ITIL 4 Foundation? I have put together some useful links for you (so that you don't have to do all the research yourself)

I have to admit, although I did not think it would, it hurt my pride a bit when I heard that I was being put on furlough. It felt like there was so much work to do, so many improvements that could be implemented, connections created, information shared and professional topics explored and learned about. Instead, you are told to drop everything you have been passionately working on for the last 3.5 years, stay at home, stay safe, persuading yourself it is all for the best of your customers, colleagues, company and the general public.

Back from a snowflake into an achiever

Whilst struggling to let go of the idea that I am not allowed to work, I started to look at it as an opportunity. When in my life will I be able to take 3 months off and not focus on work? When will I be able to do all the remaining improvements on the house I have promised to my wife and myself since we moved in, spend more time with my her, start learning another language, work on my fitness, listen to podcasts, read books, play all those computer games I hardly ever made time for and finally achieve my first IT qualification?

Three months in, although itching to go back to work, I have a feeling I will be looking back at this time in a very positive light. Aside from getting myself to read books, I have managed to achieve all and more than I had on my initial list, got into a great routine and (unexpectedly) enjoyed my time with ITIL 4.

Journey to ITIL 4

Being of a curious, slightly nerdy nature, my main aim was not to pass the exam. It was to learn how ITIL 4 works, think about why it has been written this way and its real-life implications on the world of business as well as personal life. Therefore, if you are looking to only do enough to pass, majority of the links below may be an overkill for you to go through.

I was already familiar with some of the ITSM, and ITIL 3 content, and trained in delivering our ITSM Simulations, and therefore I have had a bit of a head start which enabled me to achieve a score of 50% during my first mock exam, prior to the beginning of the course. Afterwards, I went through a four-day online, instructor-led ITIL 4 course, followed by a daily 2-hour self study and the exam 14 days since the course. During my self-study, I have researched and went through a fair amount of materials and thought some of you may find my summary useful, so that you can save your precious time, and focus on gaining relevant knowledge to help you learn about ITIL 4 pass the Foundation exam. There were some resources I wish I had used at the beginning, and therefore what you see below is the journey I would recommend for myself if I was new to this and wanted to go through the process as efficiently as possible and gain a good understanding of ITIL 4.

Please note, each of us has a different background, knowledge etc., and therefore it may not necessarily work for you, personally, just like any guide :-) . All the resources below are free of charge, albeit some in exchange for your work email address. I have not been asked to or paid to promote any of the links below, they have been chosen purely on as the best of the materials I have used in my preparation for the exam.

Recommended journey

1. Test your knowledge prior to the exam by downloading ITIL Exam Prep-2020 application by Geek-Troubleshoot into your phone. It is full of advertisement (close them in right top corner) but worked great for me - and it's free! Doing the exam will let you know where you are roughly on your journey to achieving the 60% pass mark. Please note, there were several people with me on the course that have achieved higher marks in the mock exams than in the Foundation exam itself.
2. Go to Axelos website and download the ITIL 4 Candidate Syllabus. This will help you with a structure of the course as well as with your prep for the exam and I found myself using it every single day of going through the process.
3. If you can (work vs. cost vs. time), sign up to a facilitator-led online course and go through it, as it helped me a lot to understand the concepts and really forced me to pay attention and focus on the subject matter.
4. After the course, test your knowledge further by another exam either from the course itself and/or via the aforementioned mobile application. (I achieved 77%)
5. With a boosted confidence of progress, book a date in with the examiner of your choice. In my case I have used the services of one of our channel partners - Pink Elephant UK, they have been an absolute pleasure to deal with as always, but there are plenty of others out there.
6. If your exam is two weeks away, I would set out daily 2-hour slots in my calendar for further self-study. I would recommend you to go through these, along with doing a quick recap of some of your course slides each day:

• (Study days 1-3) Sign up to a free 7-day trial of Cloud Academy and go through the ITL 4 course created by QA that is included in there.
• (Day 4) Go through the Atlassian ITIL 4 whitepaper on this topic
• (Day 5) Watch a couple of videos on ITSM Academy Youtube channel.
• (Day 6) Download the suite of BMC's guides to ITIL 4. I found the ITIL 4 Overview, Applying the ITIL Guiding Principles and ITIL 4 SVC and Value Systems papers particularly useful. remember to cancel your Cloud Academy subscription in case you do not want to continue it, I will be likely coming back to the paid version for DevOps or PM,
• (Day 7-9) Watch Ivor Macfarlane's taster of their ITIL 4 e-learning workshop. It takes you through the basics such as Value, SVC, SVS, Guiding Principles, or the Four Dimensions in a very easy to understand form, at a pace that allows you to absorb the information.
• (Day 10) Finally, day before your exam, go through your ITIL 4 slides, test your knowledge by downloading ExamMobile: ITIL 4 Foundation application into your phone and do their Training Exam 1 (I achieved 72.5%). If there are still any areas that you are looking to understand better, go through some of the resources stated here or simply google for more resources - there is a lot of them online...
• Day 11 - Pass the exam and celebrate :-)

I was impressed by the plethora of great (and sometimes not so great but still useful) information online that was freely available.

Do you know even better sources than the ones mentioned here? Please share it with us below!

Finally, please let me know if this guide was useful to you and helped you gain a good understanding of ITIL 4.