According to my LinkedIn profile, 25 people have endorsed me for IT Service Management skills. Until last month* my entire knowledge of IT Service Management came from watching Karl McCarthy present at the Northampton branch of the BCS, which does leave me wondering about the value of LinkedIn endorsements…

…still, over the last few weeks, I have been learning about IT Service Management (or at least, about the IT Infrastructure Library, usually abbreviated to ITIL®).

Those who follow this blog will have seen my recent 6-part series of preparation notes as I studied for my ITIL Foundation certification (see the end of this post) and my efforts were clearly worthwhile, as I passed the exam today. A non-disclosure agreement prevents me from commenting on the exam itself but I will highlight the resources that I used:

• Chris Ward’s 33-part CBT Nuggets series on ITIL Foundation was very useful and you can currently get a 7-day free trial…
• I practiced for the exam with the sample exam paper that Axelos provides.
• The Official ITIL® Exam App was the best £4.99 I spent. Over 300 revision cards helped me to cement some of the concepts I picked up on the CBT Nuggets course and fill in one or two gaps, as well as the app’s ability to deliver mock tests. The app can also be used in “Study” mode but I only used the “Practice” and “Track” options.

So, that’s another certification in the bag (and one of my 2016-17 objectives ticked off…). Now time to put the theory into practice, which for me will mean some more thinking about service architecture in the course of my work.

I was going to continue this blog with some notes from Karl’s 2015 talk on “IT Service Management – Putting the theory into practice” but the notes appear to have gone AWOL. Maybe that’s one to save for another day…

* Putting aside anything I’ve picked up from 20+ years working in IT.

Further Reading

• Preparation notes for ITIL Foundation exam: Part 1 (overview/introduction).
• Preparation notes for ITIL Foundation exam: Part 2 (service strategy).
• Preparation notes for ITIL Foundation exam: Part 3 (service design).
• Preparation notes for ITIL Foundation exam: Part 4 (service transition).
• Preparation notes for ITIL Foundation exam: Part 5 (service operation).
• Preparation notes for ITIL Foundation exam: Part 6 (continual service improvement).

This post and those linked above (which were written and published prior to taking the exam, so they do not breach any NDA). are intended as an aid and no guarantee is given or implied as to their suitability for others hoping to pass the exam.

ITIL® is a registered trademark of Axelos limited.