Got my ITIL V3 Expert Status--- the hard way!

I'm feeling a little bit pleased with myself... I have qualified for the ITIL V3 Expert designation, and I did it the hard way.

The easy way to get Expert designation this soon after the release of V3 would be to take the ITIL V2 Service Manager course, followed by the ITIL V3 Manager's Bridge course, and the related exams, of course. If one is already holding the V2 Service Manager designation, then its just a case of taking the V3 Manager's Bridge...

That's not what I've done.

Because I am an accredited trainer with one of the ITIL accredited training organizations, I have had the unique opportunity to challenge all of the ITIL Capability exams and ITIL Lifecycle exams that have been released to date. I have the results for five (5) of the exams so far; Service Transition, Service Operations, SOA, OSA, RCV. And I passed them all. I am awaiting results on Service Design, CSI and PPO. Its important to note (from a very egotistical point of view!) that these exams were prepared for without the benefit of the 30 hours of instruction, nor a structured curriculum. All I had to work from was the syllabus and a last minute sample exam.

And then yesterday I wrote and passed the Managing Across the Lifecyle exam! And for that exam there was no sample available...

I'm feeling pretty good about all this at the moment.

The exams themselves are an unfortunate example of the difficulties to testing knowledge synthesis of highly theoretical information in a multiple choice answer environment. The examiner (the guy who writes the exam questions) is reduced to word play. This rarely tests the understanding of the material, and is more about testing your ability to understand what the examiner is looking for as an answer. The nine exams I've written so far are a broad cross section of clear, straight up 'do you get it?' type questions to a morass of conflicting statements that look like someone had to use a thesaurus to differentiate among the choices.

EXIN and ITIL: Compatible?

This morning I was scheduled to take the online (pilot) version of the Release/Validation/Control Intermediate exam in order to be able to teach it when its officially released... but the EXIN servers were 'down'. Okay, that sort of thing I can handle... however there was no effort to contact our contacts (itPrenuers) to let them know there was problem, no after hours call numbers, no notice on their unsecured website or the exam website... absolutely no notice and no support at all. This makes me wonder if EXIN should be the examining body for a best practices framework like ITIL.

Seminars/Presentations Under Development

At this time, I have the following seminars under development... they should be available for presentation late in September, unless someone gives me a tighter deadline. Each of the seminars can be presented in one to one-and-one half hours. These presentations will be suitable for breakfast, lunch or dinner presentations for service organizations, conferences, or simply as information sessions for a corporate setting.

The 'Process Guide' seminar will also be available as a four hour session.

The titles are under development.

1. An Approach to Building A Usable Process Guide; one of the tricks is to not get bogged down in procedures, to stay at an appropriately high level, to build out a workable template, and to describe Use Cases that support the Process.
2. An Introduction to ITIL: ITIL Processes and the Lifecycle Applied to Full Business Cycles; an introductory look at the 'universality' of the ITIL Lifecycle by examining how the Lifecycle can be overlaid on the business cycles of different businesses. The value of this seminar is as a method for helping non-IT (or new IT) staff to understand why ITIL.
3. An Approach to ITIL Education; Which roles in your organization need what level of ITIL familiarization, training and certification -- a strategy for delivery from the Executive Level down to the Mail room, in both the Business and the IT Organization, with discussions about online vs. classroom instruction, external vs. internal trainers and the effectiveness/advisability of testing/certification.