and found the IT Swami was last seen in Hokitika, poaching paua (abalone) for the Chinese market. After a close shave while diving under the influence he appears to have seen the light on stripping our birthright to supply Asian greed through Kiwi greed. I finally found him building a gypsy house-truck that included a local area network, UPS and satellite link. I got up early enough in the morning to catch him sober (as he wasn't awake yet) and quickly recorded his predictions while he fumbled for his cigarettes:

We've raised the issue before of whether ITIL certification offers a return on investment, especially if you pay your own way as compared to scamming the boss into paying for it. For those of you who are self-funded, the total cost may be food for thought. I reckon it is up to $60,000 or even more, depending on your hourly rate, not to mention 4 to 6 weeks out of your life.
[Updated: I was asked about online training so I looked at that too. Courses are much cheaper but if you factor cost of your time it is still a hefty commitment.]

FWIW, here are some sample ITIL service catalogue documents. They may not be flash but they are better than what you get in the ITIL V3 Service Design book. I have used these a couple of times with success but they are not extensively road tested: they are provided on an as is basis with no warranty or support.

The word on the street is that they are! One training provider's blog suggested that since the latest revision of the syllabus perhaps "the exam was quite different from the course materials and the sample exam".

A reader had a quiet word with us about the relative costs of itSMF conferences, and we discovered on investigation that there is a most extraordinary diversity of cost around the world. Each itSMF chapter is constitutionally obliged to hold a chapter conference, but boy do they have a range of pricing for them. Aussies should have come to our conference in NZ- you'd have got a holiday in lovely Wellington, along with Sharon Taylor, Ivor MacFarlane, Rob Stroud, your prez, and others, and probably still had change left. And how about the Netherlands? Free to members! That's how you drive membership.

Forums are often full of total newbies trying to find out, and only slightly-less-newbies answering their questions. I know blogs like The IT SKeptic are nearly as dangerous for their self-appointed-expert status, but at least you have Google page-rank as some indicator of how others view the site. On a forum it is hard to evaluate what a poster knows unless you already know the answer to the question. Look at this example

Worldwide there is an overall IT professional accreditation spreading, in the UK (CITP), Europe, the USA, Australia and other places. Not before time.
For too long IT managers have accepted poor documentation, subverted change control and general ill-discipline from IT technical staff simply because they held the sacred knowledge about the technology under their care.
The understanding is emerging that the long-term health of IT depends more on professional behaviour: good process, good data, good record-keeping… a good culture amongst the staff. There is less patience with the prima-donnas and the cowboys.

How many revisions of the ITIL V3 Foundation syllabus have we had since Passing Your ITIL Foundation Exam was published? It must be pretty badly out of date by now. [Update: TSO's ITIL Foundation Handbook was revised in June 2009 to fully comply with the May updates. But Passing Your ITIL Foundation Exam is still dated November 2007.
Update update: A new version of the book is reportedly in review]

Unemployed skeptics have too much time to ponder things. As I lay sprawled on the footpath outside the labour exchange in the sun, it occured to me that although we are stuck with the word "incident" for historical reasons, there must be a better word for it.