I had to attend ITIL v3 Foundation training in Ottawa this week. With ITIL being implemented throughout many organizations, it was becoming increasingly necessary to take some ITIL Training. ITIL v3 – The Service Lifecycle Model, provides information for IT shops based on “good practices” that have become accepted throughout the industry.
The ITIL v3 Foundation course that I was enrolled in was offered by ITPlanit Services Corp. The course covered the basics of ITIL v3 Service Lifecycle and covered a massive amounts of information from the 5 major ITIL Publications:
- Service Strategy
- Service Design
- Service Transition
- Service Operations
- Continual Service Improvement
The training by ITPlanit Service Corp. was an “adequate” introduction to the ITIL v3 Principles. The amount of material covered by the course is enormous. With the training split over 3 days (2 days of instruction, 1/2 day of review and 1/2 day to write the ITIL v3 Foundation certification exam), be prepared to be overwhelmed by information.
Having little to know ITIL experience when coming into the class, it was extremely frustrating to struggle with the ITIL terminology and the ITIL ways of looking at services that I have been working with for 25+ years in the IT industry. The book selected and used by IT Planit Service Corp did very little to provide clarification of many of the topics, and it was basically a collection of PowerPoint slides with some supplemental text. The massive amounts of information covered in the 5 ITIL publications makes this type of approach very difficult.
The ITIL training provided supposedly prepares you to write the ITIL v3 Foundation Certification Exam. I’m somewhat hesitant in writing the exam, given we’ve only just finished some of the curriculum a few hours ago and now we’re doing a review. This has left little study time to grasp the massive amounts of material and focus on some key ITIL subject areas that will be tested.
Update
After completing the ITIL v3 Foundation exam, I was very pleased that Ipassed the course. I am now officially ITIL v3 Foundation certified. In my opinion, the course did very little to prepare me for the exam. The course provided a great overview but the particular ITIL exam I had written would have required much more detail to have been covered in order to have passed. In fact, there were several terms and concepts that I can honestly say that I did not see before and that were not covered in part of the course.
The particular version of the ITIL v3 Foundation exam that I drew from the pool of questions was apparently much more difficult than several other had gotten. My version of the ITIL exam was filled with questions where it was required to apply knowledge, not spout definitions. From conversations after the exam, others have gotten many questions that simply required a definition, while my exam was not. I had received only 1 or 2 questions on definitions, while others who had written the exam had received as high as 12.
Regardless, I am very content that I have successfully completed the ITIL v3 Foundation course and examination! Good luck to anyone else who is attempting this.
