About ITIL V3 Foundation Certification
ITIL is a framework for managing the delivery of the IT services around the world. It is a model for their lifecycle that recommends particular activities and processes from the development, design, delivery, as well as support of these services. Most companies adopt this framework to ensure that the delivery of their services aligns with a set of well-defined and consistent processes that include best practices. You need to understand that besides improving their delivery, these practices bring the best level of service to the users and reduce the cost of its development and deployment.
ITIL V3 Foundation: Prerequisites
It is important to note that any individual interested in ITIL can go for the ITIL V3 Foundation certification without any problems as it does not have any prerequisites, other than passing the corresponding exam. This foundational-level certificate covers all the areas of the service lifecycle, which is why it is so beneficial for all the candidates.
ITIL V3 Foundation: Exam features
The closed-book certification test contains 40 multiple-choice questions. You need to deal with all of them within 1 hour and get more than 65% of the correct answers. This is about 26 marks out of 40 possible. To be able to answer all the questions, you need to master the main topics.
ITIL V3 Foundation: Exam objectives
The candidates for the ITIL V3 Foundation certification exam must be able to demonstrate their skills in the IT service management as covered in the syllabus. To develop the required competence, you must take time to go through the topics covered in the units of the test. They are as follows:
ITILFND01: Service Management as a Practice – the applicants are required to develop an understanding of the service concepts and be able to describe the concept of service management as a practice. In other words, they should have the ability to do the following:
Explain the concept of best practices within the public domain;
- Describe why ITIL is successful;
- Describe the concept of a service;
- Describe the concept of external and internal customers and services;
- Describe the concept of service management;
- Describe the concept of IT service management;
- Describe the concept of the stakeholders within service management;
- Describe functions and processes;
- Describe the process model and process characteristics.
ITILFND02: ITIL Service Lifecycle – this unit requires that you understand the ITIL service lifecycle value and how processes integrate through the service lifecycle. Therefore, the applicants should have the skills to perform the following tasks:
- Explain the structure of the ITIL service lifecycle;
- Explain the scope, objectives, and purpose of a service strategy;
- Describe the value that this service strategy offers to businesses;
- Explain the scope, objectives, and purpose of service design;
- Describe the value that this service design offers to businesses;
- Explain the scope, objectives, and purpose of service transition;
- Describe the value that this service transition offers to businesses;
- Explain the scope, objectives, and purpose of service operation;
- Describe the value that this service operation offers to businesses;
- Explain the scope, objectives, and purpose of a continual service;
- Describe the value that this continual service offers to businesses.
ITILFIND03: Generic Concepts and Definitions – this topic requires that the students demonstrate an understanding of some key terminologies and describe the major concepts of service management. They should be able to describe the following major ideas:
- Utility and warranty, assets, capabilities, and resources, as well as service portfolio and service catalog;
- Governance, business case, risk management, service provider, and supplier;
- Service-level and operational-level agreement as well as underpinning contract;
- Service knowledge management system, availability, and service design package;
- Configuration management system and configuration item;
- Definitive media library, change and change types, event, alert, as well as incident;
- Impact, urgency, priority, and service request;
- Problem, workaround, known error, along with a known error database;
- Role of communication within service operation, release policy, and types of services;
- Change proposals, CSI register, outcomes, and a pattern of business activities;
- Customers, users, as well as a deming cycle.
ITILFND04: Key Principles and Models – the learners are required to understand the major models and principles of service management and be able to balance opposing forces in it. They should know about the following:
- Service strategy;
- Service design;
- Continuous service improvement.
ITILFND05: Processes – this objective requires that you understand how service management processes significantly contribute towards the ITIL service lifecycle. You must be able to do the following:
- Service strategy (state the scope, objectives, and purpose of service portfolio management, financial management, and business relationship management);
- Service design (describe the scope, purpose, basic concepts, objectives, interfaces, and process activities of service level management, service catalog management, availability management, and information security management, among others);
- Service transition (describe the scope, objectives, purpose, basic concepts, interfaces, and process activities of change management, service asset, configuration management, and knowledge management);
- Service operation (state the objectives and purpose of event and access management and explain the basic concepts for problem and incident management);
- Continual service improvement (state the scope for the 7-step improvement process).
ITILFND06: Functions – this topic area will evaluate your ability to describe the objectives, role, and organizational structures with the service desk function, which include:
- Specific service desk function;
- Technical management function;
- Application management function with application development;
- IT operation management function.
ITILFND07: Roles – this subject covers the applicants’ skills in the area of responsibility awareness of the major roles in service management, which include:
- Process owner;
- Process manager;
- Process practitioner.
ITILFND08: Technology and Architecture – the students will be evaluated based on their understanding of how service automation helps with expediting the processes of service management.
ITIL V3 Foundation: Career opportunities
Those professionals who have the ITIL V3 Foundation certification are popular among most companies that have adopted the ITIL technology as their internal IT standard. This certificate is valuable for any specialist regardless of the field that he or she has majored in. Moreover, this certification will make you valuable to small- as well as medium-sized businesses. They are increasingly recognizing the value of ITIL and looking for the employees who hold this certificate. Thus, if you obtain it, you will be able to get promotion, salary increment, and respect from your colleagues. The average salary of any certified professional is $88,108 and can be as high as $148,000.