Any template, anything Visio-flavoured, anything that might prove useful
for meetings, documentation – I snaffle it and put it somewhere safe.
Freebie
ITIL material, however, is a different beast. There are things out
there if you look, some useful, somewhere one might have to be a bit
more creative, but there is stuff out there.
Free ITIL Training
There
is no getting away from the fact the ITIL books and initial training
costs money. So to stumble across a free ITIL training overview merited
a look.
First up – you cannot get away from this, you HAVE to
register for most of the freebie-offers. If handing over a decent,
credible email is not your cup of tea, then this quest is not for you,
traveller.
The prospect of a two-hour ITIL “taster” came to me
through an e-newsletter from The ITIL Training Zone and I settled down
to run through the training.
The Free ITIL Training course does
require an email to access it, which will need verification, and will
come back your ID and password, within a matter of minutes.
Registering
You
are asked if you are a total beginner, someone who has Foundation
certification, or if you are an expert (on the first pass) and then
takes you to the course. I logged in again to see if it changed the
presentation depending on what you pick, but didn’t see the options
again, so maybe this is more for analytical purposes.
It would be fascinating to see what the spread of participants are.
The course itself
The layout appears on the right and is broken down to handy links so you can just dip into what you want if you need to.
Introduction – The first bit covers a lot of probably the least useful
bits of ITIL training in ANY course, if I am being honest – the history
of ITIL. But it constantly asks the user to imagine how everything that
is being taught relates to your own environment, putting it in context
from the start. It introduces the concept of a case study that you
follow throughout the course as well.
The core books – This is
maybe the most daunting bit – there are lots of sections to go through,
but they are in smallish chunks of around 6-10 minutes, and can be
paused.
The last bit – With the case study that you follow
throughout the course, and examples of real cases, the course constantly
reiterates that you need to look at the wider piece and understand how
it can help you in your organization.
What I liked
It’s nice and concise and it covers the details that you need.
It
is worth noting that it doesn’t go through all the processes in
Transition, and with good reason – this is a FREE taster to give people
the basics of ITIL ahead of maybe doing the courses for real.
Maybe
because I have worked across a range of roles, I can look across the
piece and understand the larger end-to-end picture. It constantly
reiterates the approach of applying what you are being told to your own
organisation.
People approaching ITIL education in general need to be of a mindset that it is a journey and not a quick-fix.
What people might NOT like
Globalisation
The
first company I worked for was a multi-national corporation, centred in
the US and the majority of our online training is produced in the US. I
have absolutely NO issue with hearing an American voice, but I have
been on courses where people whine about Americanisms (there’s always
one!).
Globalisation is prevalent in our industry and if this is
an issue for you then perhaps this is not the course for you (or dare I
say it the industry for you!)
Implementing ITIL
One of the things that always amuses me from trawling the Linked In groups is the sharp responses to queries about:
“I want to implement ITIL… give me x, y, z”
You will invariably see people slap that down with:
“You do not implement ITIL, you adopt, adapt, create and define
policies and processes and deploy an ITSM tool to enforce, etc”
The
course validates this phrase with talking about the processes and how
they interact, and again this is an introduction to the basics.
And
above all, it mentions the “journey” that you take in Service
Management, which is often the answer given to the “implement ITIL”
queries – so I think the course makes that distinction as you delve into
it.
For beginners – this is in terms they understand – but would
be interesting to see if more advanced courses still talk in those
terms, or whether they make the “adopt/adapt/journey” distinction.
ITIL Lite – free or chargeable?
This
is a taster course for offerings run by a training company – and there
are links to a more formal corporate targetted ITIL Lite course on their
website.
The benefit is, understandably, no additional marketing and links.
Just to reiterate – I am reviewing the completely free, ads-and-all version.
Would I recommend this?
I
would definitely point people starting out in ITIL at this course, and
in fact chatted to someone at a Regional itSMF UK seminar about this
very course as an awareness starter for their staff. They had also
looked at it, so it is getting known as a key free resource.
A
much respected ITAM colleague asked me whether it was worth their going
for their ITIL certification, concerned about learning. Unfortunately
there is no short cut or free ride to the certification, but I would
certainly point them at this for the basics, and leave them to make
their mind up as to whether to go any further.
Calling it a
report really does not do it justice – it is the course material in its
own right – showcase it as such, and maybe make this a core part of the
ITIL Lite branding.
All in all this is a great introduction to
ITIL for people thinking about certification, or getting people up to
speed with the terminology.