Call for authors and reviewers for the ITIL V3 Refresh refresh

All you budding ITIL authors, now is your chance.

You've had prior warning of the ITIL Refresh-refresh. Now TSO give you three weeks to make a submission to be the author of a rewrite of one of the six books (Official Introduction is also being revised). Hey it's more notice than they gave authors of other frameworks!

Time to decide if you want to give up near a year of your life to (re-)writing, editing, reviewing, launching, and promoting for the princely sum of £10,000, plus of course fame and glory (and criticism and derision from the likes of me) until the next refresh unpicks your work again.

Comments

Is this on schedule?

Authors should have been chosen in November and reviewers in December. Has anyone heard anything?
Aale

gathering pace

Can't find anything, haven't heard anything except the appointment of the "mentors" on December 8th with the reassuring news that "The update ... is gathering pace". Gathering from zero to crawl one assumes...

What is the future of ITIL

There have a few discussions on the subject of ITIL as a fad. Here are some thoughts on the matter.

When I started with Quint, the CEO Frank Grift predicted that the training boom will last for eight years. Looking at the growth figures of ITIL exams one can see the 8-year wave which started in 1994 and reached the peak 1998. This is the mainly Dutch wave (there might have been an earlier UK wave?). In 2002 a new wave started (I saw that coming and in June 2002 wrote to my Finnish customers that ITIL is coming). The second wave peaked in 2004 and is slowing down. (This would look better in a graph but I suppose I cannot add one, Rob?)

1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008
317 % 152 % 150 % 194 % 155 % 142 % 112 % 114 % 129 % 201 % 197 % 156 % 149 % 118 %

Please notice that these are annual growth percentages, the actual exam volume in 1998 is less that 10% of the 2001. Please notice that the business is still growing at a rate of 100%. The point is that the speed of the growth is slowing down rapidly and if there is no new wave coming, it predicts the end of the ITIL training industry. I saw a similar wave with help desk consulting and training in 1993-2000.

This might mean that when ITIL 3.5 comes out late 2012 or more likely early 2013, there will not be much interest.

Aale

reports of ITIL's death may be premature

If annual growth rates are "falling" towards an annual doubling, I'd say the wave has plenty of years to run yet. based on that graph growth won't stop for years, which will still leave us with a huge industry with massive momentum.

Stupid error in graph

Finally found this and realized that there was a stupid error in this post. These are just percentages compared to last year. To get the actual growth, I should have subtracted 100%. So in 2008, the volumes were still growing but the speed of growth was dropping fast and now the actual volumes are dropping.

Here are the total numbers

and here is the growth graph

Until 2008 the numbers are from EXIN exams but 2009 is extrapolated from APMG first three quarters. I suppose Exin has lost market share and it is likely that the real 2008 figure was higher. This would mean that 2009 drop was also bigger. Bad economy can be a major reason for the big drop but I think it will continue in 2010.

This is not good for the training industry. There will be a new version out in 2011 and there are hints that the changes will not be minor. Frances Scarff says that" the qualifications scheme is not the driver". There are 11 courses in the scheme and some of them have just a few hundred students worldwide. V2 Service Manager is still far more popular. I wonder how many training companies will bother to update the courses to match the new "edition" of ITIL.

OGC should re-design the sorry scheme and I would not be surprised if they did it.

Aale

Interesting!

Wow!
Those graphs are really interesting. It would be really nice to be able to compare the growth graph with the growth of other non APM certification schemas, like ISO 20K or COBIT Foundations.

May be this is showing a market saturation or it is showing a lost of interest on becoming ITIL certified (just in the middle of an important trend in the forums and social media about ITIL failure).

About the comment on the popularity of V2 Service Manager, I think it's normal because of the high investment you must do in order to get the ITIL Expert using the V3 pathway, so everybody is pushing the V2 SM and then the V2 to V3 bridge. This will end this year... and then we will see the real failure of the V3 certification scheme (high price combined with economical situation is a guarantee for the failure).

Aale, do you have this graphs posted anywhere? Can I use them for a post giving a reference to you? (where?)

Regards,

Antonio Valle
G2, Gobierno y Gestión de TI
http://www.gedos.es

Aale's graphs

The graphs come from
Here are the total numbers http://pohjoisviitta.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/slide1.png

and here is the growth graph
http://pohjoisviitta.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/slide2.png

Money talks and Castle ITIL walks

James wrote a good post where he might have referred to this discussion.
http://coreitsm.blogspot.com/2010/04/and-your-specialist-subject-is.html (I tried to comment direct but somehow got rejected twice.)

I do not think that ITIL is over. I hope that the V3 training boom ends very soon. It is great if this lousy training scheme fails. The main motivation seems to have been maximizing book sales. Trying to push all five books into one Foundation has not made much sense.

I sincerely hope that money talks and Castle ITIL walks. They need to listen to the market needs. Foundation training has to be useful for the student. Scope must be limited, there has to be time to explain concepts, not run through the table of contents of the five books.

Aale

PS I already told Antonio it is ok to use the graphs. Publicity may speed up the process. I have noticed that when I say that the V3 Foundation has too much content, people open up and say that they did not get anything out of the course. I suppose that is something people do not want to confess so easily.

Quoting Tolkien

I use to tell the students that sentence that Bilbo told to Frodo when he was resting at Elrond's home: ""I feel...thin. Sort of stretched, like...butter scraped over too much bread." . This is how ITIL V3 foundations looks like.

Antonio Valle
G2, Gobierno y Gestión de TI
http://www.gedos.es

A better? quote

"One ring to rule them all and in the darkness bind them"

ITIL v1 40+ books, all interesting however only 10 (11?) considered in scope for foundations...
(Favorite books are still Managing in Time of Radical Change and Understanding and Improving)

ITIL v2 6/ 7? books of which Service Support. Service Delivery...and sometimes Security in scope for foundations
Really like the other books in V2... Business and IT Operations especially

ITIL V3 trying for the whole thing...and getting pushback regarding relevance.
Horses for courses, historically, people have found value in the titles that have content geared to their needs.

My favorite quote from an IT Manager regarding V3.... "Look I shovel the coal that keeps the ship moving, someone else needs to think about navigation and steering."

The challenge is in getting people to recognize what parts they need to use, or in recognizing which pieces to use for the people you are working with. V3 provides an end to end perspective and approach. Its about using the pieces relevant to the audience. As a consultant, it gives me a source to reference for langauge and concepts and assists in developing solutions that fit the clients needs.

2 cents worth, double parked... Gotta go.

ITIL jobs

That post of mine Aale refers to is a bit of a marker for a wider discussion. There is something unsettling about the way ITIL and ITSM terminology is being used in UK job adverts, but I can't quite put my finger on what it is. Part of it is that ITIL, and v3 in particular, is being specified for more and more roles but with less and less evidence that those specifying it have thought out how ITIL is actually relevant. I think the same applies to the training. On paper it is great that large numbers are being trained, but not if it is just a tick in the box process.

James

Do you fancy it?

How about you?

I mean, are you considering it? I think it would be pretty interesting if the poacher became gamekeeper so to speak.

But I'm agreeing that the remuneration sucks...

writing books

Nobody gets rich writing books (unless you are Gladwell or Bryson or Rowling). You do it for the ongoing revenue from the fame, for the glory, for a cause, or for the personal gratification and self expression.

My family is walking too fine a line beside poverty to take this on, even if ten thousand quid looks a lot better in NZ$. I'd not be good at this task either: what is needed is crossing off a lot of details not big-picture conceptualising - that is explicitly prohibited. And that's assuming TSO would even consider me - a few bridges burnt there...

ahh pick a topic you've written on

and submit it as a chapter/section (copyright issues notwithstanding).

These things are written by committee from the look of it (well - the V2 one I have looks like that). It'd probably be profitable to have your name on one as a contributor.

No dosh - just kudos with big payback. I know pink elephant emphasize their part in these things. If you picked something that you were intimately familiar with, AND which is currently screwed up, then it might not be the mountain it looks.

oops - and a comment AFTER reading tfa

I really should read The FineArticle that's referenced before commenting. I've been on slashdot too long.

ok they want ONE author per book - big mistake I think (although books written by multiple authors are seldom well done).

Still - you'd make a good reviewer. Which might have payback.

dave

There will be many authors

Well... if they assign the books to different authors than in V3.0, then... what will happen? complete rewrite? style mixing?

Antonio Valle
G2, Gobierno y Gestión de TI
http://www.gedos.es

IT Skeptic Member Poll request

The OGC has announced it will be performing a refresh of the ITIL V3 refresh. I would like the IT Skeptic to respond to this challenge by:

0 Volunteering to be a reviewer
0 Volunteering to be an author
0 Continuing to remain independant and not get sucked into Castle ITIL.

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