Some notes and thoughts from my study of the PM certifications.
Reader's Guide
PeopleCert have made available a readers guide for their practice guides. It is designed to help readers understand and use the ITIL 4 practice guides.
Note that every practice guide has the same chapter numbers, though with small variations in titles. For example, chapter 2 is general information, chapter 2.4 is the PSFs, chapter 3 is the Value Streams and Processes dimension.
The chapter order is the order that the Practice Manager courses teach each practice. The Foundation courses uses a different order.
The table numbers and figure numbers are not consistent across different guides.
PeopleCert Ebooks
At the beginning of the course you will get an exam code. Sign in to peoplecert.org and redeem this code now, because it is what gives you the Practice Guide and/or Official Book e-books!
You will be referring to these often throughout the course delivery so open them all now, in different browser tabs or windows.
Terms, Definitions
Technical debt
The total rework backlog accumulated by choosing workarounds instead of systemic solutions that would take longer.
Some notes on technical debt from the man who coined the phrase.
A discussion of how some technical debt is good.
Models
Service request model. A repeatable predefined approach to the fulfilment of a particular type of service request.
Incident model. A repeatable approach to the management of a particular type of incident.
Problem model. A repeatable approach to the management of a particular type of problem.
Proactive, Reactive
These two words are used in several practices.
Proactive/Reactive problem identification relates to incidents. Proactive problem identification is focused on identifying problems before they cause any incidents. Reactive problem identification helps to prevent future incidents.
PRM practice guide § 2.2.1.
We can apply the same phrasing to incident management. Proactive incident handling is identifying incidents before they occur.
Montoring and event management uses the terms as well. Event management is reactive when it uses monitoring to respond to events after an impact on the service or service component has occurred; proactive when it analyses non-impacting events (past and current) to identify a potential future impact.
MEM practice guide § 2.2.
Record, Report
For example, incident record and incident report.
INM practice guide, § 3.1.1.
Record. A written or electronic account of something that has happened or been recorded.
In the Information and Technology dimension, records are almost always associated with workflow management systems.
Report. An account of something, but includes analysis and conclusions.
They are almost always associated with analysis and reporting tools.
Process, Value Stream
A process is "a set of interrelated or interacting activities that transform inputs into outputs. Processes define the sequence of activities and their dependencies".
A value stream is "a series of steps an organization undertakes to create and deliver products and services to consumers".
These terms are very close in definition, and both describe activities happening in the organization.
The difference is that a value stream includes information needed to identify waste and to continually improve. This includes fulfillment times and waiting times, as well as a focus on the outcomes and values produced.
Analysing and improving a value stream is done using value stream mapping (section 3.2.3.1 in the practice guides).
Exam
Hints
Read every word in the question and in every answer.
Read from the last answer upwards.
Look for words like "must", "never", "mandate", "prohibit". They are probably the wrong answers.
Look for plurals.
Guessed? Mark the question, move on, review at the end.
Watch the time. 90 seconds per question. Spent more than a couple of minutes? Pick an answer, mark the question, move on, review at the end. Never end a multichoice exam with unanswered questions.
Remember that there is no negative marking. Answer every question.
Things that I kept getting wrong. :-(
A service request probably initiates a standard change, not a not a normal change.
Measurement (analysis and reporting tools) supports improvement, not control.
Flowcharts
The workflow diagrams in the practice guides use Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) though they use it a bit inconsistently.
What we need to know to read them is that the small diamonds indicate some sort of choice or option, and the outgoing line with a slash is the default path (i.e. if none of the choices or options are applicable).
See https://www.lucidchart.com/pages/bpmn for more details.
Practice capability development
General
From https://www.axelos.com/for-organizations/itil-maturity-model
The ITIL maturity model is a tool that organizations can use to objectively and comprehensively assess their service management capabilities and the maturity of the organization’s service value system (SVS).
The ITIL maturity model includes the following components:
• the model overview (this document)
• the ITIL management practices’ capability assessment criteria
• the SVS maturity criteria.
In other words, the maturity model applies to individual practices (specifically to their PSFs, see later) and to the whole SVS.
The maturity criteria of the whole SVS is not covered in this course.
For more information, see the free download ‘An Overview of the ITIL® Maturity Model’ (click the Find out more about the ITIL Maturity Model link in the page above).
Capability levels
Some blogs and books include a level 0, indicating that none of the practice’s purposes are achieved. As far as I’ve read, none of PeopleCert’s publications include this.
Capability criteria
Each capability criterion refers to one PSF, one dimension, and one level (but only levels 2 to 5).
Most of the practices have at least one criterion for every dimension at level 3 but otherwise not every combination of PSF-dimension-level has a criterion (not even close). For example, MEM has 3 PSFs so could have 48 or more criteria (3 PSF × 4 levels × 4 dimensions), but actually has 23.
Some combinations of PSF-dimension-level may have more than one criterion.
Exam Hint
The exam will ask questions like “Which capability criterion supports the practice success factor ‘detecting incidents early’?”
For example, question 44 in INM sample paper 1.
Self-assessment
Self-assessment is usually only applied to the practices. PeopleCert certified Axelos Consulting Partners can be comissioned to do external assessment of practices and of the SVS.
Developing a capability
Page 170 in the INM learner workbook.
This is a bad diagram. Instead, see table 7.2 in any of the practice guides (or just quickly skip to the next slide).
Why is it a bad diagram? Because the alignment of steps and levels is just wrong. The first five steps belong to level 2 (level 1 has no step) and the next three steps belong to levels 3, 4 and 5 respectively.
As an aside, ITIL suggests that when you are improving a practice, or learning it in the first place, you should consider items in the order laid out in table 7.2. This is why the chapters in the practice guides (and the slides in this slide deck) are ordered the way they are.