ITIL Version 3

Should you or your staff be taking the V3F or the V2 certification

I am often asked these days by many of our customers if they should take the V2 or the V3 Foundation. Here is what is happening.

The ITIL V2 books will no longer be published by The Stationery Office (TSO) after the end of 2007. The same goes for the ITIL V2 Foundation exam. The practitioner level course will be available until late 2008.

Yes there is a major difference in the scope and the depth of the Foundation course between V2 and V3. V2 covers only 2 books (10 processes and 2 functions) while the ITIL V3 course covers 5 books (20 processes and 4 functions). In addition, there are more generic concepts to cover in the v3 course. Twice as much stuff in barely 50% more time. As the scope increased the international qualification panel and board had to make decisions on the level of detail for each topic. They also had to ensure that the Accredited Training Organizations (ATOs) would be able to sell the foundation course without impacting their business models.

The V2 course syllabus fits nicely in 2 days with the exam at the end of the second day. The V3 course syllabus needs more time, this is why the course is 3 days with the exam at the end of the third day. Very few organizations would be able afford to have their IT staffs attend a 5 day foundation-level course. This is another reason why the course is 3 days.

There will be a Bridging Course for the people who already have the ITIL Foundation certification. If you already have the Foundation certification, then you don’t need to take the ITIL V3 Foundation course (unless you want to of course). If you or your staff do not have the ITIL Foundation certification, then take the ITIL V3 course. Yes the two courses are different. Would you send people to be trained on one version of an operating system or application when it is being replaced by a newer version? The same logic applies to ITIL V3.

I have been involved with ITIL since 1997 and already back then we had people who thought that the material was either too detailed or not enough while some complained that the course was too long or too short. I guess we can’t please all the people all the time. Different people learn in different ways. By the way, historically, 9 out of 10 people pass the foundation exam.

By the way the intend of a foundation-level course is not to give anyone the knowledge and skills to be able to immediately implement the material just learned. I have taken introductory courses in accounting and marketing for example and this does not make me an accountant or an expert in marketing. The same logic applies to ITIL. If you want to become an expert in ITIL, attend the appropriate courses, read the books (again and again and again) and apply the concepts in your organization.

I hear and read a lot about people not needing to know anything about strategy and designing processes and continual improvement. They only want the so-called “day-to-day” operational stuff. I am sorry to disagree. Everyone in IT needs to understand the concepts of Service Strategy, Service Design of Continual Improvement. Oh and by the way, these also happen on a daily basis. Everyone in IT must understand why they are doing their job. To accomplish this they need to understand the entire service lifecycle. This is what the ITIL V3 Foundation will give them.

There are a lot of nay-sayers out there who claim that this stuff is way over the head of their IT staffs. Give me a break. These people are a lot smarter than you give them credit for. I say give them the knowledge. Send them on an ITIL V3 Foundation course. You and your organization can only benefit from it.

Soon there will be courses and certification around each book and around the clustering of processes based on the ITIL V3 lifecycle approach. Already such clustering exists in V2. These courses will go to the level of details that will enable you and your staff to properly apply these concepts into your organization. You have to learn to crawl before you run.

ITIL is not that difficult to learn. It just takes time.