ITIL Master (Version 5) – recognition and credibility at any career stage

Lisa Woodall – ITIL Master, co-author, ITIL Experience (Version 5), founder – Whatever Next?

With a blue-chip technology and business career spanning more than 30 years – but without an ITIL course to her name – Lisa Woodall decided not only to co-author an ITIL (Version 5) module but achieved the newest ITIL Master designation.
Here, she tells PeopleCert why:

When receiving the opportunity to go for ITIL Master, my thought was: “I wish I’d done this earlier”.

Though I came across ITIL a decade ago when leading a company’s IT strategy, I chose to become a Chartered IT Professional instead. That said, something told me that ITIL provides the foundation layer for managing technology and business.

Because IT and digital technology today are a broad church, I can see how ITIL (Version 5) – covering product, service, strategy, experience, practices, and transformation – will appeal to a wider market.

And, for me, ITIL Master (Version 5) has been an investment in demonstrating professional capability and credibility.

ITIL Master (Version 5) for the established and early-stage professional

For someone, like me, who has been in the business a long time, the power of obtaining ITIL Master (Version 5) is how it enhances recognition and reputation.

Learning more about the business and technology areas I’m supporting, leading and advising – understanding what people do day-to-day and becoming more familiar with the frameworks, structures and language they use – gives me more credibility.

Each of the advanced post-Foundation modules combines insight, knowledge and skills that serve a variety of different teams and what they’re facing:

For example, ITIL Service (Version 5) helps understand service management teams’ focus on management practices such as incident, problem and change enablement, ITIL Product (Version 5) reveals more about development teams’ discovery and design, while ITIL Experience (Version 5) wakes you up to the fact that an organization can be technically delivering but the real outcomes and impacts are driven by experience.

ITIL Strategy (Version 5) shows how various enterprises have different challenges and what the professional needs to consider, while ITIL Transformation (Version 5) adopts continual improvement as a way to guide where an organization needs to go. Taking a practice certification – in my case, ITIL Collaborate, Assure and Improve – reaffirmed the value of stakeholder management and collaboration across suppliers, delivery teams, and senior stakeholders.

The certification pathway to ITIL Master (Version 5) offers pieces of a jigsaw that ultimately reveal the whole, big picture and how everything connects.

This, for a more junior person early on in their service management career, means they can add new knowledge as they grow and develop in successive roles and across various teams. And they would have the advantage (unlike industry veterans) of not needing to unlearn ways of working and habits gained through, sometimes, muddling through the challenges.

So, ITIL Master (Version 5) can be both recognition for the best practices a professional adopts already and a way to equip them with fresh competencies.

A meaningful pathway to mastery

Many people take ITIL Foundation (Version 5) as the necessary, entry-level course and certification early in their career.

But stopping there reduces their opportunity to grow into management and leadership roles. That’s why the advanced ITIL (Version 5) modules – leading eventually to ITIL Master (Version 5) – underpin the journey to becoming a manager and/or leader.

A true master should be someone responsible for strategy, leading transformation, and managing practices. The more senior your position, the more relevant ITIL Master (Version 5) is.

Indeed, if ITIL Master (Version 5) had been available 10 years ago – based on the job I was doing at the time – I would have done it then.

A mark of professionalism among professionals

People in other professions – finance, law, HR, for example – need to invest in their professional accreditation as mandatory.

For us in the IT industry, we’ve been content to invest in technical exams but, not always, the courses, certifications, and designations that reflect how important management and leadership is in our roles. And, equally, to gain the respect and recognition from those other departmental professionals.

Demonstrating that you are as qualified in your field as your counterparts elsewhere in the organization means a long-term commitment to continuous development in the ways of operating and delivering digital products and services.

After completing ITIL Foundation (Version 5), any professional worth their weight should commit to going on the journey to ITIL Master (Version 5), combining real-life experience with training and certification. Any organization and CIO wanting to hire the best is likely to be seeking that.