ITIL v3 or ITIL 4 Foundation?

We continue to receive questions on the difference between the ITIL v3 and the ITIL 4 Foundation courses. The purpose of this article is therefore to provide interested parties with an understanding of the difference between the two courses and specifically to help corporate sponsors decide which of these courses is best suited for their delegates.

The simple fact is that although ITIL 4 was introduced to the world in 2019, the ITIL 3 qualification schema and supporting courseware is still valid, still available and has not yet been given notice of retirement.

Now if all you require from ITIL Foundation is a certificate, then ITIL 4 is your best option. The course is considerably thinner than ITIL v3 and of the 40 questions, 17 are on just 7 of the 34 practices, so there is far less to learn.

However, better candidates seek not only to achieve certification but also gain something they can ‘take-away’ from the course and apply to beneficial effect in their organisation. Certainly the value for the sponsor is in the latter rather than the former, particularly if training is seen as an enabler rather than ‘sheep-dip’ (the subject of one of my earlier articles).

A simple comparison of the two syllabi show that ITIL v3 has 98 separate aspects in comparison with 68 in ITIL 4. However, this doesn’t tell the whole story. Let’s take two examples of aspects at the very core of ITIL and service management; the concept of a service and a configuration item.

In ITIL v3 Foundation, the syllabus requires the student to, “Define and explain the concept of a service” whereas in the ITIL 4 Foundation course, the student only needs to “Recall the definition of a service.”

In ITIL v3, the definition of a configuration item is, "A service asset that needs to be managed in order to deliver an IT service." In ITIL 4, it is "Any component that needs to be managed in order to deliver an IT service" but an asset is "Any financially valuable component that can contribute to the delivery of an IT product or service." Is your head spinning yet?

Furthermore, how do you explain to a Foundation level candidate that 'Continual Improvement' in ITIL 4 is a practice, it is also an aspect of the Service Value System and Improve is an aspect of the Service Value Chain.

The ITIL v3 Foundation syllabus also covers the roles of the Process Owner, Process Manager and Service Manager, the importance of measurement and the types of measurement, the RACI matrix, the concept of the service catalogue, the categorisation of suppliers, service review meetings with customers, the role of the change advisory board, the concept of the definitive media library, the principle of incident categorisation and much more that has been either removed from ITIL 4 or at least from the ITIL 4 Foundation syllabus.

As a consequence, the ITIL 4 Foundation student has less opportunity to identify practical ideas they can usefully adopt rather than simply learn the theory to pass the exam.

Finally, consider that in the ITIL 4 qualification schema, the ITIL Expert designation no longer exists. This is a pity because it has existed since 1992 (previously as ITIL Manager) and is considered one of the gold standards of ITIL Certification.

Anyone who aspires to Expert therefore needs to achieve ITIL v3 Foundation as a pre-requisite and then progress through the ITIL v3 Intermediates before taking the Managing Across the Lifecycle (MALC) course.

My personal view is that as the Expert status is retired, it will be cherished by those who have it as providing significantly greater insight into service management than the equivalent ITIL 4 qualifications of Managing Professional and Strategic Leader.

Of course, this is not an ‘Either/Or’ position, but I disagree with the current advice from Axelos to achieve 17 points and then take the Managing Professional Transition (MPT) INSTEAD of the MALC course. Rather take MALC, achieve Expert and THEN take MPT. For the sake of an additional 5-days training, it will be advantageous to achieve both Expert and Managing Professional status.

Incidentally, you will note that ITIL Master still exists in both the v3 and ITIL 4 schemas, although very little is known about this qualification. In ITIL v3 format fewer than ten people are known to have achieved Master and the qualification has not even been attempted in ITIL 4 to my knowledge. I may be able to shed more light on this in time as I expect to be part of the ITIL 4 Master working group.