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.