6 Reasons to Use Your ITIL4success Subscription

Your ITIL certificate comes in the post. Congratulations, you’ve made it through the exam! You put the certificate away (or hang it up, if that’s your thing) and you also find in the envelope a leaflet telling you that you have 12 months’ access to ITIL4success.

If you’ve taken an ITIL exam with APMG, you’ll automatically have a year’s access to ITIL4success. It’s only APMG candidates that get access to the site, and there are another 8 examination institutes, including BCS and EXIN who unfortunately don’t offer this access. This puts you an exclusive club.

It’s a website that was set up at the end of 2006, and it’s designed as a growing base of resources for people who want to keep going with learning about service management once their exam is over. Sounds good. But is it worth it?

Here are 6 reasons why you should log on to ITIL4success.

1: Ask an Expert - You can Ask an Expert, or browse the questions that have already been asked. Questions are answered by people like Aidan Lawes, until recently CEO of itSMF UK and itSMF International and now an independent service management evangelist, so you know you are getting a top quality reply. It takes a couple of days for your question to be answered, and then it will be posted on the site so that everyone gets the benefit. Be as specific as possible and you’ll get a tailored response that will hopefully help you and others.

2: Management article base - There’s a selection of wide-ranging articles on ITIL4success, covering a variety of management topics. There aren’t that many of them, but they are useful to read through. Don’t get too hung up on just broadening your experience and expertise in service management – take some time to investigate other management subjects here, with these articles. You’ll be a more rounded manager for it.

Candidates are also welcome and invited to submit articles for publication, so if you want to create a profile for yourselves and your organisation, this is a good way to do it. It's also a way of sharing knowledge and experiences with the ITIL community.

3: Exam guide - ITIL v3 has been around for a while now, but the exam structure still seems complicated. There’s an examination guide on the site that explains how the different qualifications fit together, what is different from v2 (if you remember back that far) and how the credit system works.

This section is also a guide to what’s on the OGC's public website and it points you to the most interesting bits like the credit profiler, an interactive tool that automatically calculates how many credits you have or will get under the v3 scheme.

Once you’ve passed your exam, check out your name on the candidate register. It’s a bit like a hall of fame, and useful for proving your status to an employer. Take a screenshot of you on the register if you don’t think your employer will have access to the site themselves.

4: Blogwatch - Blogwatch is s a shortcut for people to stay abreast of what's being blogged about or appearing on sites like ITSMWatch. It’s good if you don’t have a lot of time to follow everything. May be only one or two a month, but we try to pick ones with practical value.

It’s hard to find at the moment as the site is being re-designed. Tony Kippenberger, the editor of Blogwatch and the man behind ITIL4success said that he regards the current site as a work-in-progress, and there are several new ideas being worked on to enhance it considerably.

5: Knowledge Portal - On the site this section is called "Best Practice" but in reality it is a portal to point you in the direction of useful things. Navigating the OGC websites can be difficult, as there is so much information. This section points out some useful things and there’s the bonus of a detailed glossary of terms.

You should note though, that the glossary is v2 terms is not the most up to date version. ITIL4success points you to the publicly-accessible ITIL site for the most recent version (and the translations), where you have to accept the terms before you’re able to view them.

There’s also an online bookshelf to help guide to you useful service management books. You could find service management books on Amazon, or in your bookshop of choice. But there are a lot to sift through, and how do you know you’ll be buying something useful? The ITIL bookshelf has a selection of books from APMG-Business Books, TSO and others. The books are categorised into Version 3 guides, itSMF pocket guides, general service management books and other IT management books. It’s a starting point if you have no idea what you are looking for.

There’s a fair amount of content. No doubt you’ll find that some of it is not relevant to you or your career stage, there is likely to be something here you can use!

The downside…

There is a forum on the site, but it is not well used. This might be because it’s moderated, and that prevents people from having a real-time access. It is only open to ITIL candidates and accredited trainers, and that also means that there can’t be that many people surfing the forum at any one time. It’s a pity, because there is a lot of useful information in the heads of people who would be using the ITIL4success site.

6: Free – Best of all, it’s free!

Elizabeth Harrin is director of The Otobus Group The Otobos Group, a business writing consultancy specializing in IT and project management. She's the author of "Social Media for Project Managers " and "Project Management in the Real World". She has a decade of experience in IT and business change functions in healthcare and financial services, and is ITIL v3 Foundation certified.