Pink President's Blog

A Team Of ITIL Experts, Or An ITIL Expert Team?

For an organization to sponsor an individual to become an “ITIL Expert”, I believe there are three big challenges:

1. Time: To complete 6 or 7 courses, most of which are 4-5 days long, will take most people 2-3 years, at least. If having an ITIL Expert on staff is such a good idea - then why wait so long? I’m a big fan of thinking long term, but this is pushing it!

2. Cost: My estimate is $30K-$50k once you factor in all associated fees, expenses and time away from regular work.

3. Risk: All that time, all that money and at the end you have one of the most marketable IT service management professionals in the world on your staff - but for how long?!

As I said in a previous post, organizations need to see real benefit from their education & training investments, and embarking on an ITIL Expert sponsorship just seems too risky to me. So how about we spread the risk out across the team?

Any large organization these days will have management responsibilities spread across a multi-person management team - so why not train them up to be a “Management Expert Team”? Same goes for a “Practitioner Expert Team”. You could have these teams in place and deliver ITSM improvements within weeks. The risk is reduced, and if the training is bulk purchased over a relatively short period of time any training provider will give you a good deal - so costs can be lower too. I’d just make sure they’re all on the same page as far as the organization’s vision, objectives, projects and plans are concerned, so I’d make sure they do some Road Map Planning together to top off their training.

I really like the possibility of having productive “Expert Teams” functioning and delivering results in a matter of a few weeks instead of waiting years.

1. David,

   I agree with your approach on this which is why I created a series of online self-study bundles supported by a team of ITIL Expert mentors so they can get there even quicker at a price point that fits into their modified training and travel budgets. The key to this is to have an external mentor (head coach) who can manage the team and the politics normayy associated with a team like this

   Posted by rick  on  04/27  at  06:55 AM

2. Glad to hear it, Rick.

   We need more consultants and trainers to help practitioner customers look at the education options more creatively. We don’t have to take what’s presented to us (i.e. that “pyramid chart” from APMG Group) and just accept that’s how we have to manage our own personal - and organizational - development.

   Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)  on  05/16  at  08:09 AM
Page 1 of 1 pages