training

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.

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.

With the release of the new format for ITIL V3 Intermediate exams, once again APMG and the ITIL Qualifications Board have opted for maximising profitability and sellability of product for the ITIL Version 3 training industry over maximising the quality of the resulting trainee.

Just how does itSMF involve the members? What does itSMF International do for international communications? How did the ITIL Qualifications Board survey the ITIL "community"?

This post has been podcast
Now that OGC have outsourced ITIL certification and trainer accreditation to APMG, a private for-profit company, let us look at the people who influence the shape of ITIL V3's slowly emerging qualifications system.

The governing body advising APMG, the "senior examiners", is mostly made up of the biggest vendors. Check out the names:

Nobody has called me out on the disconnect between my past strident criticism of the training industry for flogging ITIL2 training as ITIL3 loomed, and my advice now to go for ITIL2 training and not rush into ITIL3.

You folk aren't dumb (with one or two obvious exceptions who visit occasionally), so either you aren't paying attention or you are being kind or you get that there isn't really an inconsistency.

In case you don't get it, here's my rationalisation so I can appear in public:

APMG are you reading this?

The message is coming through on this blog loud and clear: the trainers actually delivering ITIL version 3 Foundations training are NOT HAPPY.

A posting on the UK itSMF member's forum by Sharon Taylor, Chief Examiner, resolves a few issues with the ITIL V3 qualifications scheme, including the 21.5 credits issue. It also states that "this is still work in development and many discussions are taking place to ensure the final form of the scheme..." So perhaps APMG's announcement was a little premature, because it certainly didn't mention any further "work in development".

The key points of Sharon's post: