APMG

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.

Is a British Government website inaccurate or is APMG TSO operating without a license?

As I have said before, probably the biggest gun in the ITSM skepticking field right now is Aidan 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 Aidan 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 Aidan 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.]

TSO and APMG both maintain websites "on behalf of" OGC. TSO also maintains their own commercial site with a confusingly similar name to their "on behalf" one. Neither of them provide any user community- that is left to itSMF to do. Page ranks of pages are [corrected:] 6 or less, while for purposes of comparison the less popular ISACA quietly maintains a page rank 8. The Wikipedia entry is rubbish. ITIL's online brand presence is a dog's breakfast - ill-conceived and poorly executed.

Who now controls ITIL? Who sits atop this multi-billion-dollar empire and calls the shots? The real power behind ITIL is still fragmented, although one wonders for how long. The IT Swami predicts!

Sadly PRINCE2:2009 seems to be a scripted repeat of ITIL V3. Wholesale change is passed off as a minor revision. The public are assured that older certifications will still be of value and that the new certification is no big deal. Your Highness, don't alarm the peasants.

We went through exactly the same crap with ITIL V3, the - haha - "Refresh".

[Updated 6 May to use correct link] It has arrived. As previously disclosed, the OGC has appointed APMG to administer a scheme to assure ITIL compliance of software.

We had ITIL V3 in 2007 (and 2008 and 2009 if you are talking exam syllabus), and PRINCE2:2009 (why not PRINCE3? - it was a sweeping rewrite). Apparently we have also just had PMBOK 4th Edition.

In both cases of ITIL V3 and PRINCE2:2009, OGC/APMG have cavalierly assured users there was little difference and they should happily continue to pay for the old exams up until the time it is no longer convenient for the training companies for users to pay for the old exams. And of course in both cases this was crap, with the new syllabus being totally different.

The new PMP exams are due June 30th. How different will they be?

It is a happy day indeed for the IT Skeptic when I find myself singing the same song as such a venerable member of the ITIL community as Aidan Lawes, and yet that is very much the case with a recent blog entry by Aidan. Does the ITIL V3 certification scheme provide real value to the buyer?

APMG have published a book of rules for ITIL V3 certification and training. This is excellent, exactly the kind of thing that should be public. We now look forward to OGC, itSMF and TSO doing the same in other areas, such as:

• acceptance of Complementary publications
• contractual agreements between the entities (for example did you know that itSMF have a contractual agreement with APMG to “use all reasonable endeavours to promote and market their services worldwide”)
• itSMF member code of conduct
• IPESC charter and approvals process
• itSMF charter(s) and constitution(s)

The booklet is excellent. It lays out just what we need to know. More of this please, Castle ITIL.

There were a few interesting bits...