Rant vs counter-rant: the ITIL V3 Certification Scheme

Pierre Bernard over at Pink Elephant had a "personal rant" about "people «complaining» about the ITIL® V3 scheme" and "much negativity presently in various blogs and social media sites about the ITIL® v3 scheme". That'd be me, for one, so I feel compelled to comment.

The scheme - meaning the Certification Scheme - has plenty of room for improvement. Pierre says "«It is what is it is»." No it isn't. It is whatever it can grow into being in response to the demands of the millions of people paying millions of dollars for professional certifications that are an important investment asset for their career. Those certifications should be as respectable, admirable and dependable as possible.

That's at an individual level. At the level of the profession as a whole, even those of us who don't invest in certifications have an interest in the integrity and reputation of the profession.

Pierre goes on to say

for your information, coming up with the appropriate syllabus for each course in the ITIL® V3 qualification scheme was not easy. We, the senior examiner panel; came up with many great ideas but at the end of the process, we could not use them all. The scheme was reviewed and approved by the Qualification Board. The board is composed of members from each of the Examining Institutes (EI), ITSMF International, The official Accreditor (APM Group), and the Chief Architect for ITIL® v3. Many people are involved in this.

Last year I wrote

Clumsy execution in the ITIL world is often excused on the grounds that it is run by volunteers. This is not the case with certification. The governing body is filled mostly by commercial organisations (except itSMF). There are eight examination institutes. Just one of them, EXIN, reported 160,000 foundation trainees last year. Every candidate pays a three-figure sum just as an exam fee (not including training fees). There are tens of millions of dollars in exam fees flowing into the industry every year.

It would be nice if some small part of that were spent on hiring adult education experts to design, write and test best-practice exam questions, and to quality assure the delivery.

Pierre has confirmed that the certifications were written solely by the industry and any involvement by qualified adult-certification experts was accidental. I welcome a comment here by anyone who can point to such experts amongst the group Pierre described.

I find it astonishing that everyone involved in the scheme come from an industry that sells the importance of bringing us in as consulting experts, but we don't do the same when dabbling with something about which we know very little i.e. writing multi-choice exams.

Pierre comments on

Becoming an (ITIL®) Expert

In order to be an expert in any field or discipline, one must put in effort and time; what people refer to at «sweat equity» or the «heavy lifting». One does not become an expert by attending an introductory class on a particular topic.

In the case of ITIL®, read the books! Read the books! Read the books! Discuss the topics with others, make them you own, identify where they are in your organization, read blogs and whitepapers. You should attend a set of courses covering the entire spectrum of the framework

...and you still won't be an expert. "ITIL Expert" is without a doubt the dumbest name ever for a purely theoretical certification that can be obtained soley by sitting a series of exams.

Pierre makes an invitation

If you firmly believe that you can do a better job at writing exam scenarios, questions, answers and relevant rationales, please contact APMG and apply to become an examiner.

OH GOD NO! The last thing the scheme needs is more well-meaning amateurs fiddling with it. APMG put your hands in your well-lined pockets and buy some experts! Real experts, not certified Experts. As Pierre rightly points out

Creating exam questions is not as easy as it seems.