My upfront apologies for not bringing any new information to the table over the last several days, I was recently diagnosed with NDP (Near Death by PowerPoint). This left my head woozy and my mental stability lackadaisical as I have spent the preceding two days sitting in a chair struggling to keep my attention focused on the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) presentations at hand. Thirteen of us sat around a horseshoe table setup facing our near deaths scrolling through almost 350 PowerPoint slides in under thirteen hours; listening to a presenter whose words per minute seemingly barely surpassed the average pace of twenty-six slides per hour, meanwhile not receiving any other stimulation. Two days later and following a surprisingly simple test, I am now ITIL-F certified.
The brighter side of these dark hours is the information I gleaned from the material presented. Though it was dry, intense, and at times a little dull, I feel as though I have pulled through as a somewhat stronger and smarter person. For those of you not familiar with ITIL, I will give you the brief introduction: The Information Technology Infrastructure Library is a framework of best practice approaches intended to facilitate the delivery of high quality information technology (IT) services. Thereby we result in the abbreviated name – ITIL. ITIL outlines an extensive set of management procedures that are intended to support businesses in achieving both quality and value for money in IT operations. At its basics, ITIL is intended to create efficiency. These procedures have been developed to provide guidance across the breadth and depth of IT infrastructure, development, and operations. ITIL is a UK Crown copyright and was originally created by the Central Computer and Telecommunications Agency (CCTA) by the UK Government. ITIL was created roughly 20 years ago, but didn’t really start catching attention until the late 90’s. Several years ago the Office of Government Commerce (OGC) took over the ownership of ITIL. These days ITIL is spreading like wildfire in the United States – so this is good stuff to know, considering my career.
ITIL focuses on the concept of creating relationships within a Configuration Management Database (CMDB) to identify all components and their details within an IT infrastructure to aid in the process relationships between service support and delivery components. These areas are Incident Management, Problem Management, Configuration Management, Change Management, Release Management, Service Desk, Availability Management, Capacity Management, Service Level Management, Financial Management, and last but in no way least, Continuity Management.
Anyone looking for a practice test for the ITIL foundations exam should visit the free Berbee ITIL Foundations Practice Test. This provides a good insight to the types of questions found on the ITILF examination. For now, that’s what I have – if you have other questions, feel free to email me.