Why do training organisations pay mega $$ for ITIL accreditation? October 21, 2009
Posted by ivankamenken in itil, itsm.Tags: apmg, elearning, exam, EXIN, IT Service Management, itil, ITIL V3, itsm, the art of service, value
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Caveat and pre-warning. This might turn into a little bit of a rant…
Today I was notified that we didn’t win a large training opportunity. This doesn’t happen often, but still.. not happy with the results. And as always I try to figure out where I could have assisted the client better in their purchasing process. Good thing is that this time I know who I lost the opportunity to, so I decided to check out what the differences are in our approach.
Now here’s the deal: The Art of Service is accredited with EXIN for all ITIL V2 and ITIL V3 certification courses, both for our classroom delivery and our eLearning delivery methods. And yes, the full list is:
- ITIL V2 Foundation
- ITIL V2 Practitioner IPAD, IPPI, IPSR, IPRC
- ITIL V2 Service Manager
- ITIL V2-V3 Foundation Bridge
- ITIL V2-V3 Manager Bridge
- ITIL V3 Foundation
- ITIL V3 Intermediate Capability SOA, PPO, OSA, RCV
- ITIL V3 Interemediate Lifecycle SS, SD, ST, SO, CSI
- ITIL V3 Managing Across the Lifecycle
This is important to us, as we want to do the right thing AND have that independent validation of our course materials.
(and I must admit – I am very critical of the fact that we have to be accredited for ITIL Foundation programs, when people can do self study or no study and sit the exam anyway… but we want to cover all bases hence the full suite of programs.)
This is what the friendly lady on customer service told me when I quizzed ‘the other company’ on their accreditation status:
you: Who is your ITIL Foundation course accredited with?
XXX: we don’t offer credits
you: ?
you: You offer ITIL V3 Foundation
XXX: yes
you: I only want to know if your ITIL course is ACCREDITED
you: who are you accredited with
you: ?
XXX: the training is a self study course
you: yes – I understand that
you: but who is the accrediting body who approved the courseware
you: or are you using somebody else’s materials?
XXX: We use the book from OCG which is the Official Guide to ITIL v3
you: that is great – but that’s only a book
you: who authorized the coursematerials?
XXX: and the training is instructor lead training delivered thru streaming video
XXX: the training is guaranteed
XXX: its not authorized by anyone
you: yes – who is the course approved / accredited / authorized by?
XXX:and noone has ever failed the exam after doing the training withus
XXX: with us
you: are you sure? (as this is compulsory for all providers due to copyright restrictions)
XXX: yes I am sure
you: ok – thank you
Isn’t that interesting? I mean – it will be a HUGE cost saving not to have to worry about the accreditation, audits, paperwork, renewals etc.
I might need to rethink our business model … what do you think?
What happened to Service Validation and testing in ITIL V3 Foundation Syllabus? April 15, 2009
Posted by ivankamenken in Uncategorized.Tags: apmg, certification, EXIN, IT Service Management, itil, ITIL V3, ITIL V4, itsm, rcv, the art of service, value
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Today was a very exciting but also very sad day for me… Our development team showed us the alpha version of the new ITIL V3 Foundation course material which is developed based on the new APMG/EXIN syllabus. This new course and the new exam is going to be launched on the first of May 2009 – so that is less than 15 days away!!
The material looks amazing! Very clear and easy to follow, with new diagrams and new illustrations. It is not just a ‘tweaked’ program, but basically an entire new course. We used the updated syllabus, but also input from our accredited trainers, partners and students to create this new material. So that was the exciting part of it. I think it will be a lot better for our students as a lot of the controversial material has been scrapped to make more room for discussion, debate and exercises.
But the sad part is that I will no longer experience the joy of discussing Service Validation and Testing during the Foundation program! I think I am going to be rebellious and discuss the V-model for service testing anyway.. HA!
To me the process of Service Validation and Testing together with the V-model is one of the most valuable additions to ITIL V3 in comparison to ITIL V2. Should there ever be an ITIL V4 I would really like to see even more of a stronger emphasis on testing and general Quality assurance and Quality control mechanisms in the framework.
I really enjoyed discussing the reasons for testing and validating your Service Design packages as part of this process… to give people at a Foundation level a sneak preview of the amazing value that this process gives to the overall framework. But I guess that cutting it from the syllabus will make the follow up training (like the intermediate program for ‘Release Control and Validation’ ) more desirable.
Why would APMG have made the choice to delete the process of ‘Service Validation and Testing’ from the syllabus? I really don’t know, but would love to find out!
Who came first: The chicken or the egg? (trying to answer the question why APMG/EXIN accredited ITIL Service Management trainers must pay for their ITIL V3 Intermediate exams? January 16, 2009
Posted by ivankamenken in itil, itsm.Tags: apmg, business, certification, EXIN, IT Service Management, itil, ITIL expert, ITIL V3, the art of service, value
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WOW – that is one massive title… 
The reason why I wanted to write about this subject of ITIL V3 intermediate exams is because I find it very difficult to ’sell’ this policy to my accredited trainers and our delivery partners.
This is the issue:
The Art of Service (and every other Accredited Training Organization) has to employ accredited trainers to be able to deliver the ITIL certification programs. This is part of the accreditation stipulation and we pay an annual fee per trainer for this accreditation, I get that.
But, with the new ITIL V3 certification stream APMG has also changed the trainer requirements. It is now a requirement that:
every trainer who wishes to teach any of the ITIL V3 intermediate programs has to have their ITIL V3 Expert certificate AND the certificate of the program they are going to teach.
From a quality point of view, I sorta-kinda get that as well. For our organisation this means that each trainer must sit 10 exams (!!) as there are 4 ITIL V3 Intermediate Capability exams and 5 ITIL V3 Intermediate Lifecycle exams PLUS the Managing Across the Lifecycle. As we have course material for each of those programs, and anticipate to deliver all of them – we have to be prepared and have each trainer qualify for all possible courses…
But – what I don’t understand is why accredited trainers have to pay full retail for sitting their exams? This is why I started to think about this as a chicken-and-egg conundrum.
- It is due to the trainers and their interaction with students that ITIL has become such a powerful and globally accepted management framework. And I am sure both EXIN and APMG reap the benefits from that! Also, don’t forget that we have to pay an annual fee for the trainer accreditation as well.However, on the other hand…
- Looking at the obvious fact that APMG is a commercial organisation they are probably trying to squeeze every dollar out of the industry. Could it be that APMG hasn’t sold as many exams as they promised to OGC at the beginning of their contract last year, so what better way to beef up the sales figures than by first mandating that all trainers must sit for the exams and then following this up with a full price charging mechanism for said exams. That is an amazing way to make sales and revenue figures – almost a license to print money! The trainers have no choice but to sit for the exams…. kaaaaching!!
Without trainers you don’t have accredited courses so no exam participants – which means no $$$ for APMG. And by charging for each trainer exam, I am sure people will become very selective in the type of exams they are going to sit for. Less trainers means less students, means less knowledge about the framework, which means that it is less well-known (and/or implemented incorrectly so it doesn’t clearly offers the value to the organization) which brings the risk that IT organizations will be looking at alternatives… Cobit anyone?!
There will be no ITIL V4, says Sharon Taylor October 16, 2008
Posted by ivankamenken in itil.Tags: apmg, CMMi, cobit, itil, itsm
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In yesterday’s keynote speech at the ITsmF Asia Summit in Singapore, Sharon Taylor explained how the ITIL V3 helps CIOs and IT organizations to link their IT strategies to business objectives.
A number of the key statements I picked up from her talk were:
- ITIL V3 is a combination of best practice, good practic and common practices…
- Don’t start your ITIL implementation by starting to read the Service Strategy book cover to cover – it will give you a headache
- You need to be educated and your staff need ongoing training. The certification scheme that APMG developed is designed to help with this. It gives more flexibility for students to pick and choose which courses they want to attend to achieve the 22 points for ITIL Expert status.
- Most popular part of ITIL V3 is the Service Portfolio
- Asia is frontrunner in the implementation of ITIL V3 – probably a cultural thing as the Asian region has a culture of acceptance of something new
- There will be no ITIL V4 – any changes or additions to the framework will be dealt with through the complementary guides (complementary in this context doesn’t mean ‘gratis’ it means ‘in addition to’ )
- The project group that is working on ITIL V3 is putting a lot of effort and time into synergy publications: how does ITIL relate to Cobit? How does ITIL relate to CMMi? How does ITIL relate to 6 Sigma? etc.
