ITIL ® has long been one of the few professional certifications that did not require holders to re-certify or perform any sort of continuing education to maintain the credential. As of January 2023, that changed. Under PeopleCert's new Continuing Professional Development (CPD) program, individuals who hold certain credentials are now required to recertify or record professional development points to keep their certifications in good standing.   PeopleCert , the sole examination institute of ITIL, has designed this program to help candidates show their commitment to continuing professional development and be able to stay ahead in a competitive labor market. By recertifying, individuals can demonstrate their understanding and up-to-date knowledge of best practices to support professional development. Beginning January 2023, all Global Best Practice certifications will need to be renewed after three years. Here are answers to some of the questions you may have: Which certifications ne

By Donna Knapp For more than 50 years, billions of people around the globe have celebrated Earth Day every April 22nd. When Earth Day was first introduced in 1970 there were no legal or regulatory mechanisms to protect our environment. Today there are more but there is still work to do. This year’s theme, ‘Invest in Our Planet’, reminds us that businesses, governments, and each of us individually are equally responsible for protecting our increasingly fragile planet and adopting more sustainable practices. ITSM professionals are in a unique position to contribute to a green, prosperous, and equitable future. A great first step is to look at how we can minimize and manage e-waste. According to the United Nations E-Waste Monitor report, it is estimated that 53.6 million metric tons of e-waste are produced every year worldwide. Only about 17 percent of this waste is properly collected, documented, and recycled. Much of the remaining 83 percent of e-waste sits idle in homes and businesse

By Donna Knapp It’s interesting to see how members of different communities can view a practice so differently. That is currently the case with problem management, the practice of identifying, removing, or mitigating the cause or contributing factors to service disruptions. For the most part, the IT service management (ITSM) community recognizes the value of problem management. They may admittedly struggle to find the time or resources needed to perform the practice. Or they may find it difficult to justify the actions needed to introduce permanent solutions identified as a result of the practice. But they, for the most part, value the practice. Conversely, some members of the DevOps community view problem management, or more specifically, root cause analysis, as a complete waste of time. We’ve found that there are a few common reasons that on the surface make sense, but that have counterpoints worth considering. One reason for the pushback is that the practice of root cause analysis i

By Donna Knapp Have you ever done business with an organization that liked to brag about all the extras that it provides, but doesn’t get the basics right? To some extent, the accelerated innovation that was sparked by the pandemic fueled this need to focus on the new and shiny. And for some organizations, it is what’s needed to stand out in the crowd, or to compete, or simply to survive. But here is what we know. All the new and shiny in the world can’t make up for a poor customer experience. You cannot sacrifice quality for speed. And a perk here and there can’t overcome the lack of trust that builds up when an organization fails to get the basics right day in and day out. So, what we’ve got to do is strike a balance. A feat that is easier said than done. According to the 2022 State of CIO report, 76% of CIOs say that it’s challenging to find the right balance between business innovation and operational excellence. And yet it is exactly what organizations today need to do… C. All of

Guest host post by Lisa Schwartz It is time to get back to sponsoring tradeshows!  And here at ITSM Academy that means our mascot,  Franny the Flamingo  ( click to read her origin story ) is going to Las Vegas. She's been with us at every conference since the early 2000s and I am sure she is ready to hit the road, via my suitcase, to represent again.  And her moment is here. We just signed as a sponsor of #Pink23. It was an easy decision, year-over-year, the conference is awesome.  This year, one of the options is to host, and name, the Signature Drink. During the February conference, Franny will be celebrating her 19th birthday - the Canadian legal drinking age.  It seemed fitting to honor her contribution to ITSM Academy by calling the #Pink23 Signature Drink the Festive Flamingo . That way, everyone attending can join Franny’s birthday bash.  #flamingoals   As it happens, @ITSMDonna is also celebrating her birthday in February and we take birthdays very seriously - paid holiday

By Donna Knapp Look around and it’s likely that many of the organizations that you do business with, and perhaps the company that you work for (or want to work for), are demonstrating a commitment to sustainability. Sustainability has become a top priority for CEOs but what is it? In 1987, the United Nations (UN) defined sustainability as “meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”   Sustainability is not just environmentalism, although that is an aspect of it. Sustainability is a set of values that are shared by individuals and organizations worldwide who demonstrate their commitment to these values every day through their decisions and actions. Embedded in sustainability we also find concerns for social equity and economic development, as illustrated by the UN’s 17 sustainable development goals . In recent years much of corporate America, including many large multinationals, has signed on to support the sustainabl

Axelos/Peoplecert has released the newest ITIL Specialist course:  Sustainability in Digital & IT .   This course is designed to provide a practical grounding in the key principles of sustainability (as defined in the United Nation’s sustainable development goals ) and then uses the ITIL continual improvement model to introduce methods and models that organizations can use to improve their sustainability. In recent years much of corporate America, including many large multinationals, has signed on to support the sustainable development goals. Investors are also starting to take notice. The movement for ESG (environmental, social, and governance) investing is strong and growing, driven by investor demand and regulatory pressure. So strong, that CEOs are starting to take notice. According to a 2021 IBM survey, 37% of CEOs view sustainability as a priority over the next three to four years. According to McKinsey, “In the very near future…[sustainability] will be as fundamental to doin

I really like teaching Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) Foundation course.  I find it really effective to link SRE Foundation to the learners’ needs of incorporating SRE core concepts to ITSM and DevOps (and any other framework!)  This course allows me to explain how SRE improves operational excellence and quality, a key performance measure for ITSM. It also allows me to explain how SRE improves Automation, not only with the DevOps pipeline, but also how Ops uses this data to improve the flow of work into operations, and then automate repetitive tasks by utilizing tools (e.g., ChatOps).  Most importantly, SRE improves collaboration with customers, defining Service Level Objectives (SLO’s) so that IT consistently achieves (and exceeds) customers’ expectations AND delivers VALUE for the organization.  Automated monitoring is NOT enough these days, we must include observability, using automation to manage security, and ultimately delivering improved IT service quality to the business.

Written by Greg Smith , originally posted in OwlPoint News , September 14, 2021 What is the ITIL ®  Maturity Model? The ITIL Maturity Model is a tool used to objectively and comprehensively assess an organization’s service management capabilities and the maturity of the organization’s   Service Value System (SVS) . AXELOS is about to release the new ITIL Maturity Model which OwlPoint – the most tenured AXELOS Consulting Partner in the US – will use to assess clients’ service management capabilities. Why would an organization need an ITIL assessment? There are three main reasons an organization would want to have an ITIL assessment performed: To achieve a desired level of certification and/or meet contractual obligations, they must meet a pre-defined level of maturity and capability. They have undertaken a Service Management implementation or improvement initiative and need to validate the project goals have been met. They are preparing to undertake a Service Management implementation

Originally posted on DevClass , June 22,2021 written by Joseph Martins and sponsored by Axelos Experience is everything when it comes to delivering IT-enabled products and services. But it’s no longer about how many deadlines your team smashed, how often you’d exceeded service-level agreements (SLAs), or how many lines of code you’ve spat out. Rather it’s about how the services and products you deliver impact the rest of the organisation’s ability to do their jobs, increase productivity, deliver customer satisfaction and co-create value. “Experience” may be seen as subjective, even ephemeral, compared to the traditional IT metrics, deadlines and SLAs. But if you want proof of its importance, consider how ITIL® 4, the latest revision of the best practice framework for service management from AXELOS, focuses on improving user experience of digital services and how this enhances productivity right across the organisation. Ian Aitchison , VP Product Management at Nexthink, the leader in di