Posted July 12th, 2010 by Roman Jouravlev

IT service management has been developing for almost 30 years. Naturally, it has got various attributes of a real branch of knowledge and industry: BOKs, tools, myths, satire and skeptics, various types of parasites… And among all that, ITSM has obtained professional certification for individuals. Nowadays, when good old ITILv2 is leaving, it is interesting  to have a look at qualification achievements in order to understand their value, their downsides and their perspectives.

Frankly, it would be fine to hear some analysis from examination bodies such as EXIN or ISEB – they should have enough data to convert it into a useful piece of information for the community. But it seems they have passed this information stage and proceeded directly to wisdom, which inevitably means keeping silent.
Working for several years as an ITSM trainer and course author I have had a good chance to assess dynamics and reasons of ITSM certification in Russia and CIS. Some of my observations are likely to be interesting for ITSM people outside Russia as well.

Past: value from ITILv2 professional certification

Foundation
As any other basic certification it was to prove individual’s awareness of the structure and content of the library.

• Some companies considered it as a required element of IT competency.
• Therefore some individuals considered it as an advantage in their efforts to join certain companies
• Some individuals planned their career in ITSM and take Foundation as a required step towards practitioner and/or manager certificate(s).

Note: in fact it was not ITIL Foundation but ITSM-according-to-ITIL Foundation since it covered only two core books of ITILv2. There was nothing about ICT infrastructure management, or business perspective, or planning to implement ITSM…

Practitioner
After being clustered in 2006 these exams covered four areas of ITSM:

• IPSR – Support and Restore
• IPRC – Release and Control
• IPAD – Agree and Define
• IPPI – Plan and Improve.

The trainings designed in accordance with relevant syllabi had to include a real-life practical assignment as well as detailed theory of the processes studied. In my opinion, these were the most interesting and the most useful ITIL trainings. ITIL Practitioner is a great sample of optimal balance between real-life utility and theoretic knowledge. This balance was achieved by the practical assignment which was required for getting certificate, not only for learning. But the exam itself was a multiple-choice test designed to check if a candidate knows the book by heart.

Every certified ITIL Practitioner I personally know is a real professional possessing deep knowledge as well as practical experience and real skills.
Unfortunately only few of such professionals have any interest in being certified. Moreover, only few of  IT managers consider this certification to be important.

I believe this level is widely underrated – at least, that is how things go here in Russia.  By now we have thousands of Foundation certificates, about 200 certified Managers and 40-50 certified Practitioners maximum. Note: Russia is quite big.

Manager
“Red badge” certificate aimed to prove competence, capabilities and knowledge required to rule a service management system. It had to be focused on process management more than on service management. The exam was essay-style, scenario-based, interesting and difficult. I delivered this training many times for about 300 students and I know personally most of Russian certified Service Managers. I can state: 99% of them deserve this status.

All these exams are leaving. By December, 31st 2010 all ITILv2 examinations will be ceased.

 
Present: Climbing ITILv3 certification pyramid
APM Group introduced new qualification scheme together with ITIL v3. There are three levels:

Foundation
The objectives of this level are the same: to prove awareness. The only difference from ITILv2 Foundation is scope: now it covers all five books of the library. For the exam as for the training this means broader but shallow: less time and less questions for more of material.
In most cases it does not matter: it does not affect reasons for certification stated above.

Intermediate
Here we have to confusing streams combining same processes in different manner. As training provider I must say it is almost impossible to explain the difference between, say, operational support and analysis from capability stream and service operations from lifecycle stream. Officially, capability stream is a substitute for Practitioners while lifecycle is successor of service manager. Unofficially the streams are not easy to distinguish.
The most important change was made to the form of examination, not to the matter. There is nothing practical there any more. Multiple choice scenario-based questions aim to check one’s memory more than one’s knowledge or skills. Scenarios do not help: many questions do not depend on them at all while they still take much time to read through – a bad surprise for non-English candidates.

Bad surprise for everybody: in order to proceed with expert certification one has to pass at least five intermediate exams including managing across the lifecycle which – officially – is another part of intermediate level. That means if you want to prove your ability to manage a builder’s team you should first certify your own skills in working with hummer, spade, bulldozer and crane (or in managing each of the workers).

Expert
One becomes expert automatically after passing 5 Intermediate exams including managing across the lifecycle (theoretically) or after passing manager’s bridge (real-life case).  Recent discussion at LinkedIn Manager’s/Expert’s group shows that the only individuals who have chosen the long way up are professional ITIL instructors. Next year some “normal” professionals from industry will come there – or will not.
By now ITIL Expert has got quite unpleasant image of formal and useless certification – thanks to upgraded managers sharing their impressions after passing the bridge.

Future: More (ore less) value for less (or none) audience?

I am afraid we will see the following scenario here in Russia next years after v2-to-v3 bridges are also ceased.

• Intermediate exams will stay unpopular. Trainers, consultants and few people from industry will get certified in the first two years.
• Therefore experts grown from intermediate level will become endangered species in our land before becoming present.
• ITIL professional certification is to become ITIL Foundation certification.

This pessimistic scenario has good chances to become real if a good achievable alternative arise. And I think that a qualification scheme based on ISO20000 which is now promoted by EXIN can grow to become such an alternative.

 

Average: Select ratingPoorOkayGoodGreatAwesome

Your rating: None Average: 3.7 (12 votes)