Knapp I.T. » ITIL V2

Time is running out for the Manager Bridge!

Jill Knapp — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 23:13:18 +0000

If you already hold an ITIL V2 Service Manager certification and would like the shortest path to a V3 ITIL Expert, then the Manager Bridge class is for you.

The classes will not be offered for much longer, so you need to act soon!

APMG has scheduled the official retirement date of this class as June 30, 2011. This will be the last component of the ITIL V2 qualification scheme to retire.

So for those of you sad to see ITIL V2 go away, join me in one final drink on June 30, 2011.

Service Level Managers should not be smarmy

Jill Knapp — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 15:44:15 +0000

Recently I considered refinancing my mortgage. With interest rates being so low these days, I could easily knock 2.5 percentage points off my mortgage if I refinanced. I called my mortgage company and asked for information, and I was connected to a mortgage loan sales guy. He was the only human I had ever spoken with at my mortgage company; he was the face of my mortgage company.

Sadly, he was a stereotypical smarmy sales guy who was really trying to close the deal. He gave the hard sell (ick!), he interrupted my questions (argh!), and didn’t let me finish my answers (grrrr!). He pulled all of the typical annoying used-car salesguy tactics; e.g., “Let me check with my manager,” and “We have a special deal just for today, but you have to sign the paperwork in the next hour.” Uh, no.

So I said “Thanks but no thanks” and I took my business elsewhere. Even if my mortgage company could give me the best rates around, I’d rather pay a touch more just so I can feel good about who gets the commission.

What’s this have to do with ITSM/ITIL?

If you’ve taken my ITIL Foundation class, you’ve heard me make the analogy that your Service Level Manager is the face of IT to the folks who buy IT services (a.k.a. The Customer, or The Business).

To the business, the Service Level Manager is the one-stop-shopping role; the salesperson for IT. The SLM deciphers what the business needs and compares that to what IT can realistically deliver, and they negotiate how much it’s going to cost as well as the details of what’s to be provided. (They do other stuff too, of course.)

The Service Level Manager is a unique bird, and needs to have some madd skillzz, yo: They need to speak both techie-speak and business-speak, and they need to accurately capture the needs of The Customer, and also accurately convey the capabilities of IT. They have to be great communicators, they have to have backbone, they have to be good schmoozers, they have to know how to close a deal, negotiate contracts, and most of all, they need to have the ability to say “no, I’m sorry” but still be likeable.

With that said…

Make sure the person/people in your Service Level Manager role has those qualifications, or the business may very well choose to take their business elsewhere, just like I did.

Upcoming Service Desk Webcast – Free!

Jill Knapp — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 14:16:41 +0000

On Wednesday, August 11th from 3 – 4pm Eastern Time, I’ll be participating in a BrightTalk Summit revolving around Service Desk optimization. I’m giving a free presentation called “From Helpless Desk to Service Desk: 10 Tips for Transformation” and I hope you’ll attend! You can watch it right here from my site (below), or if you don’t see an embedded player, you can also click this link: http://www.brighttalk.com/webcast/22401

Farewell ITIL V2, you’ll be missed.

Jill Knapp — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 15:59:55 +0000

It’s finally happened: Foundation exams for ITIL Version 2 are officially retired and no longer available to new students. And when there’s no certification to earn, training is no longer perceived as valuable by the average Joe. This makes me sad since I cut my ITSM teeth on ITIL V2; so it will always hold a dear place in my heart.

But sentimentality aside, I think ITIL V2 still offers some value, especially for smaller organizations or companies just starting on the ITSM path.¹

ITIL Version 2 was published in 1999-2000 and is a set of nine² books, but the exam syllabus only covered the two most popular volumes from the set: Service Support and Service Delivery. With only two books to master, ITIL was a much simpler beast back then, with its ten processes and single function (compare that to V3’s 24-ish processes and four functions). True, the world and its technology have changed radically since Y2K, but ITIL isn’t about technology. It’s mostly about processes; and V2’s meat-and-potatoes processes (Incident, Problem, Change, Release, Config, SLM) haven’t really changed all that much from V2 to V3.

Many organizations have opted to stick with ITIL V2, despite the sunset. ITIL’s just a framework, after all; and once you adapt it to make it your own, the underlying framework becomes less relevant. The problem arises as these organizations hire new employees; getting them trained and certified in the same version as everyone else can be challenging, as fewer training companies continue to offer V2 training.

If certification isn’t the most important thing, you should ask your training provider if they’ll teach V2 classes without the certification. I can’t imagine any training company would turn away the work (and if they do, call me directly and I’ll be glad to teach it!).

If certifications are important however, then you’ll need to dive into ITIL Version 3. But how?

Consider retraining some of your managers / supervisors / leaders in ITIL V3. Once they get the hang of it, you can then decide if training everyone in V3 is the way to go, or if taking a hybrid approach (V2 for the operational worker bees; V3 for managers and above) makes more sense.

Stay tuned, and I’ll address the pros and cons of a V2/V3 hybrid approach in a later post.

——————
¹ There are books designed to assist the smaller organizations get their ITIL V3 implementation off the ground: ITIL Lite: A Road Map to Full or Partial ITIL Implementation, as well as an official OGC publication called “ITIL V3 Small Scale Implementation. However, there never were any certifications or formal OGC-approved training classes around these books, which means that if you find someone offering a class on such a thing, the instructor wouldn’t be adhering to a set OGC-blessed syllabus. (This, of course, may be a good thing depending on your perspective… heh.)

² ITIL V2 was originally published as eight books, not nine. But the 9th book (ITIL Small Scale Implementation) was published in 2006, prior to the release of ITIL V3. This book is different than the Small Scale Implementation book mentioned in the previous footnote.³

³ Are you really reading all of these footnotes? Impressive!

A Candid Word about ITIL Foundation Bridge Classes

Jill Knapp — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 20:00:41 +0000

With the end of ITIL V2 rapidly approaching, students are asking more about getting their certifications “upgraded” to an ITIL V3 certification. Many training organizations will tell you that the fastest way to get a V3 certification is to take the ITIL Foundation Bridge.

That’s true: It is the fastest. But is it worthwhile?

ITIL Foundation Bridge classes are short, intensive classes designed to fill V2-certified people in on all that’s changed in V3. At the end of class, there is a 20-question exam which participants have 30 minutes to finish; 13 or more correct answers earns a passing grade. Depending on the training provider, these classes are delivered as either a one-day class (for the sadists and/or the overly optimistic), or in a two-day format.

I’m speaking candidly here folks:
I am not a fan of Foundation Bridge courses; there is simply waaaay too much information to cover in too short a time.

It’s a matter of math: ITIL V3 has 24 processes and four functions (meaning, 28 “topics” to cover); V2 has 10 processes + one function (11 “topics” to cover). Since Bridge students are expected to remember all of the vocabulary and process ins and outs of V2, only the remaining 17 topics are covered in the Bridge class. However, students are tested on all of ITIL, not just the short-term-memory stuff they learned in class.

If you thought taking your ITIL V2 Foundation with only 11 topics to cover was intense, wait until you try to learn 14 processes plus three functions in even less time. I’m not saying it’s impossible to do; my students have been very successful, thankfully. But I am wondering how valuable it is, if the information won’t be easily retained and applied.

So when people ask me about the Bridge class, I usually tell people to just spring for the extra few bucks and take the full-blown ITIL V3 Foundation instead of the Bridge. Your retention rate will be higher since you’re not in panicky-exam-cram mode, and you’ll have a better chance for success.

I’m honestly not trying to upsell anyone; I just my students to be happy, relaxed, and successful!