I recently passed the ITILv3 foundation exam and wanted to write about the experience to help out anyone who is interested in the ITILv3 exam but isn’t quite sure if they should or how to go about it. So let me start out by explaining who I am so things are framed correctly. I have been an IT manager since 2003, since that point what I have managed has grown from a couple services, 30 users, and keeping things running to over 70 users, 16 servers, partners, external customers, and understanding that keeping things running doesn’t but it. With cheap labor being able to talk the talk and business’s constant demand to cut costs while technology being able to solve more and more problems, automate more (reduce people costs), naturally a business that has 100k in annual interal costs with a 90/20 people to technology split should turn into a 40/60 people technology split and reduce costs down to say 70k. It makes logical sense, right? (meant retorical). So in order to achieve that I knew that keeping things running would not get me there, I had started to study ISO 20000, ISO 9001, had passed my PMP, was an MCSE so I undestood the value of best or good practices and was pretty tired of having the analyze how we where handling issues, and change or deciding what new improvement would help out based on the current emotions in the office or the latest TV segment on technology that and exec saw and believes thats what we should do. But it was going to be a hard road ahead of me, and I would have to use some of that Dale Carnaige training because expectations of what comes out of the technology department has been set.
One thing about getting people to listen to you is you need to learn how to listen, you also need to learn how to see things from there point of view, use true stories for reference, but more like did you hear about the company that, rather than “Let me tell you about a company that”. Use small talk to sell, use meetings to listen. Visit with people in the office to win over they ones who are the most vocal so they can speak for you, that way you have solders. there are a bunch of tricks, but none of that matters if you don’t have the answers that will help. Brings in ITIL. the Information Technology Infrastructure Library can be in a way some guy/girl who guides you on good practices which work in Service Life Cycle Managment. If you do not know what Service Life Cycle Managment is, think of it as how we management technology so that what you watch and plan, tells you what to change, tells you what to verify, tells you what to watch and plan. And all of that is based on what you decided to do at a high level. Know what I just said is what is called proprietary, not necessarily bad but would have to be explained to anyone I interact with, and chances of someone else using that language would be really strange. So ITIL is a common set up best or good pratices for managing technology service delivery as a practice. And the most important thing to remember is as a technology professional you don’t delivery service you deliver fulfillment to customers, and customers are anyone you provide service to.
OK, so in order to pass my exam I needed a good reference I could use, I looked at web sites, books, class’s, and ended up settling on a online coarse by bywze. the coarse was about $500 and was a pretty well done coarse. You would log in and the coarse took you through each of the life cycle stages after an introduction and overview module. After each module you where tested. At the end there was a moch exam which was pretty accurate and well done. After taking the actual exam is when realized that fact, but prior to I remember thinking to my self, Man this test sucks! and of coarse it is the tests fault, never mine.
Anyways, thanks test for being you and sucking, because it helped me pass my test, 6 out of 9 area’s I had a 100%, and finished the test in 20 minutes leaving me 40 minutes to review my quetions.
Check out the class at http://www.softtaught.com/opec/?cid=1
Let me know what worked for you.
I started my quest fo the ITIL about 6 months ago