The IT Skeptic - Comments for "Open letter to ITIL Qualifications Board"

a market advantage

skeptic — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 19:59:00 +0000

Hi Jill

great input, thankyou! Written from real experience.

You may be interested to know HP were running a pilot Foundation course in the first week of May 2007. Not that that gives them a market advantage of course...

Exercises in Foundation training

Jill Knapp — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 16:06:33 +0000

My V2 and V3 Foundation material is fairly bare-bones, and I don't have any mandatory exercises written into my curriculum. Here's why:

1) In a three-day V2 Foundation class, there is plenty of time for discussion, roleplay, and simulation exercises. However, every class is different: Some "classroom cultures" won't groove on a roleplay exercise (for example), but they're happy breaking into groups and working on an exercise together. You have to read every class. Instead of building specific exercises into the courseware, it's left to the instructor to choose what's best from the exercise arsenal... if they choose to use exercises at all. Sometimes the discussion is plenty. It's also a perception thing: I don't want students to think they're getting gypped because an instructor skipped an exercise in the student workbook. It's better to be handed something extra than to skip something and feel ripped off.

2) In a three-day V3 Foundation class, there is significantly less time to dedicate to non-lecture activities. In V2 Training we had 11 concepts to cover (10 processes, 1 function), but in V3 Foundation we have 25-ish (21 processes and 4 functions) in the syllabus. In order to cover the material, provide breaks, lunch, discussion, time for students to take a sample exam and for us to review it together, wrap up with a review and pre-exam Q&A, and get ready for the proctor, it's hard to make time for multiple, meaningful exercises without the students feeling rushed.

3) This might just be an American thing: Many adults haven't taken an exam since school and have test anxiety. They make it very clear that they don't want to "waste time" simulating that they're on Apollo 13 or Wall Street; they want to nail the exam because their performance review/pay raise/job security depends on it. So in lieu of exercises, I ask a lot of open-ended questions and ensure the floor is always open for discussion so we can "apply this ITIL stuff" to people's real-life situations. The discussions (regardless of whether it's a private or public class) are so valuable, and my class evaluations confirm it. However, instructors also need to be good facilitators for this approach, because classes can quickly devolve into a whiny tangent-fest. Also, this approach means students must be reminded to answer the exam questions based on The ITIL Way and not the way they do things in their own organization.

4) Depending on whose facts you use, I supposedly co-taught the world's first ITIL V3 Foundation class with exam in June of 2007. (I mention this only to show that I used to work for a company that was a very early player in the V3 game.) When we first designed the V3 Foundation course with our business simulation, we were selling it as a four-day class, because we knew we couldn't cover the material plus the simulation in 3 days. Problem is, we couldn't sell the darn thing-- students weren't willing to miss four workdays just to earn a puny Foundation cert. The market demanded a three-day, no-simulation version of the class. However, our leadership believed that our business simulation was a selling point and a key differentiator, so trainers were told to "just cram everything into three days." And two things happened: Some trainers omitted the simulation and students felt more relaxed, or trainers did the simulation and student pass rates (and satisfaction evaluations) were not nearly as high.

Wow. I wrote all that just to say, "I don't think exercises should be mandatory. Let the trainers (and ultimately the market) decide." :-)

Love your blog, love the discussions.
Thanks!

Mostly Agree - But A Single Voice Does Not Get Heard!

David Ratcliffe — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 16:02:12 +0000

Exercises
I understand the feeling professional Trainers have about incorporating exercises into courses - it certainly makes the experience more interesting and likely more effective. But I'm not sure that mandating a % of time to exercises is the right way to go. I'd leave it up to the developer - if they have a good product (with or without a certain % of exercises) it will sell and generate positive results, if not, it won't.

Foundation
I think the two Foundation options is a decent idea and I tried to persuade the Chief Examiner and APMG to do this in February 2007 when they were formulating the new scheme (so much for my influence!) I take Skep's point about not wanting to miss out on making sure everyone has a broad understanding, but that doesn't mean you can't have a "bias" towards operational stuff in one course/exam and strategic stuff in the other. It's quite possible to have an "ITIL Overview" in half a day, covering broad brush strokes of what ITIL is and how it can be used, then for the "ITIL Operations Foundation" a couple of days could be spent fleshing out how operational folks use and interact with ITIL practices This is what the V2 Foundation did and it was very well received (compared to the current V3 Foundation!) The "ITIL Strategic Foundation" could then do the equivalent for that audience.

Intermediate Level & MALC
I've already blogged on this at length. The Capabilities are really the equivalent of the V2 Practitioners - very good. The Lifecycle courses/exams are the thorn in our sides. Just combine them into a V3 Service Manager over 2-3 weeks - like the V2 Service Manager - and be done with it! That's it. Scrap the Managing Across the Lifecycle concept - it would be redundant. I guess this would also make the "ITIL Expert" redundant too, and this would be a step too far for APMG and the Chief Examiner because they wanted to get away from V2 terminology & concepts in the certification scheme. So we could call the "V3 Service Manager" the "ITIL Expert Manager" (we'll be dropping the V2 & V3 tags next year anyway). Then if you do enough of the Capability courses/exams you could become an "ITIL Expert Practitioner". Voila!

Translations
Well said Peter! When the V3 scheme was introduced I believe the issue of exam availability in non-English languages was an afterthought and MAJOR GAFFE. At a stroke we left the non-English speaking world in limbo. This should NEVER happen again! So any future changes to this scheme must incorporate plans for translations at the outset. New exams should be released in multiple languages on the same date. It's called "good project management" - do it!

One last thing. I can't overlook the comment you made, Skep, about how you believe the industry (training providers?) came up with this V3 scheme because they wanted to "milk more from each customer". I keep hearing this accusation again and again and from our point of view (at least at Pink) it couldn't be further from the truth. We agree there's overkill - and overlap (see Peter's comments on the value of ST, SO & SD) - in requiring people do so many courses/exams to get all those credits. I'm all for a wide variety of courses developed by a wide variety of suppliers. Customers can then chose what they want based on their needs. But to "enforce" a requirement for a specific (high) number of credits to get ANY recognizable designation (Expert) certainly does smack of greed on the part of whoever's supplying the courses/exams. I'd much rather sell 10 of one course than 4 of one, 2 of another, 1 of another, 1 of another, 2 of another and develop 3 courses that sit on the shelf and never sell at alll!!! See my point?

OK - I'm starting to rant. I'll stop now.

Except for one last, last point. You're probably right to say that Peter has a "snowflake's chance in Hell" of getting anywhere with his ideas. Not because they might not be good, but because the "powers that be" seem to have deaf ears. Probably the best chance that "the industry" has of getting ideas heard is for a collaboration of training providers to get their heads together and speak as one voice. Yes - you heard right - trust the training providers! Think about it, collectively they really could wield some power. And, like I indicated earlier, a better designed scheme really could serve all needs. It could contain more options (key word here - OPTIONS!) so people could pick and choose what really meets their needs. Rather than be "forced" through a path containing some irrelevant and ill-conceived courses/exams which you really must do to get the required credits to get to a single destination - ITIL Expert.

The changes we've talked about here are not that radical.