Rote learning ITIL

Monday, April 11th, 2011 at 10:41pm

Six years ago (almost to the week) I attended three days of ITIL Service Management Essentials training. Today was the first of three days for the ITIL V3 Foundation Certificate.

At first glance, today’s course appears to be the version 3 equivalent to the previous version 2 course, with them both being the first ITIL course you take and there being a multiple choice exam at the end. After only one day it is clear that they are quite different beasts, but you don’t have to go beyond the name of the course to find out why.

The service management essentials training six years ago was a an overview of ITIL in addition to a description and practical simulations of supporting a service through the service desk, incident management and problem management. I felt that this was useful training as everyone would have a more practical understanding of service management.

The v3 foundation certificate has been, and appears like it will be, about rote learning the ITIL terminology in order to pass the exam. There will be a simulation, but instead of multiple runs of it being spread out during the course, it will be run on the last day, after the exam. Instead of the simulation being used as a learning tool, it appears to be a tacked on afterthought to try and convey some practical knowledge out of the training.

Oh well, there is nothing I can do about the form of training except to attend it. I only hope that after spending all that money on training every ICT related staff member, that we can directly apply this new terminology.

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