Posted September 1st, 2010 by Roman Jouravlev
More is not always better.
At the moment, we have at least four major players in the field of professional certification for ITSM specialists: ITIL-based from APM Group, ISO 20000-based from EXIN and TUV, ISO 20000-based from itSMF-UK and multi-sourced one from ISEB (based on industry best practices from ITIL®, COBIT®, ISO/IEC 20000 and SFIA). I consider this development as a very bad sign. We are now one step further away from commonly accepted qualification standard for the industry, and one step closer to ITSM certificates devaluation. The more institutes declare their own way of proving ITSM competence, the less value a customer gets from any of them.
We have been experiencing similar situation in the area of higher education here in ex-USSR (post-Soviet) countries. The number of universities, academies and institutes of many kinds increased dramatically since 1991, while the overall quality of education dramatically decreased. Several laws have been issued during last three or four years in order to correct the situation. The government is now trying to introduce clear quality criteria and effective controls to ensure that national diplomas do have the value they claim.
But there is no governance in ITSM. No body to collect what we are losing now. APMG seems to be quite happy with their qualification scheme disregarding the fact that this scheme has become the main drivers for others to offer alternatives – due to its formalism, complexity and impracticality. itSMF could in theory become a common independent non-commercial certifying body, but internationally it has lost some power since APMG joined ITSM world while national chapters can hardly become a base for international certification.
So what can we expect to happen in this area? Personally, I see three main scenarios to choose from.
Scenario 1: dictatorship
By now ITIL keeps its status of the main and the most official collection of good practices and this status keeps selling anything carrying ITIL logo – including exams..
But if another qualification scheme becomes popular enough to take over a notable part of the market – at least in particular country – OGC and APMG will realize losses in audience and income. Naturally, it is expectable they will take some steps to drop competing schemes off the market, or – more likely – to acquire it. Just by accepting as valid and ITIL-compatible. We’ve seen a similar scenario when APMG had agreed with EXIN and ISEB on ITIL certification couple of years ago. “If you can’t beat them, join them”. A good way to implement this policy is to cooperate with itSMF: to obtain its exclusive approval for ITIL scheme and consequently grant a sub-approval to others. For money.
It is unlikely but still possible they will at the same time review the qualification scheme taking into account some of critical and skeptical comments they are ignoring now.
Scenario 2: feudalism
APMG continue ignoring alternative qualification schemes. Another two or three of them arise in upcoming months – from internationally recognized companies such as Pink Elephant or from national itSMF chapters. Big international companies keep following ITIL certification while smaller local customers partly migrate to newly introduced schemes due to better prices and more practical orientation (both advantages are quite easy to achieve).
In this case ITIL will finally lose most of its status and OGC will have to work hard to return it. See Soviet and/or Yugoslavian history.
Scenario 3: capitalism
Qualification schemes introduced by EXIN, ISEB and other non-APMG institutes compete trying to differentiate from others and especially from ITIL-based pyramid. Looking for factors of differentiation they finally obtain itSMF’s approval on local or international level. Or ISO’s. Or ISACA’s. Or ant major vendor’s. They also develop better, modern ways of taking exams, offer free training materials and templates for partners, etc, etc… And finally come to similar offers and price competition. Then some of them merge and finally we have two or three major qualifications each having a part of the market – more or less stable.
Conclusion
I’m afraid of dictatorship scenario: it is the most likely one, being the most industry-oriented and the least customer-oriented. Personally, I hope for capitalism. There are some signs present – for example, EXIN offers free courseware for training organizations following their scheme. Still I find the feudal scenario quite probable.
Jan van Bon
(01/09/2010)
Excellent observations. But there's more to it. It was not only "due to its formalism, complexity and impracticality" that alternative offerings came to the market. It's also the commercialized approach that APMG introduced. There was a lot of freedom in this field before APMG took over.
APMG was a newcomer to a market that was created and dominated by EXIN, with ISEB in the slipstream. Of course they had to 'work with EXIN' - and then slowly push it out of the way. Because that's what happened. APMG has successfully taken over the ITIL certification market. Reason: indeed, money. Unfortunately the quality for the customer and the ease of use suffered deeply.
ITIL has always been an extreme example of a push-market. But with ITIL v3, and APMG running the show, ITIL training is definitely not doing what the market expected. Huge investmenst were made to force the customer into the v3-model. APMG (with the help of OGC) is killing the v2 exam market, although the large majority of customers still isn't ready to even cope with v2... Push, push, push... But the market doesn't respond as hoped. Participants are staying away from the v3 trainings - at least in my country ;-). Alternatives, with a very practical structure, will be taking over the position of the theoretical ITIL trainings.
OGC doesn't have to work on this failing scenario, since OGC has no real interest in the international status of ITIL. But as usual, organizations like OGC are influenced by commercial stakeholders who use them as their instrument to get to the money.
All of this is the beginning of the end of ITIL. Actually, ITIL has always been misused by the push market, as an implementable system - which it clearly is not. Page one even states this explicitly. But there's no stopping of the ignorant consultants doing it anyway.
In five years, we'll be laughing at ourselves, thinking "what the #$%^ got into us, that we followed this like tame sheep, instead of using our natural management skills to get in control of our companies?". And by that time I guess we'll be using the ITIL books for what they actually were all the time: very useful books with practical guidance on situations you may find in your own company, stuff you can use to be inspired by. In combination with guidance from the truckloads of other books, we'll have put it into practice in our own management system - like they've been doing in other disciplines for decades....
Aale Roos
(01/09/2010)
I agree.
With ITIL V2 we had a common language for ITSM. Yes, it was a bit shaky but it still made sense. Now we have a mess as Jan described in his recent column. It is is easy to make a mess and hard work to clean it.
It is a pity as the simple concepts of ITIL V2 actually did and do a fair amount of good to those who have understood them. It is better to have some structure in your work than have none. Also it is quite hard to define processes from scratch, I have seen many scary examples when customers have shown their home cooked process models, even V3 begins to look good ;-)
Ian Clayton
(01/09/2010)
Interesting comments - I tend to agree with much of what you have written and here is why - we have created an alternate qualification scheme here in the US - the Service Management Qualification Scheme (SMQS), offered by the non-profit Service Management Society. It was originally offered to the itSMF many years ago but there was little or no response. It is now in process to be approved by the American National Standards Institute, and you will hear much more of its flagship credentials the Certified Service Management Professional, and Certified Lean Service Professional as 2010 ends.
I must admit that the level of acceptance amongst organizations such as APMG and EXIMN is improving as they seek alternate revenue generators to plain old ITIL. Frankly ITIL has been exposed by the economic perfect storm and the need to justify attending a course with benefits achieved by putting the knowledge learned to immediate use.
The SMQS is role based, and I now see the players speaking to this need... hhmm.. The Society's motto (www.sm-s.org) is "Value from Knowledge and Experience". Behind this is a feeling there is a need for education that transfers knowledge that translates into something a professional can apply with ease - immediately - without the need to adopt an onerous framework.
I'll be writing more on this later this year - thanks again for an interesting article.
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