ITSM Dashboard: April 2011

ITIL Intermediate Exams (or lack thereof)

ITIL intermediate pass-rates are worryingly low, for Service Strategy, Continual Service Improvement and Managing Across the Lifecycle it currently stands at around 50-60%. Think about that, of all the students that invest many thousands of dollars on those courses, 50% will likely fail the exam. Would you be happy if it was you? And that’s not all, quite a substantial number of students fail these exams multiple times. I am a member of an ITSM LinkedIn forum where it is common to see posts from ‘ITIL Experts’ who have crashed and burned in an intermediate exam:

(http://www.linkedin.com/groups?home=&gid=1932454&trk=anet_ug_hm)

So what’s going wrong? Surely the course material should be sufficient to pass....

It’s interesting to note that all ATO course material is designed according to an official syllabus and approved by APMG (the private examination company which is responsible for accrediting the ITIL Qualification Scheme).

If every Accredited Training Organisation (ATO) teaches approved material, why are pass rates are so low?

Quite simply, there is a considerable gap between the academic syllabus and the practical examination. That’s right, the exam on the 4th or 5th day, tests you on the practical implementation/usage/tailoring of those processes you have just learned about.... If you ask students who have sat these exams, they will tell you that; even if the exam was open book it would not have provided any benefit.

APMG does recommend 21 hours of personal study before taking the exam, this is on top of the 21 contact hours you need for a 4-day course. Unless you plan on not sleeping for 4 days, is this realistic?

Let’s talk about the exam itself:

8 Scenario- based Questions, Multiple Choice (ranked answers) within 90 Minutes. What is a ranked answer? The structure of an intermediate question asks you to choose the BEST solution from a choice of four. If you get the BEST answer (in ITIL’s view, not usually the real life answer) you are awarded 5 points, 2nd best is worth 3 points, 3rd best 1 point and a ‘Distracter’ for which you do not score.

To pass an ITIL intermediate exam requires a student to analyse a case study and determine the BEST approach for the given situation. And this is where students are falling short. The answers given are remarkably similar; sometimes there is only a one word difference between them. The student has the daunting task of trying to identify the BEST one.

There is no practical element in the official syllabus (although ATO’s do add their own exercises, based on individual experience).

So what’s the solution? Well without a drastic change to the official syllabus, success really seems to depend on the experience of the instructor. It is therefore wise for students to request background information of an ATO’s trainers to determine if their experience matches with the course.

For Foundation level courses this is not an issue, as they are purely academic in nature, however Intermediate and above absolutely require specific expertise in the subject.

My recommendation therefore is not to simply choose the ‘cheapest’ option. Research the available options and make your selection based on:

The credibility of the ATO
The experience of the instructor
The number of practical exercises

This approach is no guarantee of success however but will serve to reduce your risk of failure considerably.

Best of luck!