training

For all those who have paid lots of money to be accredited ITIL V3 training organisations (ATOs), be aware that APMG-International the Examination institute (EI) - as compared to their parent APMG Group the official OGC accreditor of all EIs - is not directing any business your way if you accredited through another EI. You know who your friends are in the ITIL world.

If you know something about IT operations (not just development) and your IQ is in triple figures then passing the ITIL V3 Foundation exam should be no big deal and no big investment. Follow these steps:

Personally I find learning from online videos even harder than learning from online webpages ("ooh look an incoming email..."), but for those of you who can stomach death-by-video this might be a good option for you to study free for your ITIL V3 Foundation course. This post has compiled and sorted a bunch of videos created by Marco Cattaneo and alerted me to the set, but you can also access them on Marco's own playlist on YouTube.

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

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".

In our mobile age it becomes very difficult for employers to build a base of expertise in the organisation. It leaks. You've no sooner paid for someone's ITIL Manager's (now Expert's) certificate and they are moving on. Pink Elephant has been talking about an interesting alternative approach: an expert team.

It greatly concerns me the huge numbers of people being sent on ITIL Foundation training. Given the cost of ITIL certification, I suggest companies who send staff on theoretical ITIL training - other than the small number actually involved in designing the transformation - are wasting their money. The real target group for that theoretical training are the specialists and consutants. My recommendations are:

APMG have just run an anonymous public survey for "your valuable feedback" on the ITIL V3 Foundation Syllabus. Who knew? Oh, come on! You had a whole five days to hear about it and respond.

This post has been podcast

Yet another unhappy camper prompted me to hammer on the cold stone walls of Castle ITIL once again, right over the blood-stains of last time I tried. But I won't. I give up. ITIL training and certification isn't going to change. It has been taken over by the money engine and is lost. The real experts are elsewhere.

[updated February 2009]

Most readers of this blog know this stuff but certainly not all so here's the IT Skeptic's shaky understanding of the world of ITIL V3 certification. I welcome corrections and elaborations.