Blog posted by: Adam Griffith - ITIL Architect, PeopleCert, Consultant, IT best practice, AXELOS, September 2023.
Why does the world need an ITIL 4 Practice Manager designation?
First - and perhaps most important - we listened to the service management community. They told us that while the ITIL 4 Managing Professional and Strategic Leader designations had the right focus for tactical and strategic knowledge and skills, the missing link was a designation for service management operations.
And though the ITIL 4 practice guides launched along with the ITIL 4 core guidance always addressed this issue, they had become - inadvertently - our “best-kept secret”.
So, connecting the practices with specific certifications for the first time both shines a brighter spotlight on the practical techniques available to service managers and gives practitioners the opportunity to validate their knowledge.
And as the practice guides exist in a digital format, we're now at the point of refreshing them with guidance on practical application and recommendations for key tools.
How do the Practice Manager training and exams measure and evaluate people's skills?
The first batch of practice guides* - collectively entitled Monitor, Support & Fulfil - that qualify a candidate for the new designation** include:
- Service Desk
- Incident Management
- Problem Management
- Service Request Management
- Monitoring and Event Management
These practices naturally synergize, making them virtually inseparable. And, at their core, the practices remain organized around the four dimensions of service management in ITIL 4. Consequently, the exams for each practice ensure candidates look at the practice in terms of organizations and people, partners and suppliers, information and technology and value streams and processes.
Plus, the capability criteria from the ITIL maturity model now included in each practice helps practitioners perform a self-assessment to drive improvement.
What does having the Practice Manager designation prove?
Training and certifying in the five practices that make up each of our three planned bundles, and achieving the Practice Manager designation, proves your ability to apply ITIL concepts to daily service management success: covering operational tasks and activities, driving valuable outcomes, improving customer experience and - above all - keeping the IT and ITSM lights on every day.
The operational work of a Practice Manager is what's most often seen in an organization: in other words, the service management “tip of the spear” with greatest visibility. So, for someone wanting to advance their career, having an operational focus is probably the most common starting point.
And for the organization, Practice Managers are the ones most focused on delivering and facilitating valuable stakeholder outcomes. In many cases, they are the face of service management: creating vitally important daily outcomes that the business needs and seeing the impacts - positive and negative - of IT service provision every day.
*Following the first bundle of practices within Monitor, Supply & Fulfil, we will release Plan, Implement and Control in H1 2023 and Collaborate, Assure & Improve in H2 2023.
**To achieve the Practice Manager designation, you will need to have completed 5 individual practices plus the ITIL Specialist: Create, Deliver and Support module, or you will need to have completed the 3-day bundled or combined module plus the ITIL Specialist: Create, Deliver and Support module.
Click here for more information on the practice certifications.