Quality over Quantity?

I returned from holidays last week and boldly started 2014 with a ‘polarising’ tweet:

OK, I'm back from holidays and have stepped into 2014.What's new? Has @AXELOS_GBP messed up #ITIL yet? #ITSM

Admittedly quite a blunt tweet, but I was hoping for some responses and got exactly what I bargained for with specifically two interesting ‘discussions’ following (using the term lightly as it was all in 140 character twitter statements, thus lacking some ‘finesse’).

One was rather obviously about AXELOS’ performance to date. More on that later, but first the other discussions which diverted into whether (ITIL) training should be of the best quality or the most accessible. John Custy (@ITSMNinja) mentioned that if ITIL exams were more expenses (based on AXELOS’ price increase) ‘maybe fewer, but more right people certified...’

This got me thinking, as I have always been a great advocate of training quality and a skeptic of the current ITIL certification scheme (see my blog from March 2013 on Action Based Learning).

However at the same time I can see the importance of training be accessible to a large audience, particular at the basic/entry/foundation level. Hence the title of this blog: Quality over Quantity/Accessibility.

The current ITIL Foundation course (or rather ‘Foundation Certificate in IT Service Management’) has become a volume-seller with around 20,000 exam each month. Plenty of organisation are sending all their IT staff to this course and the prevalence of the ITIL Foundation certificate has certainly helped to make ITIL the ‘de facto’ standard in IT Service Management.

Compare this for instance with COBIT. COBIT is seen as an equivalent if not better alternative to ITIL (with more prescriptive guidance, standard RACIs, a direct link to governance, risk, project management …). However, whilst there are COBIT qualifications available, it comprises mainly of Foundation, with then ‘specialised’ implementation or assessor courses which are not focused on general staff. And it is much harder to obtain with fewer organisation (in fewer locations) offering this course less frequently (although there is always the on-line option).

And it is a similar story with MOF (Foundation only), TOGAF (Foundation or Certified qualifications), LEAN or AGILE. Whilst there certainly is certification in those methodologies, it is far less known, far harder to obtain (not because of difficulty but because of availability) and far less recognised.

As mentioned, I believe this is part of the success of ITIL and in order to maintain this it is important that AXELOS not only maintains the quality of the ITIL certifications, but maintains or even improves the availability/accessibility/quantity. Most certainly at entry/Foundation level but also for Intermediates, which have a far smaller uptake. The more people are trained and certified in ITIL, the more people will want to use it (and the more people use it, the more we can work towards quality improvement of the theory).

That doesn’t mean that quality is not important. And whilst I hope that future updates to ITIL will improve the quality of the theory, and with it the quality of the certification (for instance a lower, operation-only Foundation, more practical and less factoid based, periodic exam refreshers to maintain higher levels, …). We need to look at the situation at hand: The Foundation is course is so prevalent that a lucrative and significant grey circuit has developed offering courses that do not (always) meet the existing quality standards. This (in my opinion) is a real threat to both AXELOS, the ATOs and the market.

For instance I believe we can all agree that the existing ITIL Foundation syllabus only just fits in a three day format. There is a lot (too much!) theory to explain and the danger is of the course becoming death-by-powerpoint, theory-overload with not enough time to discuss practical application of the principles. So, I was not overly impressed when I was approached by a (non-accredited) training organisation with the question whether I could deliver the Foundations in two (albeit extended) days … over a weekend … including the exam. I declined and sincerely question the quality and outcomes of a course like that.

Because as important as certification is, there is more to training than that. However we need to look beyond the IP-owner and training organisations and realise that it is the responsibility of the organisation/manager who sends staff to training to obtain ‘value’ from it (as well as the staff attending training). I advocate an immediate follow-up on training: at Foundation level an attendee could do a review of existing procedures, tools and documentation (and discuss any questions or suggestions with the process manager/owner). At Intermediate level this can become a more formal assessment and CSI/SIP and at Expert level the scope increases (all lifecycles) and would include tactical or even strategic customer relationships.

Anyway, bringing this rant to a close: the quality of training is paramount and any customer/participant of training is responsible for choosing the best training and getting the most out of it. The better training organisations (and fortunately there are plenty of them) will maintain quality and inject this into their offering.

The role of the ‘examiner’, in our case AXELOS, is to design a qualification scheme that is acceptable by the market, but also to maintain a delivery model that will make it available to that market.

Whilst this includes maintaining quality (EIs, ATOs, …) there is more to it. And a first action of increases the price of exams (and thus their revenue) does not necessarily give out the right signal. But that is a different discussion (on AXELOS’ performance, which I promised Andrea Kis (@AndieKis) to have in 170 days).

Best wishes for 2014!

the ITIL Zealot

January 2014

The Alternative to ITIL …

If I follow the social media ITIL seems to be over the hype-curve, with many people predicting its impending demise, often due to various reasons:

• The joint venture with Capita (AXELOS) will make it too commercial
• COBIT (or …) is better
• DevOps will replace it
• Cloud computing has made it obsolete
• BYOD has made it obsolete

In our MALC course we actually debate the relevance of ITIL, whereby I as the facilitator take the opposing view, often using the very reasons I’ve highlighted above. It is refreshing to go over to the ‘dark side’ and attack the ITIL framework for all its weaknesses (or heralding the benefits of those mentioned above). At one stage we nearly decided to quit the course and start doing COBIT Foundations instead!

But it also makes me realise all the good things about ITIL and how to actually, practically apply it. I will address the ‘negative’ reasons in reverse order, but first I think it is important that at the heart of all this we are talking about IT service management. Service management is all about delivering (IT as) a service to the customer: a fixed-price, black-box, repeatable, guaranteed, managed & measured value.

This immediately invalidates any reasoning that a new kind of technology (for instance Cloud, BYO) will replace ITIL. ITIL\service management is not about technology, but which processes (\activities) to follow to make sure the technology delivers the benefits (=value) they’re supposed to. So, whilst Cloud and BYOD may make it easier to manage the technology, it is still required to define business value, guarantee the design, transition this, operate it and measure to validate or improve.

Service management is also a ‘best practice’, of which my favourite definition is ‘common sense written down’. And common sense doesn’t really change, so any ‘movement’ or development (like DevOps, return-to-core, rightsize, … even Agile or Lean) can at best only marginally change our opinion of common sense, but not completely invalidate it. Thus they won’t replace ITIL, but provide a different perspective on the guidance it provides.

ITIL is nothing more than the best-known proponent of the IT service management best practice. It has been around for a long time (25 years+), is recognised globally and arguably is the most accepted of the methodologies (certainly in terms of people certified, tools sold and ‘implementation’ performed).

This does not mean ITIL is perfect (despite the nom-de-plum I’ve chosen, even I don’t believe that). I fully recognise the weaker points of ITIL: its generalisms, inconsistencies, less-than-complete or defined strategy processes, its lack of dealing with the real-world (although complimentary publications like the ABC of ICT, Planning to Implement Service Management etc., do a good job of that).

As a consultant (and trainer) it’s these imperfections that make ITIL such as rich source of work: it has to be understood and adapted before it will succeed!

But ITIL has a few things going for it that will make it hard to ‘usurp’ as the leading service management methodology:

· Its ‘completeness’
· Its ‘installed base’

ITIL (since v3) now covers a lifecycle, which means that it just about covers everything you want\need in an IT organisation. Sure, there are some glaring omission (organisation & risk management, or a better defined governance framework) but by-and-large everything is covered.

Many of the other framework focus on one particular element (PRINCE2 for project management, Agile for development, Lean Sigma for process improvement, ISO2700x for security management) which at best makes them complimentary to ITIL, not a replacement.

There are but a few other ‘complete’ frameworks out there. MOF (the Microsoft Operations Framework) is not vendor-neutral and Microsoft hardly has the right audience (too many techo’s, not enough business managers). Plus it is by-and-large based on ITIL anyway. ISO\IEC 20000 is also based on ITIL and its prescriptive nature makes it less friendly to adopt & adept (though together with the additional guidance that is being released it certainly provide a good source of content, perspective and ideas).

This leaves us with COBIT (OK, potentially TOGAF or USMBOK but this is not meant to be an exhaustive comparison). Without going in too much detail, I’d consider COBIT the biggest ‘competitor’ to ITIL. In many perspectives COBIT is better than ITIL (more consistent, contains better governance and risk, provides a quick start, has ‘default’ RACIs, …). In fact if I were to start with a greenfield organisation I might even consider using COBIT instead of ITIL … but, be honest, how often do we come across this.

And so, based on the installed base of ITIL-trained people in the market (including consultants), the number of ITIL-based tools deployed (and/or available) it is very hard to ignore ITIL as the premier service management methodology. Again, this does not mean ITIL is perfect and many of the other frameworks referred to in this blog can be used in conjunction with ITIL, but they’ll not replace it.

Thus the best alternative for ITIL is … an updated ITIL. Which bring us to our last argument: the new joint venture AXELOS who now owns ITIL. A great opportunity lies before them to invest in ITIL (and the other best practices in the portfolio) and bring an update to the market that includes lessons learned in the market, benefits from other methodologies but above all in a consistent package with supporting products (quick guides, implementation guidance, …).

Currently they’re making all the right noises, so I will remain cautiously optimistic that AXELOS will improve ITIL. However, there is a very real risk that AXELOS could instead be the death knell for ITIL too: if they overemphasise the commercial side or focus too much on the UK\home market they will restrict the use and global involvement of the community in the on-going development of these best practices.

In that case I might switch my allegiance to COBIT or USMBOK, but for now I’ll remain the ITIL Zealot.

the ITIL Zealot
July 2013