Hopefully by the time you’re done reading this article, you will see why the ITIL certification is a perfect complement to your project management skills.

Project vs Service

Let me elaborate at the surface level why the “project vs service” perspective came into existence. A project is a temporary endeavor having an actual start date and an actual end date. A project cannot be called a project unless these two parameters are stamped in writing. Further, the outcome of a project is a unique product.

On the other hand, a service will most definitely have a start date, but there is no logical end to a service. A service is meant to be continuous, prolonging until it is needed. The outcome of a service is not unique, there is no product developed, and generally the target of a service is to maintain status quo.

Role of ITIL in Project Management

ITIL is a certification on services, so it is rational to believe that IT professionals in the service industry would subscribe to it? Not anymore!

The world is flattening; products which are outcomes of projects need servicing, and the era where services took over after a project has ended is a thing of the past. These days, the scope of project planning extends to services as well — how the product would be serviced and what the boundaries would be. Projects and services are running companies hand in hand, and this is the way of the future.

ITIL is unquestionably the unparalleled standard for services. It is gaining popularity by the day, people in service industry have hopped onto the band wagon, and we are beginning to see project managers especially show interest in learning the nuances, and leveraging ITIL for a better outcome on their projects.

How ITIL Can Help Project Managers

ITIL delves into how a service is to be formulated, aspects of design, transition, operation and the improvements that can be identified and implemented. Traditional project management stages include initiation, planning, execution, monitoring and controlling – which is more or less principally similar to what ITIL has to offer.

The outcome of a project will act as a feeder to service in most cases. For example, when Microsoft releases their next version of Windows, the product — Windows 8 — needs servicing. Users are going to have issues with capacity and compatibility, among others. In order to service their customers better, Microsoft will have to doff their project hat, and don the service hat, and do what is necessary to service the customer proactively.

In essence, the product led to a service, so service planning and strategizing should be done during the project phase to predict the service issues that might arise, to implement preventive actions if possible or keep corrective actions ready.

Example: Benefits of ITIL in Projects

Let me consider an example to illustrate how ITIL can benefit projects.

A particular project uses a vendor to perform certain activities, like delivering necessary hardware and servicing the hardware for a certain period of time. Project management is ably supported with processes to find a suitable vendor, through tools such as bidder conferences, contract negotiations and expert judgment.

Project management can ensure that the vendor is selected, and products are delivered on time — but what are the terms of support? Are there any agreements governing the kind of support the vendor would provide their customers? These questions can be tackled with ease by somebody with ITIL knowledge.

Any support that is agreed upon is bound by the Service Level Agreement (SLA). This document contains all the dimensions of a support – support window (24X7 or 15X5 etc), how soon the vendor responds to issues, how soon he will be able to resolve issues, constraints, conditions when a vendor could be penalized for missing targets. SLA negotiations are a specialty of ITIL, and ITIL professionals are best placed to negotiate these terms. Imagine a project manager who is ITIL certified, he is a force to reckon with!

ITIL for Project Managers and More

I’m not saying that ITIL would help project managers alone; project members can very well learn the intricacies of ITIL and become certified. But, a project manager, given his position in a project, would be in the best position to call the shots, and being armed with ITIL will give him a good handle on the project more than the others.

There are a number of theories on the ideal capabilities of a project manager. Some will say that a project manager must be an expert in what he has been hired to do — manage the project to successful completion. If he needs technical consultations, there are experts who can help him through the project. Today’s IT gurus vouch that a project manager is like a one-man-army, who is good with project management as well as technical insight.

Look at the bigger picture. A person capable of handling a project and having insight into various technicalities makes a better project manager. He might leverage on various experts for research and technical view, but the final decision must be that of the project manager. If a project manager has to remain successful over a number of projects, he cannot rely on experts alone, and hope that their judgments are on target time after time — which will generally not be the case as the accountability of delivering a project lies with the project manager.

A good project manager must be a jack of all trades and should judiciously mix his management skills with his technical skills before he can pronounce his decision.

Same argument holds good for ITIL too. An ITIL expert must be hired to opine on things in question, and provide necessary data, but the judgment call must come from the man himself. If the project manager is relying on the ITIL expert to make his decision, then there is something screwy that can come apart anytime. It is time that project managers are not only experts in managing projects, but have practitioner’s knowledge of ITIL as well.

How ITIL Improves Project Manager’s Chances in the Industry

Today (and for a very long time to come), ITIL certification for a project manager is a priced arrow in his quiver. It gives him options. He can take up positions that involve project management alone or a position that needs both the skills – like the transition manager. And, he will be automatically qualified to take up positions in the service industry based on his ITIL knowledge alone (backed with the IT experience in project management) – such as the service delivery manager.

The role of a service delivery manager is just one of the many managerial positions we have in the service industry – others worth mentioning are IT process manager, data center manager, account manager amongst others.

More the flairs, higher the paycheck is the mantra in the industry today. So, our ITIL certified project manager is likely to expect a good package from hiring companies. Private consulting is not a bad idea as well!

How Project Managers Can Get Started with ITIL

Project managers can get started with ITIL fundamentals through ITIL v3 Foundation Training which covers the 5 core ITIL libraries:

1. Service Strategy
2. Service Design
3. Service Transition
4. Service Operation
5. Continual Service Improvement

The ITIL certification will not only help you be a better project manager, but it will improve your employment prospects as more companies, and especially IT organizations, are utilizing ITIL.

A holistic view of ITIL empowers IT professionals to develop processes that are rigid, input independent and self sustaining; it gives managers the vision to look beyond the present during the planning phase of deliveries. The core books of ITIL provide the kind of knowledge you need, and the certification that comes along with mastering the core books is the ITIL V3 Expert certification.

ITIL V3 Expert Certification Prerequisites

I assume that you — the reader — are either an ITIL V3 Foundation certification holder, or you’re been working on ITIL processes for a long long time, and you’re thinking of getting certified.

To embark on a journey towards the ITIL Expert certification, the ITIL V3 Foundation is mandatory. The Expert certification is not just one exam, but a number of exams, each consisting of certain credits. Depending on the path you choose, you would end up taking five or six modules before the crowning ceremony.

Formal training through Accredited Training Organization (ATO) or approved e-training courses are mandatory before taking up each exam.

ITIL V3 Expert Certification Credit Scheme

ITIL V3 Expert certification requires candidates to earn at least 22 credits. Each module exam consists of a certain number of credits tagged to it, and depending on the modules you choose, you either need to complete five or six modules to get the required credits.

The image above shows the pyramid to reach the ITIL Master Certification, which is still in development at the time of this writing. The highest certification is the ITIL Expert Certification which is the subject of our conversation today.

At the base of the pyramid, you have the ITIL Foundation certification, which is mandatory (as mentioned before), and it carries 2 credits.

After that there are two different areas you can choose from. The first is based on the service lifecycles of ITIL V3 and there are five of them.

Service Lifecycle Modules:

• Service Strategy
• Service Design
• Service Transition
• Service Operations
• Continuous Service Improvement

Each service lifecycle module gives you 3 credits. Candidates must receive a minimum of 21 hours of training before they attempt the exam.

The second area, the service capability modules, is grouped based on role mapping. It has four modules in each earning you 4 credits.

Service Capability Modules:

• Planning, Protection and Optimization
• Service Offerings and Agreements
• Release, Control and Validation
• Operational Support and Analysis

Candidates must complete 30 hours of training to take this exam.

The service lifecycle path gives candidates a good hold on ITIL V3, and will aid them in making service management decisions. People who choose this area are those who have an eye on a management position to run the operations, organization and other derivatives of management.

The service capability modules add value from an implementation standpoint, and are particularly useful for those deploying services and solutions.

Once the modules are mastered, the integration of all the modules — Managing across the Lifecycle — awaits you. This module stands between you and Expert certification, and it carries 5 credits. It is an exam on how well you know the management and implementation side of ITIL V3. The minimum training hours for this module is 30.

ITIL V3 Expert Certification Options

You have six options with logical permutations and combinations to choose from; you can pick one of them based on your interests and future considerations. The figure below illustrates them along with the credits that you would obtain upon completion. Note that the Foundation certification and Managing across the Lifecycles are the mandatory ones in the list.

Image Copyright: APM Group

ITIL V3 Expert Certification Examination Format

Every module exam has the same format despite carrying varying credits. The exam consists of eight questions, and it’s in multiple choice format. The questions on the exam however, are not straightforward. They present a scenario, and you are required to choose the best answer from the list.

Like other exams, there isn’t one right answer, and three wrong answers. All the four choices are correct, it’s just the degree of correctness that matters; in other words, all four answers are correct, the best gives you maximum points.

So all exam answers are weighted as best answer, second best answer, third best answer and fourth best answer. The best answer gets you 5 points, second best 3, third best 1, and the last does not carry any points.

So, the exam consists of eight questions, eight possible best answers amounting to 40 maximum points. To pass the exam, you must secure at least 70% which is the equivalent of 28 points. So, in essence, a candidate can get three best answers, four second best answers and one third best answer, and still pass the exam.

You can take up this exam either on paper or online. Generally, ATOs schedule the exams at your request, and the choice of paper or online depends on availability of infrastructure. Results on online exams are instantaneous while you have a cooling off period of 3-4 weeks if you undertake the paper based one.

I personally prefer to take a paper based exam. The scenario based question and the choices run into several lines. I have seen questions and choices running across an entire A4 page. I find it hard to concentrate and grasp quickly on computer monitors, and paper gives me the freedom of reading at the angle and position of choice, and to highlights key points on the question paper. But again, the choice is yours.

ITIL V3 Expert Exam Resources

The ITIL V3 Expert certification exam tests your knowledge based on the core books of ITIL. There is no substitute to the official books. During the training sessions, ATOs condense the information and present it in a format that can be covered over the weekend. It should be sufficient provided you have previous exposure to ITIL and related processes.

Sample papers are not available on the net, as far as my searching-on-the-web capabilities are concerned. Before I took up the exam, I had to sign an undertaking that I would not reveal the questions to the outside world; hence you won’t get anything from me either. ITIL examination bodies share two sets of sample papers with ATOs, which they would probably share during the trainings, and this is your lifeline to understand the exam, and to check your ITIL pulse.

Read on to find out more about ITIL, and its significance in today’s IT industry.

What is a Service in ITIL?

A service is a way of supporting customers to achieve their intended goals. This sounds a little complicated, so I hope an example will ease the tension. I have a cellphone; the connection which allows me to make and receive phone calls is a service. The cellphone by itself is not a service (it’s a product), but the connection that allows me to achieve my intended goals (like calling a friend) is a service.

Some examples of services in the IT world could be internet service, blackberry service, telephony, and web hosting. Non IT services are landscape maintenance, car washes, cable TV, and trash collection. Remember that any service that a customer receives helps the customer achieve the intended goal of the prescribed service. A trash collection service gets rid of the trash, cable TV connections keeps the customer entertained, and a clean car is the outcome of a car washing service.

What is ITIL?

ITIL is an acronym for Information Technology Infrastructure Library.

ITIL is a collection of best practices related to managing services, and the inputs that came from various organizations. It guides service provider organizations in setting up services, and running it efficiently and cost effectively. This in turn makes the customer happy, and brings in more business – which is what all organizations are set out to do.

ITIL was designed initially for infrastructure services alone, like Windows services, mainframes, and storage among others. As it evolved, ITIL became more and more relevant for application services as well, like providing Microsoft SharePoint services, or maintaining database through SAP.

The abbreviation of ITIL mentions infrastructure, but ITIL covers much more than infrastructure, hence the custodians – OGC have decided to keep the name ITIL and annul its abbreviation.

ITIL is a certification bestowed upon individuals, and not organizations. Organizations embrace frameworks built on ITIL such as ISO 20K.

I will demonstrate what ITIL can do in later sections of this article.

A Brief History of ITIL

It all started under Margaret Thatcher, the prime minister of United Kingdom during the eighties. The cost of IT in the government agencies was not in control with disparate processes ruling the roost.

Central Computer and Telecoms Agency (CCTA) was commissioned to bring down the cost and streamline processes across agencies. It took CCTA 4 years and 8 billion pounds to come up with a set of best practices, it was called Government Information Technology Infrastructure Management Method (GITIMM), conceptually similar to ITIL. Consultants who were taken on board this project visited a number of private institutions (including IBM) to understand their processes, and how they performed their IT related activities. The processes and activities were passed through a sieve, and the best sets of processes were retained to give birth to ITIL.

GITIMM, throughout the eighties and early nineties evolved to become ITIL v1 which consisted of over 30 books.

In 2000, the United Kingdom’s Office of Government Commerce (OGC) took over CCTA, and a year later ITIL v2 was released. V2 sub divided ITIL as service support and service delivery. Maintenance of services came under service support while putting up a new service or modifying it came under service delivery. This version consisted of 8 volumes.

The subsequent version – ITIL v3 was published in May 2007, and it provides a holistic view of services. It covers the entire lifecycle of a service – from the nascent stages of strategies through design, transition to live environment and support when services are active.

A major difference between v3 and its predecessors is the inclusion of a continuous improvement phase in the former. This phases stresses on the need for continuous improvement throughout the lifecycle of a service – which makes ITIL much stronger than what it was envisioned to be.

ITIL v3 further reduced the number of books to 5, called as the core volumes.

Sometime last year, there were talks of ITIL v4, but it turned out to be hoax in the end.

How does ITIL Affect the IT Industry?

I recently attended a conference on IT service management. One of the topics in a debate session was – ITIL is required in my organization. The team speaking against the topic stressed on the foundation that an organization had to lay in order to support ITIL processes. You would need funds to develop processes, document, implement and audit them on a regular basis. Support staff needs process trainings, which costs money. As they rightly argued, these are the overheads companies would like to give a miss.

Well, I agree with the team speaking against the topic, but there is more to it than meets the eye. The return on investment (ROI) in implementing ITIL is multi-fold. Some benefits include:

• increased uptime of services,
• better response and resolution rates,
• enhanced quality of service provided,
• cutting down the cost of services
• maybe even passing on the cut backs to the customer which could lead to better customer satisfaction and more business.

These are just a sample of benefits an organization can derive by putting aside a small portion of the budget to be an ITIL convert.

Example of ITIL in Action

Let me run this with an example to demonstrate ITIL capabilities – your internet connection is down. You call in the toll free number provided by your Internet Service Provider (ISP). The call center which receives your call is a derivative of ITIL – called the service desk. The folks answering your phone call try to fix the issue by asking you to do some basic things like restarting your modem. If they cannot solve the issue, they inform you that somebody else will contact you in the next 8 hours (another concept of ITIL – service level agreement). Your issue gets fixed in the next 2 hours, and you receive a call confirming resolution (final step in incident management process). In the end you are happy as your service is restored within 2 hours, although the person on the phone told you 8 hours (exceeding customer expectations – ITIL again). When you are happy, you spread the good news to your friends and colleagues who believe you and would want to jump onto your ISP.

The call center serves as a medium between the organization and customers — act as a single point of contact which is one of the goals of service desk.

Technicians do what is necessary to bring the service back to life — their aim would be to bring the service back at the earliest time (one of the goals of incident management process), even if it means fixing a few glitches at a later point in time. In case they are unable to fix it permanently, they try to apply a temporary workaround and push the case to senior technicians who are a lot more adept with the underlying technology. These senior techs would investigate and find a permanent solution – problem management process in action.

All the activities performed by call center personnel and technicians are recorded on a ticketing tool which provides data as proof for what has been done and serve as inputs for further analysis.

In this example, I have given you a brief sneak peek of what ITIL looks like on the inside, and how it affects customers on the outside.

Why Should IT Professionals Learn ITIL?

The IT world we live in is becoming more and more service based by the day. Product organizations want to ensure status quo is maintained on all their products under warranty; and the activities that do not surround their core business area be outsourced.

Maintaining services is generally not a profit making unit of a customer organization. Hence, they would like to keep the costs at a minimal without sacrificing neither the quality nor the customer satisfaction ratings. This unique combination of requirements by a customer organization can most definitely be sufficed by ITIL. Industry leaders have seen it in action and have bought into it. Most major global corporations are running their services on ITIL, and this means that IT professionals who are aware and good at ITIL are in demand.

Secondly, job security is higher with jobs involving ITIL. In times of recession, product companies would dare to lay off their employees by cutting back on the number of product launches. But, service companies do not have the same luxury. They have made agreements with their customers for a certain number of years, and this translates to holding onto ITIL professionals in dire times as well.

Embracing ITIL is the current trend in the industry, and the number of ITIL IT professionals continues to grow. If you aren’t one of them yet, now is the time to get yourself ITIL trained and certified.

An abounding number of people dislike the work they do; they secretly want to change their careers to something that would make them happier, provide them with more money, better job security, the freedom to do what they enjoy or a number of other similar reasons.

Today , I want to answer some common questions relating to the topic of changing careers, especially when it comes to changing careers within the IT field. This article may sound like chicken soup as I have a number of stories to share, but I hope that seeing what others have gone through will be helpful to other prospective career changers out there.

What is a Career Change?

So what classifies as a career change? Well, there are some misconceptions that I want to iron out first. Sometime last year, when I was interviewing a candidate for a possible position in my organization, he said that he wanted to change his career, and this prompted him to apply for this job. I was puzzled. I asked him again, reiterating that the job in this organization is quite similar to what he performed in his previous organization. He agreed, and told me that he had spent half a decade in the previous company and was looking forward to beginning a new career in my organization.

His concept of a career change is a bit different and he may be just one in a million who thinks working for a new company is the same as changing careers. It may be for some reasons that you continue the journey on a different vehicle but the path leads to the same destination.

So, in this context, he was working in a particular field, and was moving within the same field to a different company; that is not changing careers, it’s simply changing jobs.

If you move from one field of specialization to another, that’s a career change. For example, let’s say, a person working as a unix administrator moves into service management or project management, or a person moving from IT to start his own business — that’s a career change.

When to Make the Change?

There is no straight answer for this question. I can become spiritual and say that it depends on your calling. Well, calling depends on a number of things, and could very well be a result of a number of questions you may ask yourself:

1. Are you happy with with your current job?
2. Are you happy with the money that you’re making?
3. Are you passionate about what you are doing?
4. Is there something else that excites you?

Over the years, I have interacted with a number of co-workers and friends working with various organizations. Many hated the IT industry because of the lack of physical action, and the bosses lurking over their shoulders.

I asked them if they had something else on their minds, that can take IT’s lucrative place (mostly in financial terms). Most did in terms of a passionate job but very few could express it clearly. Those who could, feared financial security and those who didn’t wept over the lack of vision.

Story #1: Finding the Right Opportunity

A couple of years back, SAP was at an all-time high (it still is). A friend who is quite smart with his coding skills was waning away with his Mainframe job. The organization which he was working for was paying SAP guys liberally while the people with his skillset drew much smaller salaries.

He decided to take the plunge into the SAP river. It took him a little over four months to get his hands around SAP, got certified outside the company. And he expressed his interest to move to a SAP project within the same organization.

Since the demand for SAP talent was high, his wish was granted almost immediately, and within a year his salary doubled, while the Mainframe guys got a meager 8% increase. Along with this, the company voluntarily paid him skill bonus, and the client he was working for too gave away bonuses.

In this case, it was all about timing. My friend chose an apt moment to switch his career, and it paid off. He had the urge to earn more, and the passion for a bigger paycheck coupled with hard work resulted in (probably) the kind of job he was seeking.

He found the right opportunity at the right time and took it.

So When Should You Make the Switch?

Change your career when you find the right opportunity or when you think you have to. Yes, there are risks in switching careers, but sometimes staying in your current position can be a bigger risk than learning something new and making the switch.

Tips for Changing Your Career Track

Let’s get one thing straight: no one can do everything. We all have our particular talents and aptitudes that make us the right fit in certain industries. Singing and I are as far apart as the south and north poles. I can never take up singing as a career, forget career, I am banished from singing in the shower!

Find a career that you are good at, and something you believe you could excel at, not just performing the basics, but towering over your peers. Usually, if you’re good at what you do, you will enjoy it more and vice versa.

Once you identify your potential field of work, follow up with research. Find out if the field you want to move into has a future; for example, the Mainframe position that I mentioned above is facing slow death if not sudden dissolution. Other things to find out before you make the switch include opportunities that are available, pay ranges, companies that you could work for and other considerations that could be specific to your needs.

Let’s say that you are passionate about moving into a new field, but are you capable of stepping into it? Do you have the necessary skills and certifications to follow it up? If you don’t, then it’s definitely a good idea to get your ducks in a row first.

Drawbacks to Changing Careers

So you have passion for a new area of IT; you’re fully capable and confident with moving into it. There is good money and plenty of opportunities. What should be stopping you?

Here are some considerations you need to take into account before making your final decision.

Story #2: Will the Money Be Enough?

A few years back, my colleague with many more years of experienced than me decided to move into IT. He was working in the hospitality business but wanted to cash in on the booming IT field in the Eastern part of the world.

He had at least ten years of experience in hospitality, but less than three years in the IT field. When he changed careers, the compensation he received was better than before but, he joined the organizational ladder at a junior level, where his peers could have mistaken him for their grade school teacher.

This move cost him the position he held earlier of an Assistant Manager; now he works as a coordinator. The sight of a fatter payslip gave him a sensation of satisfaction but, as he settled in, comparison of age vs position with his peers made him sulk; youngsters out of college were making as much as him, and this further put him behind in a complex of inferiority.

“You’re at a point of no return,” I told him. Although I knew that he could go back to his previous life, but that it wouldn’t make sense for him now. He has accepted the reality, but the brooding feeling will be around for some time to come.

Disadvantages to Changing Careers

Other disadvantages of moving from one career to another include lower salary, possibly lesser exposure in the new field and a reinvention of the wheel that awaits you.

All this being said, the next section will throw light on why it may be a rejuvenating spirit that is necessary to rekindle the fire.

Should You Change Careers?

Here’s a couple of question you should ask yourself:

• Is the line of work you are targeting backed fiercely by your passion?
• Is it something you would not miss a heartbeat for?

If you answered no to any or both the questions, you probably need to sit back and think again.

Story 3: When Passion Trumps Pay

A friend who used to work in the human resource department in a multi-national corporation was fond of kids, and that prompted her to take up a college degree that would allow her teach at the kindergarten level.

She spent a couple of years completing the degree through correspondence, and quit her job for a teacher’s job in a kindergarten school. The pay was a fraction of what she received in her previous job. But, the interest in spending time with kids was much more important to her.

She sometimes worked overtime preparing study material for kids and coming up with new games. The school didn’t expect her to put in the extra hours but the true passion she had made this possible. She enjoyed putting in the extra hours, and didn’t mind the fatigue that came with the job.

Work is Life

A feeling of satisfaction is perhaps more important than a fatter paycheck. Living life for the weekends and giving away freedom between 9-5 on the weekdays is not an ideal way to go about it. Most do it, and only a handful have fun with their work. As long as you are having fun with the work you do, it is a clear indication that you are enjoying it.

I have other colleagues too, who complain about their jobs in IT and tell me that their passion is somewhere else. One is an auto fanatic, who can’t stop talking about how much he would love working with cars. But his passion ends with his words; he has not taken any steps to move towards the direction that would make him happy. He will never be happy in IT, but it will be like a leech that latches onto him until the last day he works, and the dream will remain a dream.

The way I see it – he works to fulfill his responsibilities, and this is no fun. Fulfilling responsibilities with what one does, and thus achieving individual goals is the secret to a happy life.

Conclusion

I often look at sports commentators and movie actors, and grow green at their prospect of having fun while they make money. But I know it’s something I cannot flourish in, and don’t dare to run after this hollow dream. Maybe something like turning a full time writer is a mouthwatering prospect for me.

I could say that I am running life on a semi-compromise mode. While I work 9-5 (and more), sitting at a desk with a phone stuck to my ear and keyboard to my fingers, I am getting useful experience and data points for the writing I do. I am willing to run in this mode until I become a published writer, and the shorter the wait, the better it’ll be for my soul!

Work need not be an untouchable part of our lives; you and I need to enjoy it as we spend time with family. Now is the time to re-examine your work and ponder over options if you are in a state of compromise.

Finding free ITIL web resources however, is a different story. There’s just not that much information for ITIL professionals, at least not easily accessible and free. But I was able to find a number of free resources that can help beginners gain some ITIL knowledge, keep up with what’s new in the field and join other ITIL professionals in discussion.

But will these resources alone prepare you for the ITIL v3 Foundation Certification? Let’s find out.

10. ITIL v3 Foundation Study Guide by Taruu

Taruu, a Service Management firm from Indiana, has created and published a study guide for the ITIL v3 Foundation certification. This is one of the best free resource that I have been able to find for those looking to certify in ITIL.

At 45 pages the study guide is concise, but all the concepts listed in the ITIL v3 exam outline find mention, and the authors have done a decent job in explaining each of the topics. The guide could double up as a handy cheat sheet for those currently controlling IT processes as well.

But, there is a catch. This study guide works great for those with a couple years of ITIL exposure, but is definitely more difficult to use for beginners. On the certification exam, questions may not always be straightforward, so a deep understanding of ITIL processes is necessary and that’s not something you’ll find in this free resource.

Nevertheless, the study guide can serve as a great introduction to ITIL, an additional study reference for the ITIL v3 Foundations exam and a convenient resource for current ITIL professionals.

Check out Tarru’s free ITIL v3 Foundations Study Guide.

9. ITIL v3 Foundation Certification Kit by The Art of Service

The Art of Service has published a certification kit for ITIL v3 Foundation exam, a portion of which is available for free on Google Books. The free sections include service strategy, a good part of service design and service operations. A number of review questions are available, which are helpful to boost your self confidence before taking the exam.

On an earlier occasion, this book was passed on to me by one of my team members. He was taking the ITIL certification and asked me if the material was worthwhile to pass the exam. I find this book manageable for professionals with ITIL experience behind their backs, but beginners might find it difficult to connect the dots.

Access the free content of the ITIL v3 Foundation Complete Certification Kit to see for yourself.

8. An Introductory Overview of ITIL v3 by itSMF

The IT Service Management Forum is an organization run by IT service management professionals, and its main goal is to integrate the ITIL knowledge under one roof, bringing in millions of professionals to share knowledge and continually improve on the practices of IT service management.

The forum has put together introductory material on ITIL v3. The pdf is brief, and each section defines the goal of the process, and activities that are a part of the process. I consider this very good reading material, but not sufficient enough to pass the Foundation exam, even for the experienced ITIL professionals.

However, if you’re just getting a start in ITIL it is an excellent high-level overview of the IT Infrastructure Library and a good place to start learning about ITIL.

Take a look at the free Introductory Overview of ITIL v3 by itSMF.

7. Creative Management World YouTube Channel by Marco Cattaneo

Marco Cattaneo is an IT consultant from Australia, who has recorded his ITIL focused lectures at Charles Strut University. The videos are available for free on his YouTube channel; the prime reason for publishing the videos on a public forum is to get feedback, and thereby continually improve, which is incidentally one of the life cycles in ITIL v3.

A number of ITIL topics are covered, including the service lifecycle, service strategy goals, service design value, and more. The tone, speed and the path undertaken to explain the concepts is down to earth, and best suited for those seeking to get into service management. This will also serve well for those who are looking for direction in corporate training.

There are currently 60 videos that pertain specifically to ITIL v3. You can access them all for free at the Creative Management World YouTube Channel.

6. ITIL Processes Wiki by IT Process Maps

IT Process Maps, of which Stefan and Andrea Kempter are the founders, has created a wiki for ITIL. The wiki covers a number of topics in ITIL including the retired but yet still in use ITIL v2.

Like Taruu, range of topics is good, but the descriptions are not sufficient from an examination standpoint. It is a great resource for those looking for quick ITIL definitions, discussions and a way to connect with peers. All topics are additionally available in German and Spanish.

ITIL beginners can use the wiki to get familiar with the ITIL processes and use the wiki as a reference tool.

Check out the wiki and let me know what you think: ITIL Processes Wiki.

5. Open Guide Wiki

Open Guide is another ITIL wiki, but this one seems to be lacking recent updates; the Recent Changes page actually states that the wiki was last changed “ages ago.” Nevertheless, the content on the website is good and much of it is still current.

ITIL v3 service life cycles are discussed but not in great detail. But, v2 processes are explained in patterns that go something like this: goal, input, activities, benefits, mission statement, process goal, critical success factors and KPIs.

ITIL v2 and v3 are the same as far as the processes are concerned. The way of working between v2 and v3 is quite similar, perhaps with an addition or two in the latter version. So, referring to a v2 process does in no way waste your time, nor disorient your thoughts and thought patterns.

Although a bit outdated, I think the Open Guide wiki is still a good learning and reference tools for ITIL professionals and perhaps it will gain some attention from the ITIL community once again.

You can take advantage of the free Open Guide Wiki and start contributing, as it is an open wiki for ITIL professionals and students.

4. The IT Skeptic Blog by Rob England

A blog on a topic of interest is definitely worth the time, especially if the writer knows what he is doing, and keeps doing it frequently. The IT Skeptic is a blog on ITIL, and Rob England, a consultant from New Zealand is the blogger.

He picks up day to day issues he faces at work, and makes blog posts out of them. The topics are interesting, especially for those who can relate to them. The reader base is quite active in commenting and the blog has a great community behind it. Rob provides links to online ITIL resources that are quite helpful especially to those who are interested in completing the ITIL v3 Foundation certification.

Check out the blog and join in on the discussion at The IT Skeptic.

3. Pink Elephant News Blog by Pierre Bernard

Pink Elephant is another blog worth a mention. Authored by Pierre Bernard, the content revolves around ITIL v3 news; process and technicalities of ITIL are rarely discussed here. It is a good source of knowledge and a great way to keep up with what’s going on in the world of ITIL.

There were rumors floating around sometime back that ITIL v4 is on its way. Many who had completed their v3 certifications started to sweat and those who planned to take the exam, decided to wait and watch. In the end, OGC issued a statement stating that the core books of ITIL v3 were getting updated and there is no v4 in the near future. You can read Pierre’s views on this issue here: There is NO ITIL v4 coming your way.

You can check out Pierre’s Pink Elephant ITIL v3 News Blog as well as 3 other Pink Elephant blogs.

2. ITP Report

ITP Report is a published magazine covering the world of IT business across various geographies. The ITP Report website is a great repository of ITIL service management material. They host a handful of blogs, and the articles posted make the time worthwhile, while posing several questions to the reader.

A number of case studies along with industry research makes up for the free content available on the website.

I found Nas Ozcan’s blog particularly interesting.

Check out the ITP Report for the latest news and information for ITIL Professionals.

1. IT Infrastructure Library Section on TrainSignal Training

I kept the best for last. TrainSignal Training has begun delving into ITIL and its associated processes. Although we are still in very early stages, the material you see is well researched and of good quality, created by experienced ITIL professionals.

You can check out my comprehensive guide on how to obtain your ITIL v3 Certifications, read about the basics of incident management and problem management and a get a thorough introduction to the service desk concept.

In the upcoming weeks, we’ll be posting free training videos from the brand new ITIL v3 Foundation Training and more how-to articles on ITIL processes.

The ITIL tag lists all of our ITIL videos and articles for easy access. The first ITIL video comes out tomorrow, so stay tuned!

Are Free Resources Any Good?

Should you attempt to prepare for the ITIL v3 Foundation certification exam with only free resources available online?

Let’s face it; our world runs on business, not charity. Free resources that are widely available on the web are nuggets of information compared to the deep knowledge the world has to offer for money. And this not only applies to ITIL.

I would not risk taking the ITIL v 3 Foundation exam by preparing with free resources alone, even with prior knowledge and experience in ITIL. On the other hand, if you are recertifying or want to learn more about ITIL without making a commitment to the certification or training then these free resources will be very helpful.

The sites will also serve as a great reference once you’re on the job. I generally refer to ITIL resources available on the web if I need to confirm official definitions, or to recollect where certain processes fall in the service lifecycle. For simple tasks, these free resources can replace the ITIL core books, and they’re a great way to connect with other ITIL professionals.

As SharePoint 2010 adoption increases, so does the demand for qualified SharePoint professionals. So let’s take a closer look at SharePoint 2010 and the available SharePoint certification at the MCTS and MCITP levels.

Brief SharePoint 2010 Overview

Microsoft SharePoint is a web publishing software used in organizations for collaboration, file sharing and building portals.

Many organizations utilize SharePoint to set up their intranet websites, which can be used to share information easily, and also to share files with minimum bandwidth crunch. File sharing especially is chiefly popular considering that the alternative to sharing files through a web server is through emails, and an email sent to mass recipients can choke the network, as the entire propagation is at the same instant. Alternatively a file shared on SharePoint can be downloaded by users as and when needed, and the probability that all users will download the file at the same point in time is pretty low.

In the organizations I have worked for, SharePoint have been a key factor in the medium of communication. Organizations use it to share certain mandatory documents or information like policies, guidelines and procedures. Project managers use it to store files, collaborate with others sitting across continents and share common information, which is necessary for teams that are not co-located. Communication accounts for about 70% of project timestamps, on an average. For example, if a project is estimated to take 10,000 hours, around 7,000 of it goes into communicating between various parties, be it between the team, client, third party vendors and other stakeholders. That’s where SharePoint comes in very handy.

SharePoint can be an extremely powerful tool and a vital part in many organization’s success. And SharePoint 2010 has more to offer than ever. With a new user interface, new collaboration features, improved search function, new ways to customize and manage SharePoint sites and content, SharePoint 2010 is a completely redesigned tool. Take a look at this article from Microsoft to get more details on what’s new in SharePoint Server 2010.

A Word on SharePoint Professionals

I consider all individuals working with SharePoint as SharePoint Professionals; I say this because there are a number of certifications at the Professional level in the area of SharePoint. In fact, there are two different certification paths for SharePoint professionals with very diverse skill-sets:

• SharePoint Administration
• SharePoint Development

SharePoint administration revolves around the activities of SharePoint installation, configuration, managing users, controlling access, and the like. Senior level administrators can get into more complex activities like designing the infrastructure needed to support SharePoint.

SharePoint developers on the other hand work on designing and developing SharePoint websites and spend their time writing code and optimizing the features and performance of SharePoint sites.

Microsoft has certifications for both SharePoint developers and administrators at both the MCTS and MCITP level. Let’s take a closer look at the certification and exam options.

Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Certifications

There are a total of five SharePoint 2010 certifications available, two geared towards SharePoint administrators, two designed for SharePoint developers and the fifth one is an amalgamation of the four, designated for the true SharePoint masters.

SharePoint 2010 Administration Certifications:

Exam 70-667 TS: Microsoft SharePoint 2010, Configuring

The Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist (MCTS) Exam 70-667 TS: Microsoft SharePoint 2010, Configuring focuses on the installation, deployment, upgrading, managing and maintaining a SharePoint environment.

There are no mandatory prerequisites to take this exam however, Microsoft recommends that the candidate has a minimum of one year experience in SharePoint administration along with Windows Server 2008, Active Directory, and network infrastructure knowledge.

70-667 exam topics include deploying new installations and upgrades, managing accounts and user roles, managing web applications and site collections, backing up and restoring SharePoint environments, as well as monitoring, analyzing and optimizing SharePoint performance, among others.

Learn more about Exam 70-667 TS: Microsoft SharePoint 2010, Configuring

Exam 70-668 PRO: SharePoint 2010, Administrator

The Microsoft Certified IT Professional (MCITP) Exam 70-668 PRO: SharePoint 2010, Administrator covers disaster recovery, infrastructure capacity, upgrading and migrating, security and compliance, information architecture, information search strategy and more.

Microsoft recommends a minimum of two years of experience in SharePoint administration, deployment, management, migration, and design before attempting this exam. You should have a good grasp of PowerShell, SQL mirroring and load balancing, security concepts and authentication methods, as well as Server 2008 and Active Directory administration, and network infrastructure services like DNS and IIS.

70-668 exam topics include designing physical architecture and SharePoint integration with network infrastructure, planning service applications, SharePoint backup and restore, search topology and enterprise content management, business intelligence and more.

Learn more about Exam 70-668 PRO: SharePoint 2010, Administrator.

SharePoint 2010 Developer Certifications:

Exam 70-573 TS: Microsoft SharePoint 2010, Application Development

The Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist (MCTS) Exam 70-573 TS: Microsoft SharePoint 2010, Application Development revolves around a candidate’s ability to develop applications on the SharePoint 2010 platform. It is geared towards those with a programming background who are interested in working on customizing and extending the features of SharePoint to users.

To be eligible to take this exam, you should have at least one year experience with ASP.NET with Visual Studio 2008, along with SharePoint development experience and a minimum of 3 months exposure to SharePoint 2010 and Visual Studio 2010. The ideal candidate will be able to write code that extends SharePoint, add and support code in an existing SharePoint project and write code for custom features, such as Visual Web Part or EventReceiver. This certification could help you get the role of a software developer who uses SharePoint 2010 as a platform to develop and extend features.

70-573 exam topics include creating and applying branding to SharePoint sites, programming custom navigation and creating custom ribbon objects, creating and debugging Web Parts, managing features and solutions with Visual Studio 2010, creating and modifying custom content types, and much more.

Learn more about Exam 70-573 TS: Microsoft SharePoint 2010, Application Development.

Exam: 70-576 PRO: Designing and Developing Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Applications

The Microsoft Certified IT Professional (MCITP) Exam: 70-576 PRO: Designing and Developing Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Applications focuses on designing and developing custom applications for SharePoint 2010, including selecting appropriate technologies to build code, creating a strategy for code development, versioning and structure as well as custom design projects for SharePoint 2010.

The ideal candidate fits a team lead role on the SharePoint development team and has a minimum of two years of development experience, and at least three years developing with ASP.NET.

70-576 exam topics include managing application development, optimizing SharePoint application design, designing SharePoint solutions and features, designing user experience, and more. There is a long list of exam objectives for this certification and it definitely involves a lot of skills.

Learn more about Exam: 70-576 PRO: Designing and Developing Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Applications.

Microsoft Certified Master (MCM) on SharePoint Server 2010

There is one more SharePoint certification, and this is the grand master of all the other SharePoint 2010 certifications. The Microsoft Certified Master (MCM) on Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 is reserved for the true SharePoint experts.

The idea behind this MCM certification is to validate the skills around the entire SharePoint product, including the design, development, configuration, deployment, migration, optimization, troubleshooting, etc. A candidate at the MCM level possesses comprehensive knowledge and experience with SharePoint 2010 and is able to handle the most complex projects.

With great responsibility come greater requirements. The MCM certification requires you to complete all the four aforementioned SharePoint certifications before applying to the MCM program. Hands on experience with the tool in administration and development is a necessity, along with at least three years experience with SharePoint installation, configuration, troubleshooting, and custom development. Another prerequisite of the MCM program is the ability to speak, write and understand fluent English and this probably isn’t as much of a requirement for SharePoint itself, as it is for the testing process which is available only in English.

Learn more about the MCM SharePoint 2010 Certification.

Should You Get SharePoint Certified?

If you currently work with SharePoint 2010, then validating your skills with SharePoint certification is a good idea for several reasons. IT certifications are often requirements for many positions and hiring managers use this as a determining criteria when evaluating resumes. The certifications are also a good way to really get to know a product or technology; because of the exam objectives you’ll be making sure you learn all aspects of SharePoint as you prepare for your exam.

Salary statistics show that SharePoint is a good area to be in, with salaries ranging from upper $60,000 to upper $80,000 for SharePoint administrators and developers. The stats below are taken from SimplyHired.com.

SharePoint Salary Trends from SimplyHired.com

As a project manager, I have hired several individuals to work for my organization. In the process we shortlist people, conduct interviews, and during the discussions, put a score against each skill a candidate possesses. Core competencies have a higher rating, while secondary skills are placed on a different scale. In the end, all the scores are tallied, and the person with the maximum score gets hired.

Moral of the story: technical skills in the area of Microsoft Office do matter, even if they’re not the main job requirements. And validating those skills with the Microsoft Office Specialist Certifications shows hiring managers that you’re serious about your work and career.

Microsoft Office Specialist (MOS) Certifications

The MOS certification is an old wine in a new casket.

It was previously referred to as the Microsoft Certified Application Specialist (MCAS), and a rebranding of the certification was performed to up the ante when Office 2007 was released. The Microsoft Certified Application Specialist certification name was somewhat ambiguous, and didn’t strike a chord with the information worker. One had to have prior knowledge of what the certification entailed, and only then it made sense.

The MCAS didn’t last too long; in June of 2010, with the release of Office 2010 the name Microsoft Office Specialist came back.

The MOS is a badge given to individuals who display prowess in one or more of the following Microsoft Office applications:

• Word
• Excel
• PowerPoint
• Outlook
• Access

There are also expert level MOS certifications for Microsoft Word and Excel, which require an additional exam. The top of the league MOS certification is the Microsoft Office Master, which requires passing Word Expert, Excel Expert, and PowerPoint along with a choice between Access and Outlook.

There are several tracks to choose from depending on the version of Microsoft Office you are targeting. The latest is the Microsoft Office Specialist Certification for Office 2010. Other tracks are based on Office 2007 and Vista, Office 2003, Office XP and Office 2000. My two cents – go for the latest one – Office 2010. Software packages grow obsolete in a blink of an eye, and over time, organizations move to the latest offering of Office, thus rendering the rest useless. This in fact applies to all facets of life, the new outgrows the old.

Microsoft Office Specialist Certifications for Office 2010

As the name implies, the MOS for Office 2010 is a certification to certify your proficiency in Office 2010 applications. Unlike its predecessors, there is no Windows component to the exam, although there are rumors that Windows 7 is likely to get added to the pack.

Individuals can get certified as specialists for the following Office 2010 applications:

• MS Office Word 2010
• MS Office Excel 2010
• MS Office PowerPoint 2010
• MS Office Outlook 2010
• MS Office Access 2010 *
• MS Office SharePoint 2010 *

At this point in time, the MOS exams for Access and SharePoint are still in development; the Access 2010 exam is expected to be available in March 2011 and the SharePoint 2010 exam in June 2011, according to Certiport, which administers the MOS exams. Exams for Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook are available now.

The MOS Expert certifications for Word and Excel have been announced but the exams are also in development and are due in April 2011, according to Certiport.

Judging by the status of the exam development, I believe that we will have our first Microsoft Office 2010 Master available sometime this year, around June or July.

The MOS Office 2010 Exams

Unlike other Microsoft certifications, the MOS exams are not like the typical questions and answers exams. Instead, when you walk into the examination center, you will be asked to perform a series of tasks which would determine your proficiency with the given Microsoft Office application. This live examination is perhaps more fitting, and can ensure that you are put to the test.

The examination typically lasts an hour and a half, during which time the F1 key (which brings up the Help section) is disabled.

Certiport administers the Microsoft Office Specialist Certifications for Office 2010 and previous editions of the cert.

Job Opportunities for MOS Certified Professionals

When you complete any of the MOS certifications, a digital logo is made available to you by Microsoft and you’re permitted to embellish your resume with this logo. Not a bad deal, considering that potential employers will see your resume before anything else, including you.

If you were to complete one of the MOS Office 2010 certifications out of your own personal interest, you would be showing your prospective employer that you’re self motivated, driven and willing to go the extra mile to hone in your skills.

As far as job opportunities, as I mentioned before, you cannot and should not hope to secure a job on the mastery of Office 2010 applications alone. The MOS certification will most likely not be helpful in getting into a new field or increasing your salary. Expertise in Office should be a secondary skill which will help you distinguish yourself from other job candidates and allow you to offer something extra. When a hiring manager sifts through resumes that list similar skills, education and experience, your MOS certification will help you stand out.

MOS Training

There are a number of books targeting the Microsoft Office 2010 applications. I generally start with the dummies guide and move up the ladder from there. You may not find a plethora of study guides for this certification as the format of the exam expects you to perform the functions in live environment, but most books targeting the applications will help you get started with Office 2010.

Train Signal has recently launched Office 2010 training, including:

• Excel 2010 Training
• Access 2010 Training
• PowerPoint 2010 Training
• Word 2010 Training

Outlook 2010 Training is currently in development and should be available later this year. Video training is a better option for those who are visual learners, and Train Signal’s courses utilize real life activities that one encounters working with Office.

If you’re interested in getting the MOS on Office 2007, there’s a Office 2007 Training and plenty of books available as well.

It sounds a lot like the Crime Scene Investigation (CSI) shows we see on TV, which involves plenty of investigation, following the clues and accurately pin pointing the person responsible. My personal favorite is the Miami version.

The CSI we see on TV is staged and the real version of forensic investigation takes several days and months to achieve reasonable success. The subjects are real people, evidence left behind during the act, background information and connections. In IT form of CSI – problem management, investigations are quite similar. It involves investigating and probing the techies involved, studying the log files and the history of IT infrastructure in question and carefully analyzing the architecture for possible related issues. Don’t you feel problem management could be fun? Most definitely, I started my career doing problem management by the way.

What is Considered a Problem?

“Problem” is a common lingo for people across professions and societies. In IT, we need to be careful when we use this term as it carries plenty of weight. A “problem” in ITIL refers to an incident for which we do not know the root cause yet or an issue which is repetitive in nature, with no solution in sight.

The official definition, as defined by ITIL is:

The unknown root cause of one or more existing or potential Incidents. Problems may sometimes be identified because of multiple Incidents that exhibit common symptoms. Problems can also be identified from a single significant Incident, indicative of a single error, for which the cause is unknown. Occasionally Problems will be identified well before any related Incidents occur.

Let’s take an example. You are using MS Outlook 2007 and when you try to open it, Windows throws an error message and apparently you cannot open the application. Well, this is an incident. The technician looks at your system and cannot pinpoint the culprit and decides to uninstall and reinstall the software, no go. The issue resurfaces even after reinstall. In this case, the root cause is unknown and hence the Outlook 2007 issue can be termed as a problem.

The technician escalates the issue to the next level of support. The higher skilled technician looks at your system, reads through several pages of documentation, refers to knowledge bases and finds the solution to the problem. He promptly goes into the registry and changes a parameter that was conflicting with MS Outlook 2007, and voila that fixes the issue. The incident is resolved now and the problem, for which the root cause is established, becomes a known error.

Temporary Workaround and Permanent Solution

Temporary Workarounds and Permanent Solutions are the two varieties of fixes you find in the IT world. While both cannot and do not exist mutually, they are used in juxtaposition, but not simultaneously.

A temporary workaround is a fix that is provided to an issue at hand, but the fix provided is not a permanent one. If MS Word on your PC is not working, downloading Open Office and using it instead is a workaround but is in no sense the solution that is optimum. However, if you went ahead and repaired MS Word using the required troubleshooting techniques and bringing the application back to life, that could more or less be regarded a permanent solution.

Note that while you had your temporary fix in place, you could get the job done but not exactly the manner/means you intended. It only served the purpose of getting you through for the time being. When you opted for a permanent solution, you no longer need a temporary workaround, although it can still exist in the system.

A temporary workaround is generally an output of incident management while permanent solution is always the aim of problem management, although I wouldn’t go on record stating that everything that comes out of problem management is permanent in nature.

Root Cause Analysis (RCA)

The Root Cause Analysis (RCA) is a document/report that is a result of problem management.  The objective of this document is to establish the root cause of the problem and to find a permanent solution.

A typical RCA lists out the issue details, such as the nature of the outage, time frame, affected regions amongst other facts. Furthermore, it would have an entire section dedicated for finding the cause and the action taken to resolve it. Finally, a preventive measure to ensure the issue does not happen yet again is recommended.

Here are some RCA samples.

To find the cause of an issue, there are several problem management techniques in place. The simplest and possibly the most commonly used technique is the 5 why analysis. You simply ask the question ‘why’ five consecutive times. Let me illustrate it with an example.

Let’s say your keyboard which is connected to your PC is not working. Here are the questions and answers I would pose to get the root cause.

1. Why is the keyboard not working? Windows 7 does not recognizing it.
2. Why does Windows 7 not recognize the keyboard? Driver is corrupt.
3. Why is the driver corrupt? Maggie tried to install her wireless keyboard on this PC. She installed the wireless keyboard’s drivers onto this PC.

Here you go. Driver conflict is the root cause of this issue. You really don’t have to go down asking ‘why’ five times. Do it as many times as possible to get a logical and usable answer. Generally you will arrive at the root cause within the fifth why.

Problem Management Roles

There are basically two roles in the IT industry for people who work on problem management. A problem manager is the one who is in charge of the entire problem management process end to end. He takes ownership of all problems coming in and it is his accountability to deliver RCAs on time. A problem coordinator reports to a problem manager. A coordinator basically coordinates between different technical teams to obtain the information needed to develop the RCA and performs document control tasks along with tracking and monitoring of open problems.

In the IT industry, problem manager position is considered to be one of the top individual contributor roles. An expert in ITIL who knows the processes quite deeply is entrusted with this job. I worked as a problem coordinator initially and then as a manager a few years back, and the experience has catapulted me into a higher position today. The job was hard, not for the work I had to do, but for the expectations I needed to manage. In my present role, I have four problem managers reporting into me, and I look at them to provide the technical expertise I need to manage my delivery. I say this to stress the importance of problem managers in an organization. If your problem manager is good, your company can most certainly heave a sigh of relief.

Conclusion

Everything I mentioned in this post is perhaps a small fraction of problem management knowledge area. The field is so vast, that no single book that I have read so far covers it completely. It will most definitely give you the satisfaction of doing something completely new every day, and it keeps your senses at bay, watching for clues as you unthread the mysteries behind the IT infrastructure.

To illustrate with an example, let’s imagine your broadband internet connection which you have subscribed through an ISP fails to connect to the network. You call their customer care and report the loss of your internet connection.

In this example, your internet connection is a service which you are subscribing to, and the disruption that you face is termed as an incident under Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL).

The art of managing incidents to quick successful recovery is Incident Management.

Incidents in ITIL

Any disruption to the service availed will go down as an incident in ITIL. It may include any service you are leveraging from your service provider like telephony, cable TV, internet and so on. You get the idea right?

Official ITIL definition for an incident goes like this:

“Any event which is not part of the standard operation of a service and which causes, or may cause, an interruption to, or a reduction in, the quality of that service.”

Objective of Incident Management

You are bound to have incidents, and there are always technicians to resolve it. But life in not that easy.

You are not the only customer and the technician is not dedicated to you, waiting for your call to report an incident. In reality, there are thousands of customers if not more and just a handful of technicians who are responsible for recovery of service.

Incidents get reported through various mediums such as emails, telephone, text messages, and walk-ins amongst others. Any service provider who has thousands of customers can expect at least a thousand incidents reported in a day, and as I mentioned earlier, the technician strength will not be an equal match to the reported incidents.

How does one manage this challenge? How can a service provider keep customers happy if incidents are reported in heaps and a handful of engineers are present to man the system?

The answer is incident management. It is an art of managing incidents and a field I specialize in.

The goal of incident management is to ensure that the interrupted service comes back up as soon as possible, nothing more nothing less. The official definition as listed on ITIL is as follows:

“Restore a normal service operation as quickly as possible and to minimize the impact on business operations.”

The definition pretty much sums it up; the service needs to be restored as quickly as possible, and how you do it is the strategy that will either lift you higher in the market or sink you deeper.

Prioritizing Incidents

Ten customers call the customer care and report ten incidents simultaneously, which are not connected to each other. There is one engineer who works on incidents at this point in time. Which of the ten incidents does he choose to work on first? First come first serve basis does not gel well here, nor picking numbers randomly.

The organization must therefore have a process of ranking incidents and in ITIL we call it prioritizing incidents.

A priority is derived by simple addition of urgency and impact. Urgency is how critical the incident is to the customer, and the impact refers to the extent of disruption. Generally, impact is associated with a monetary value.

Priority = Urgency + Impact

Let’s say there is an individual who reports an incident stating that his internet connection is slow. We will call this Incident A. At the same instant, another call lands in the call center from a business stating that their internet connection is down for the entire office, around 150 users are affected; we’ll mark this Incident B.

We need to rank these incidents to ensure that the one ranking higher is picked up first. Comparing the two incidents, the impact is higher in Incident B and so is the urgency. Incident A will rank lower as the outage is not total with performance degradation, and the timeline to resolve the incident doesn’t look too pressing. Incident B will be prioritized over Incident A and the engineer will look at higher priority incidents first and move down the list.

This kind of prioritizing will be done for all the incidents that land into the call center’s bin, and this clearly ensures that severe incidents are dealt aptly in a timely fashion.

Simple Incident Management Model

Let me explain this simple model through an illustration.

A hardware manufacturer’s customer care gets a call from a business stating that the server that is hosting small business server is showing high CPU utilization.

As per the model suggested by me in the image above, there are two functional groups which will be employed, service desk and the technician group.

The service desk is the first point of contact for customers. The reported incident is recorded on their database and classified – assigning a priority and ensuring all the obtained details are accurate. This incident is then routed to the technician group. In many cases, service desk would have basic knowledge of troubleshooting and act as the first level of support.

The technician group picks up the incident and performs the investigation and diagnosis, in which they assess the incident details, gather and analyze details and suggest a resolution. The suggested resolution is implemented to resolve the incident, either by fixing the plug permanently or providing a temporary workaround. It does not matter what the solution is, as long as it fixes the disruption.

The technician group sends the incident back to the service desk with the update that the incident has been taken care of. The service desk takes a confirmation from the customer before bringing a logical end to the incident. If the incident is still unresolved, the incident is re-routed to the technician for a review and the process loops around as long as the incident is open.

There are a number of ways to achieve incident management, and the one illustrated above is perhaps the simplest of the lot.

What is a Service Request?

While you are trying to digest the concepts of incident management, I want to introduce a new concept that goes hand in glove with incidents – service requests. A service request is not a disruption to the existing service, instead, it adds on or enhances the existing service functionalities.

An example could be getting access to a web portal. You would raise a service request instead of an incident to get the required level of access. It is not an incident as you did not have access to the portal earlier, and your request is an add-on to what you already have.

Many organizations, especially those who claim to follow ITIL framework, don’t differentiate between incidents and service requests and handle everything under the banner incidents. I find this practice disgusting as the two are situated on two different poles, and most definitely have different objectives.

Effective Incident Management Increases Revenue

Think about it. Customers report incidents as there is a disruption to the service they are receiving, and you may rightly guess that they are not very happy about it. If the service provider organization has implemented effective incident management process, it will lead to restoration of service at the earliest.

This will make the customer happy, although initially he/she was unhappy over not being able to avail a service they are paying for. Restoring the service quickly ensures customer satisfaction, and there are plenty of positive implications with a happy customer. Word of mouth gets around quicker than lightning, and will lead to expansion in business. The last thing any company wants, is to lose customers owing to bad customer service – read resolution of incidents.

Geeks pride themselves on performing all actions through keyboard, without using a mouse or other optical input devices. In fact, I have seen a few who discuss different combinations in depth as though it is an ambiguous theological topic.

I am a semi-keyboarder and a Microsoft user. I have used Microsoft products since inception and the keyboard shortcuts have pretty much stayed constant throughout. With the addition of new products, new ones were added and few were modified.

The new kid in town, Microsoft Office 2010 inherits most of the keyboard shortcuts from its predecessor, Office 2007, with some enhancements of its own.

Let’s take a look at some of the most common and most useful keyboard shortcuts, the available shortcuts in the new Ribbon interface, how to customize the Ribbon interface and modify your shortcuts all in Office 2010.

Basic Office 2010 Keyboard Shortcuts

These are pretty basic. If you are a newbie to desktop publishing tools, you might be interested in running through the following combinations.

CTRL + C – copy selection

CTRL + V – paste selection

CTRL + X – cut selection

CTRL + Z – undo action

CTRL + Y – repeat action

CTRL + B – bold text

CTRL + I – italicize text

CTRL + U – underline text

CTRL + HOME – navigate to beginning of the document/sheet

CTRL + END – navigate to end of the document/sheet

CTRL + F – find text

CTRL + H – find and replace text

CTRL + K – add hyperlink to selection

CTRL + P – print document/sheet

CTRL + S – save document/sheet

F12 – save as document/sheet

Office 2010 Ribbon Interface

Microsoft brought in a new interface called the ribbon with Microsoft 2007. It replaced the legendary icons and the menu bar. The ribbon interface in 2007 was rigid, meaning you couldn’t customize it as you would have liked, unless you dug deeper into the XML files.

In Office 2010, the software giant has given the control to the user, which, according to me is the right way forward. If you look at the previous MS Office products, it always let you set your own icons, at desired positions. It could very well be that Microsoft was toying around with a new ribbon interface and didn’t want to take a chance by launching all possible features at once. And, they needed yet another feather for their future release – 2010.

Ribbon interface is based on tabs. Each menu item is a tab, and when active, it displays a set of icons. The image shown above is the ribbon interface used in Microsoft Excel 2010.

Keyboard Shortcuts Within the Office 2010 Ribbon Interface

I mentioned earlier that using shortcuts require some memory power, but for those who find it difficult to remember, Microsoft has offered an olive branch – with cheat sheets. Associated shortcuts (christened as KeyTips) are displayed on the screen by pressing the Alt key. The image below illustrates it.

Initially, KeyTips for tabs are visible. Hitting the corresponding tab KeyTip opens up an array of KeyTips for the individual commands.

Let’s say I am using Microsoft Word 2010 and I am in the middle of an article, and I want to insert a table. I will start with the Alt key. Tables come under Insert tab – KeyTip N.

I can see the KeyTip T against the Table command. Hitting T displays some more KeyTips that are associated with tables. At this juncture, I want to insert a table, KeyTip I it is.

If you are familiar with tables within MS Word, a command to insert a table throws a dialog box open in which you need to choose the number of columns and rows, along with the other options – which are generally kept at default.

To move between the options in a dialog without using a mouse is simple enough. Hit the Tab key to shift from field to another – direction is from left to right and top to bottom. Once you land the cursor in a field, enter desired numbers or change the options around using the arrow keys (radio buttons). I moved top to bottom by hitting Tab, and to move one step back, Shift+Tab will do the trick – right to left and bottom to top.

Customizing the Office 2010 Ribbon Interface

Microsoft Office 2010 not only displays the shortcut keys but it lets you create your own ribbon and design it with the commands of your choice, including the KeyTips. The feature of putting up icons of your choice existed in MS Offices prior to 2007, and is now reintroduced in the form of ribbons.

To create your own tab (ribbon), do the following:

Step 1: Click on File -> Options

Step 2: On the sidebar, locate and click Customize Ribbons

Step 3: You will find two sets of commands. The one on the left is the available commands that you can readily use, and the one on the right are your existing ribbons. You can either modify an existing tab or create a new one. I am going to run you through the process to create a new tab and load it with the buttons of your choice.

Step 4: Beneath the right set of commands, New Tab button is used to create a new tab and each functional item under it is called as a group. You can add commands from the left window and drag it into your new tab->group.

Step 5: Let’s say I want to create a new tab called Abs and want to have basic commands such as copy, paste and cut in it. I click on New Tab, and a tab named New Tab and a group named New Group appears in the right window. Highlight the New Tab and click on Rename to key in the name Abs. Drag the commands Copy, Paste and Cut from the left window onto the New Group (groups can renamed in similar fashion as well) one after another. Hit OK to save the changes you have made. Voila! A new tab is created with the commands of your choice.

Step 6: You can export the new tabs you have created, and all other settings you make to the ribbons by using the Import/Export option available in the same window. The output is an Office UI file which can be used on any machine running Microsoft Office 2010.

How to Modify Shortcuts in Office 2010

Step 1: KeyTips for tabs are allocated automatically by the software, including for the customized tabs. There is no option to change them. As seen in the image below, the new tab Abs is assigned Y.

Step 2: To assign a shortcut key to a command, Click on File -> Options -> Customize Ribbons and hit Customize beneath the left pane.

Step 3: Find the command in the right window which you wish to assign a new shortcut. I think we use the Paste command more than Print, and hence Paste should have the shortcut Ctrl+P. I am going to change it in my system. You should too.

Step 4: Locate the Paste command under the Home tab. You can see the existing shortcuts under Current keys and a blank field – Press new shortcut key.

Step 5: Move the cursor to Press new shortcut key and hit Ctrl+P. The new shortcut key appears and it also lets you know that it is currently assigned to Print. Assign to assign the new shortcut key for Paste command. Remember to go back over to the Print command and assign a new shortcut for the newly orphaned command.

Step 6: The shortcuts you assign can be set across the application or just the document you are working on. Save changes in option located in the same window gives you the choices of Normal and the document that is open. Selecting Normal will change the shortcut in the application, and selecting the document will affect the document alone.

This is especially true in the IT world. In IT most jobs come with long hours, not enough vacation time, not enough pay and a general feeling of dissatisfaction, frustration, stress and disappointment.

But your dream job is out there and you shouldn’t give up your search for that perfect IT job, even in the current economy. To begin your search for your dream job, several actions are required on your part which we’ll discuss today.

The five tips that I’ll cover today are for those who are looking to work in IT, in a company or an organization. If your dream job is to start your own business and succeed as an entrepreneur, then this article is not for you.

1. Find What You Love and What You’re Really Good At

First and foremost, dig deep into your brain cells, and feel the beats of your heart. It will reveal certain secrets such as what kind of a job you like to do, and what will keep you motivated and happy for long time.

Yes, it’s true that most IT professionals are adept at multiple skills and have the choice to jump onto the ship whichever lures them, but the key is to find something you love and something that you’re really good at (or have the potential to become really good at in the future).

A few years back, I was working as a problem coordinator under IT service management. I was donning this role for a year and a half, and was quite good at it. Alongside, I was really good at technical writing. I wanted to move to another company for a better pay and benefits package. I attended a series of interviews in a company for a technical writing role, and on the expected lines, was offered a package with a decent pay hike.

This company is one of the biggest IT companies in the world. I accepted the offer at first but later started to mull over the change of industry. My brain waves started to work and interact with my heart cells, and the outcome was something I didn’t like at first – IT service management is what I enjoyed doing in an organizational setup and I could write anywhere, anytime and even during work hours. So, in the end, I rejected the new job offer and negotiated with my boss for a pay hike, and got one soon enough.

It is important for each of us to find out what we desire to do in a long run, but with common sense if I may add. Let’s say you love the field of Lotus Notes administration. That is good, but, think! Is there a bright future for Lotus Notes? Will this position ever pay the amount of money you want to earn? Are the enough opportunities for advancement? Is there a future for you in this field?

If you are just out of college with no specific ambitions and interests, I suggest you do some research on various topics and see what interests you. For me, when I was in college, I hated coding courses; I knew what I didn’t enjoy doing, rather than what I really did, and that helps too.

2. Research Companies Worthy of Dreaming

Let’s say you have narrowed down your field of work, and the next activity lined up is to find an organization which leverages on this technology, at the highest level. The company that is worthy of your dream should definitely be a leader in its own right, and should have plenty of projects and opportunities at hand.

If you are into SAP, you probably want to get into a software company that is wholly based on the technology to build applications such as a human resource management suite or a learning management system. If you get into a company that does minimal SAP work, like on SAP BASIS where the job mainly revolves around maintenance jobs and housekeeping work, you are not going to stay motivated nor grow much taller.

Fortune magazine ranks companies post their research, and provides a nice list which can certainly help you move in the right direction. The US chamber of commerce has a list of local companies listed as well. Inc.com compiles a lot of company data each year that might also come in handy in your reasearch.

I would follow news on the companies of my interest to find out positive and negative developments that might help me change focus if needed. You should also keep an eye out for the words offshoring or outsourcing as some companies are sending their jobs to other countries, especially in the area of IT.

3. Leverage the Power of Social Networking

The power of networking flattens the world at an unimaginable rate. Feedback and opinions travel faster than the speed of light across the globe, and is mostly reliable especially the wisdom of the crowds.

Utilize the social networking websites to have an insight into the companies you wish to work for. Get to know people from the company and they might probably be able to share information that the company website might not divulge. They might even offer an olive branch by referring you to the company HR. Employee referrals hold plenty of weight, especially if they can vouch for you. ‘Coax’ people on social networking websites to win their friendship and throw in the bait.

LinkedIn is a great resource if you want to find and connect with professionals. It filters people who work for specific companies, making it easy for you to scout. Facebook Groups work in the same manner as well.

4. Create an Ongoing Job Search Strategy

Job portals are perhaps the best medium to find jobs, and if you are a gambler like I am, you would bet your bottom dollar that all the major companies would list all the available openings  across major job portals on the web.

All the jobs across the US and the world are present in these databases which you can extract to find relevant information. Accessing the right information depends on your capability on how well you can utilize the available filters.

Basically there are two things you need to key in properly: keywords and locations! Usage of proper keywords will assist in listing openings that are relevant to you, and the location(s) of your choice will narrow down the search.

Indeed.com and SimplyHired.com are two good places to start. Both of the sites have a gigantic repository of millions of job listings, sweeping across the web looking for jobs on company career pages, job boards, forums etc. Monster is yet another well known job portal which is both legendary and state of the art.

5. Perfect Your Resume and Job Interviewing Skills

Once you find that dream job your next step is to make sure you get it. This is where your resume and job interview become the priority.

Pay special attention to how you draft your resume; refer to this article on how to write great a resume that will buy you a ticket to an interview. Then take a look at some tips on how to prepare for your job interview.

I hope that these five simple steps will help you get a little bit closer to finding and securing your dream IT job.

There are a number of websites that offer resume writing services that promise to launch your resume into hyperdrive, but I would be wary of such services for two simple reasons.

People who write resumes for a living tend to turn out boring products that all look the same. They follow a standard set of rules and often fail to make you stand out. Another problem is that these services usually don’t take into consideration the unique needs of the organizations and positions that you’re applying for. They don’t know what the person hiring you expects to see on your resume since they usually don’t even take that into consideration.

A resume is nothing more than a sales brochure that you use to sell yourself at a premium price.

This brochure does quite a few things for you. It brings you to the interviewer’s desk and tries to make a first impression for you with the not-so-patient interviewers, who are generally bored of taking several hundred interviews every month. Interviewers often lose interest in the first twenty seconds of scanning through your work experience.

Lack of interview calls is good evidence of a weak resume.

Below I have put together some tips that will help you enhance your IT resume and get you the interview. These tips are aimed at IT resumes, but I can categorically state that they hold water across industries.

1. Organization

The placement of sections in a resume is extremely important. As I mentioned earlier, an interviewer’s patience runs for a few seconds, and your brochure needs to work diligently for you in the available period. This is possible only through smart organization; a well organized resume generates that extra few precious seconds.

Take a look at the job ad or description and determine what the company is looking for. For example, do they place a lot of focus on specific experience or certification? If this is the case, and you’re able to meet the qualifications, make sure to have this information at the top.

An objective or summary section is recommended, but not necessary. It’s a good way to show the direction you are heading in and provide the interviewer with a quick overview of who you are. The objective or summary section should go at the top fold below your name, where it is almost impossible for the interviewer to miss it.

Next in line are your experiences, with your latest one on the top and rest to follow chronologically. Remember that an interviewer would be most interested to know what you are doing currently. And don’t feel forced to list every single job you’ve ever had; focus on the important roles that showcase your expertise.

Follow experiences with your education qualifications and the certifications you hold. In the IT industry, education counts to peanuts while certifications are quite weighty so try to make your certifications stand out.

Recommendations should be a perfect climax for resumes. Get some from top dogs in the companies you have worked in earlier, the higher ranked your recommender, the better. If you are just out of college, get some from your professors ranting about what you are capable of.

2. Presentation

You need to dress your bride for the occasion, else it’s a wedding in bad taste. Same holds true for resumes. Presenting your resume in long paragraphs that are difficult to read, much less scan through for vital information, will do little good.

Your entire resume should be bullet based, and each bullet should never run for more than two lines. If you have more to write, split it up. I would not like to read a paragraph that explains what the DBA is doing in his present organization, but rather get a quick snapshot of only the vital activities. I will get to the details when he/she sits across the table from me.

3. Length

Many websites advise candidates to shorten resumes to the smallest possible length, and the justification is the impatience of the person reading it. I personally don’t agree with this popular belief as I don’t think that it holds true in the IT field.

Most IT interviewers like to see some weight, in the form of experience covering multiple projects and activities. We prefer exposure rather than a person who wears a blinder while doing what he/she has been asked to do of them. Interviewers in the IT field like to know what you are capable of, and what else you can do apart from your normal work. Coupling compactness and weightiness is an odd combination that rarely works.

Never water down your resume in order to keep it compact. List all of the important certifications, projects and experiences you have achieved in bullet points, especially if you think they’re what your interviewer is looking for.

4. Accuracy and Integrity

Make sure your resume includes what you have actually accomplished and not what your job description lists. This is a common misconception. I have seen candidates pick up lines from job descriptions and garner their resume with it. Your resume is a report of what you have done, and not what you wish to achieve. Delete anything that you haven’t been able to achieve in your current or past positions.

Integrity is your biggest strength and the mirror called resume should reflect back who you are and what you have been able to accomplish. Never, ever put down things that you haven’t done. Interviewers have ways to find out what you are capable of, and how truthful your resume is. I have humiliated a few candidates in person who fell in this category during interviews. Trust me, you don’t want to be in a similar situation.

5. Format, Spelling and Grammar

You might wonder what is the point in improving the appearance of your resume, it’s superficial. It’s everything! Would you notice an attractive girl a mile away from you or rather prefer to watch a not-so-attractive gal walk right in front of you? You know the answer!

Formatting, using the right font and spacing, presentation and media play a significant part in persuading the recruiter and an interviewer to read your resume for a little bit longer.

I generally ask people to put fonts that are pleasing to the eye. From what I have seen, Times New Roman at size 11 is not too hard on the eyes. Couple this with 1.5 pt spacing.

When you print your resume, do it on a milky white paper and avoid colored paper and other off-white media. They are everything but professional. If you are sending your resume in softcopy format, do so in PDF format. Once again, it’s all about professionalism.

Last but not the least, before you finalize your resume, ensure that there are zero typos and grammatically, your words make sense. There is nothing more annoying than typos and a misplaced modifier. If a fifth grader can do it, we implicitly expect you to be able to construct proper sentences.

I have hired several individuals in the organizations I have worked for, and have conducted multiple interviews to those hired. Here, I hope to share a small piece of my mind and try to tell you sitting in the interviewer’s chair, what kind of preparation we look for in people coming into an IT interview.

In this article we’ll go over the key factors to consider when preparing your resume, how to appropriately present yourself at an interview and how to be ready for some of the most common interview questions.

Preparing Your IT Resume

Your resume or curriculum vitae (CV) is one of the vital pieces of the jigsaw puzzle which you need to crack to get a shot at the position you are aiming for.

Get your resume or CV in place, and you can safely expect that the interviewer is familiar with your work experience. I won’t delve into the contents and sections of your resume as there are many different styles that work, but I will focus on a couple of things that you just can’t miss while preparing your IT resume.

Presentation

Your resume should be presentable, and easily readable. It’s much like a website you visit, and the harder it is to navigate, the quicker you want to get off of it. Ensure that your resume provides the information the interviewer is looking for in the initial pages rather than making him dig through it.

Carry a copy of your resume with you, printed on milky white paper and on single side, as opposed to back to back prints. You can alternatively leverage on professional resume services who are quite adept at creating presentable and informative resumes.

Accuracy

Your integrity depends on the accuracy of information you have put on your resume. Include only the activities which you have performed and nothing more. Interviewers are smart chaps and have ways to catch frauds, and even blacklist them throughout their consortium.

Typos

Typographic errors tick me off more than anything else. This is a good indicator which we managers use to judge the discipline of a candidate, and we would be strongly favored to reject those who carry resumes with typos.

Take a look at these 10 tips to writing an IT resume that sells for more detailed instructions on how you can make your resume really shine.

Looking Your Best:
The Right Job Interview Attire

Although it seems superficial to mention a person’s attire, what you wear can mean a lot in a job interview. The right clothes can make you look professional and help you feel more confident.

Choose Formal, Conservative Clothing

They say first impression is everything, and it’s true in IT, especially the way you present yourself. Try to wear a light colored shirt, preferably a plain white shirt. At the very least, do not wear bright colors, bold patterns or anything which will attract the attention more than the words that come from your mouth.

Clean and Pressed

Should I explicitly mention that your clothes should be clean and pressed? I think it should go without saying.

Suits and Ties are Optional — But Not Always

IT was strictly associated with suits and ties a decade ago, and much of it has changed. We see it as a burden these days but don’t mind if a candidate wears it to his/her interview. Read your interview instructions carefully, there are some old school organizations which demand interviewees to come in wearing certain clothing.

I would strongly suggest researching the company you’re applying to to see what type of an organization it is. Many tech companies are much more casual, but some remain very formal. The key thing to keep in mind is that you never want to look under-dressed.

Here are a few more tips on how you can look more professional; check out tip #4 professionalism is key for some more input on what to wear and how to present yourself.

IT Interview Questions You Need to Be Ready For

For the most part, interviewers are predictable. They talk to hundreds of candidates and it is highly impossible for them to come up with one hundred sets of unique questions. They have a standard set of questions and unleash them religiously upon every candidate.

Interviews are subjective and so are the possible questions. But, within this realm, there are some generic questions which weigh in as much as the others. Let’s take a look at some of the most common ones.

Why do you want to leave your present company?

In my book, this is the make or break question after the mandatory technical clearance. It is like lifting frogs with hands smeared with butter. The trick here is to show your loyalty to your present company and at the same time, give sufficient evidence that change is inevitable. If I am being interviewed, I would say something like “I enjoy my present line of work, but I think could do much more with sufficient opportunities. Unfortunately, my company does not offer any. I know that your company has plenty to offer and I would like to be part of it.”

Remember to never to put down your present company. It leaves a bad taste in your interviewer’s mouth. Other reasons such as switching for hike, or just need a change rarely work, unless there is a good reason for you to do so.

What are your biggest strengths and weaknesses?

This is a classic question, especially for the ones who are down on the ladder. We ask this question to understand how best the candidate is able to assess himself. And, to find out if there are any weaknesses that will not make him/her eligible for the job in question.

There are some who answer this question too truthfully choosing to reveal weaknesses that can hurt their image. But some are smart and know how to make their weakness look like strengths. I prefer the latter. The trick here is to project your weakness and follow it with a mitigation plan to counter it. This will definitely have a positive impact on the interviewer.

For example, if your biggest weakness is time management you might say “I know that my biggest weakness is time management, that’s why I follow strict rules that I have set for myself that help me overcome this. In fact, I stay on top of my work so much that it has almost turned into a game of how much I can accomplish each day.”

Make sure to check out this list of the top 77 questions you need to be ready for when preparing for your next IT job interview.

Research the Company

Do you know what we are into? Do you know what we do? Do you know where we are placed in the industry?- These questions are common but don’t really threaten the result of an interview. But, that being said, if answered with some level of preparedness, it provides an assurance to the interviewer that you know the kind of stinking hole you are getting into. It also sets the interview in motion, and brings in a positive mood to the environment.

People who work in the company you are interested in can provide an honest feedback and information relevant to your job profile. In this age, it is easy to find them on social networking websites such as LinkedIn. Company websites rarely gives you the information you need. They talk at a higher management level and rarely the common employees have anything to do with it.

Last Minute Tips for Your IT Interview

There are quite a few things you need to do before going in for an IT interview. I will run through some of the basics.

Rest Well

Make sure your’re well rested before you attend your interview and that you’re not hungry. And ask for a slot in the morning if you’re given a preference.

Refresh Your Basic IT Knowledge

This is quite a common phenomenon. People working on technologies would know the grammar and etiquettes, but will forget the individual alphabets and the order or placement. People who interview like to start from the basics and move up the ladder. If we feel that your foundation is not strong enough, we may not be keen in moving forward. Beware!

Here’s a nice quick list that you can review your basic IT terminology before going in for your interview.

Envisioning

This is my specialty and it works like a charm every time I harp onto assignments that I manage. The night before your interview, envision yourself sitting in front of an interviewer, and cracking it with great ease. Sink this feeling into your subconsciousness. This action will lift your spirits and as a result — your confidence. If your subconsciousness is convinced that the interview is already in the bag, going through an interview will just be a routine course of action.

Questions?

I like to help. If you have any questions relating to IT interview preparation or a different perspective, leave me a comment

Negotiation in common sense is the best value we can get for our money. But, in a project, where long term relationships are involved, this may not hold true at all times. Good negotiators strive to bring in harmony and to ensure that both parties have something to boast — in other words, it’s a win-win situation.

A win-lose situation might hold in good stead for a shorter term, and the party on the losing side might not be happy to do business again. Think again the next time you negotiate, whether both the sides are winning.

Types of Negotiation in a Project

When I was talking to a co-worker on this proposed article which I was penning on negotiations, he seemed interested. He pointed out that negotiations were a regular feature in his work area, and he felt at ease whenever he was a part of negotiations with suppliers.

I agreed that it is indeed fun, but pointed out to him that I will dedicate a small section in my article with respect to negotiation with vendors. He was puzzled and said – “What do you mean by small part? Negotiation is the activity meant when dealing with vendors”.

I paused, smiled and quipped — “Well, negotiations start even before a project gets underway. Client managers spend days and months on negotiating desks, and when a project manager comes onboard, he negotiates the scope, time, cost and quality with the stakeholders. At the time of handing out activities to resources, there are negotiations involved regarding timelines and the quality that can be achieved.”

He didn’t blink for a second and I continued — “And, of course, you have the negotiations with vendors. Through the project lifecycle, project manager and team members negotiate with full vigor with the compliance teams trying to push our product towards compliance. During project closure, the project manager along with the program manager and senior management negotiate with the customer to rationalize that they have delivered the best they could within the agreed budget and time. Now tell me, is negotiating with vendors a small segment or everything?”

My co-worker walked away without a word, and that was the last time we spoke about project work despite meeting for lunch and coffee every day.

Negotiator Types

There are two kinds of negotiators: black and white, and grayscale. Black and White negotiators would have a predetermined figure or an offer, and will not budge on either side. It is either their way or the highway. Grayscale negotiators are flexible, they try not to preempt the fate of negotiations, and aim to balance the scale somewhat.

Industry experts believe that grayscale negotiators are mostly successful and are preferred at the negotiation table, but from my experience, I believe that each one of them has their place and both are as important as the other.

The black and white types are extremely focused on the end result. They have a figure in their mind and will not go over it at any given point in time. They stick to their guns and bring the other party to their knees. I would go with these kind of negotiators in a project that has a fixed budget, and there is no room for expandability.

The grayscale kind are the people who can influence others. They have the ability to read the situation, estimate on the fly whether the deal is good for both parties, and persuade the opposite party to come to an agreement. They can go under the hammer in any such situation that does not put a cap on budgets.

p.s. Agreement is the lingo we use to replace the word compromise, which has a negative connotation to it.

The Art of Negotiation: Preparing for the Bout

Preparations are key to successful negotiations. You need to know the intricacies involved in the business, including the technicalities before the meeting starts.

Understand what the market is offering and get an estimate from estimation professionals on what would be a fair deal and how far can it be stretched. And most importantly, understand what your goals are from the negotiation meet.

Rehearse the opening, and the juncture when you know that the party is not going your way. You need to have a comeback strategy and its best displayed with words which are rehearsed.

Getting Ready to Haggle

There will be compromises made at both ends of the table. To ensure a fair deal for your side of the table, fatten your cow before you lay it for slaughter. Add (good to have) items to your list to make your shopping bag look bulky. Let’s say you are in for a bulk PC purchase. Although you need Windows XP, ask for a free upgrade to Windows 7 and a RAM upgrade from 512 MB to 1 GB.

When both sides start to negotiate prices, you can drop things off which you didn’t really want in the first place and demand for a compromise from the other side. There is a good chance you will get one.

Be sure not to let go anything off your list without a concession from the other side. And, always try to get a bigger piece of meat from the opposite party compared to what you have struck off your list.

Negotiating with Vendors

Although negotiations are a part and parcel of project lifecycle, the real deal still lies with what you say and do with vendors. I don’t blame my colleague for arguing that negotiation in this area is everything, most people still believe that this is it.

Remember that vendors are much more experienced than you are across the negotiation table. They deal with multiple clients and have enormous experience in this field. They might read your trick before you execute it. Play your cards safely, and don’t expose your trump cards all at once. It’s like poker!

Remember that relationships with vendors are generally long term and you would need their support at every juncture. For example, if you are dealing with a vendor who has laid optic fiber cables between your offices, you need his support as long as the cable lies in active state. The last thing you want is a disgruntled vendor who does not provide on time service, and this resulting in irreparable financial losses.

As I mentioned earlier, ensure a win-win situation exists between your vendor and you. Vendors support your project indirectly and are as important as project resources.

Who is a Good Negotiator?

Nobody comes out of college as a good negotiator. It is a skill that is developed on the field, and through experiences, although some folks have native talent to negotiate over others. I recommend that you grab some books on this subject to get the theoretical knowledge.

But, as I said earlier, the real deal lies in the practicalities. If you are not into project negotiations yet, ask your manager to involve you as a silent spectator.

Negotiation on the Project+ Exam

Negotiation is part of project management, and thus the skill is included on the CompTIA Project+ exam as part of objective 3.1: Coordinating human resources to maximize performance. But far more than exam prep, developing your negotiation skills will come in handy in many phases of project management.

Likewise, in a project, communication is the key to success and experienced project managers say that three fourths of the project time is spent in communication. This is actually not a bad thing and as a project manager, you should never think that communication is a waste of time.

Creating a Communication Management Plan

A project is a set of activities undertaken to achieve a single goal. A project needs people to perform the required activities, and people who can lead the project, such as a project manager. There will be customers who provide the project requirements. A project will also need suppliers for the infrastructure; examples where suppliers are involved are in provisioning desktops, phones, software, internet etc. Plus, there are other invisible stakeholders within organizations such as security heads, compliance leads and HR; and on the outside, governmental agencies and green activists.

When all the aforementioned people are involved in a project, communication becomes a challenge. There will be certain information which customers need to know, information the government requires, and the list goes on. To tackle this inconsistency, as project managers we come up with a communication management plan.

The communication management plan is basic and simple. It is tabulated generally and tells the reader which communication should go to who, and by what means along with when and where.

Here is a link to a sample project communication plan that you can take a look at as an example.

Types of Communications in a Project

As mentioned earlier, there are multiple stakeholders within and outside the organization to receive inputs and updates from a project.

To start with, we have team members in a project and internal communication is perhaps one of the arduous tasks a project manager has to deal with. And, it becomes complicated when more people are involved.

A project team of 10 will find it easy to share activity updates than say a team of 20. Using the equation – N(N-1)/2 , we can determine how many communication lines cut across a project where N is the people in the team. For simplicity, I am not considering customers, and other stakeholders. Applying the formula, a project team of 10 would have 45 communication lines and the number quadruples to 190 when the project team size doubles. Just imagine how much harder it gets to maintain successful communication in bigger projects.

A major form of communication include reports, memos and briefings to customers, program managers and others in the organization who are interested in the progress of your project.

These days, project members are generally not co-located. If the coding team sits in San Jose, the testing activities are probably bangalored to some part of India. Communication hence becomes tricky. Companies leverage telephones and video conferences to shrink the distance between multiple brains working towards a single goal, but it cannot be used at all times, albeit it is the best option. Emails have come into the fore and have overtaken all forms of communication. People can communicate with each other whenever and wherever they want and there is no question of privacy intrusion or availability issues of the recipient.

Interestingly, researchers say that written communication is effective only 7% of the time whereas body language and oral communication account for the remaining 93%. And yet, most projects, successful ones at that, run on written communication. Just imagine how successful projects would have been if all communication forms were through body language and words that come of our mouths.

What Constitutes Good Communication Skills?

You would have probably heard that a good communicator is blessed with the talent of hearing out every vowel and consonant, and putting the right words across at the right instant of time. This is so true in the world of projects as well. A project is a set of activities that a group accomplishes and the direction to the set of activities is a result of communication.

First, the customer spells out what he needs and this mostly happens over a video conference or a phone call. The project manager along with his top dogs sit glued to their telephone sets to ensure that they get everything right. Getting the correct requirements solves a major stage in the jigsaw puzzle. The project manager does not want the project to start with wrong specifications, only to realize later that the work has gone to the bins.

So, in a project sense, communication is principal. Listening plays a great part to understand in detail what exactly the customer wants. Once you get a hang of it, fill the gaps by probing with the right darts. This process cascades down to project team members who need to understand the intricacies from their manager. An eager team member who is always on the lookout to ask questions and show off may never grow to great heights. As I said earlier, communication makes or breaks the subject on hand.

Other areas where communication comes in handy are – setting the right expectations, influencing people to take the action you desire, negotiating deals beneficial to both parties, conflict resolution, summarizing and identifying the next steps to take.

The Communication Process

In a typical project sense, communication process if fivefold. My list is not comprehensive but is recommended by project management bodies.

1. Identify Stakeholders

It is significant to know who the stakeholders are. A project might typically have customer organization with various layers, suppliers, governmental organizations, organizational heads and maybe indirect stakeholders – spouses.

2. Plan Communications

You know who needs to be informed or consulted but what completes the cycle is the kind of communication a stakeholder is supposed to know, and the frequencies. This will be a part of your project communication plan as discussed earlier. For example, a supplier may not be interested in knowing where the project team is headed for dinner. He might be keen to understand the business he gets, which might be trivial to a person who produces technical documents.

3. Communicate

Well, you have done all the hard work of identifying people involved and a plan to communicate. What is pending is the execution itself! Emails, newsletter, phone calls, video conferences, TV broadcasts, radio telecasts and internet streaming is carried out as per the bible – project communication plan.

4. Manage Stakeholder Expectations

This is a course in a master’s degree of business administration. Influencing stakeholders’ expectation is an art of communication that is perfected by a very few, and thousands who talk about it like they own it are mere hypocrites. The idea is not to put all expectations on paper and sweat over achieving them at a later time. But, setting the right expectations on whether a particular job can be done at the price, time and quality quoted is the right way to go about it. I hope you got the idea, I can write on this topic all night long!

5. Report Performance

How does anybody know how a project is progressing? Whether they are ahead of time or behind the costs? Reports! It’s the world of reporting that we managers love. Reports give stakeholders the marker to judge the performance of a project, and a chance to change things around during the project as opposed to – at the end. The art of reporting is to account what is needed and to cut out things that add little value. It is like removing chaff from the wheat before feeding your sweetheart.

Managing people effectively is an art which is yet to be perfected for the most part, and the accountability solely lies with the project manager — most of the time. It is indeed most of the time, as there are certain types of organizations where people management is offloaded from the project manager’s plate, onto a manager who only deals with people. These types of organizations are minority and will not be considered in the reminder of this article.

Who is a People Manager?

Just as a business would manage its finances and sales targets with professionals from respective fields, a people manager is a person who manages employees of an organization. It is a job meant only for specialists, and verticals that are responsible for people are generally called the human resources department.

Organization structure aside, a people manager looks after employees’ professional needs from the time of employment, and as long as the employee continues to be a part of the organization. You could also say that he acts as a guardian angel in tending to the employee’s needs.

Some qualities that a people manager should possess are – the ability to be trusted, understand people issues, ability to resolve them and to understand the human resource requirements of the organization.

Responsibilities of a People Manager

Here are the main responsibilities of a people manager in an organization. This list is not comprehensive but covers most common ones.

• Understand the human resource requirements of the organization
• Hire people who fits the needs or the organization – read as people who are self motivated, competent and good at what they do. The unstated requirement is to find people who can swallow the whole hand when you show them your thumb.
• Issues and conflicts arise from time to time, and it is the responsibility of the people manager to sort things out within limits of the organizational policies and guidelines.
• Feedback is a strong mechanism to reflect the performances, and employees receive performance feedback on a regular basis. In this process, he would highlight the strengths and weaknesses of an employee from his purview and suggests improvement measures. This entire process in organizations is generally referred to as the performance appraisal process.
• Take action against erring employees, which might include demotion, termination or being innovative by grounding employees from attending monthly luncheons.
• Recommend training for employees to improve their competency, and to increase employee satisfaction

A Look at Human Resources from Project Management Perspective

If we are talking about managing people in a project, the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) should definitely have processes around it. Let’s take a cursive look at it.

There are four processes listed in it, and they are:

1. Develop human resources plan – Before a project gets underway, the project manager has to estimate the number of people he would need, and the skill sets that are needed in achieving the project.
2. Acquire project management plan – This is the process of interviewing people and getting them on board.
3. Develop project team – It is imperative that anything that does not grow will perish. A team that does not grow will find the same fate as well. The project manager needs to ensure that during the team’s stay in a project, their competencies and skill levels improve, thereby improving the project performance.
4. Manage project team – Getting a team together is one thing, while managing them throughout the life of a project is another. Management includes resolving conflicts, providing project performance feedback and other day to day activities.

Common Challenges in People Management

Managing people is a huge challenge. The one who comes out on the top is the one who completes the project with least amount of conflicts and indifferences.

A new project manager is bound to struggle while managing a project team. He may have learnt about issues of various kinds pertaining to people, and also might have theoretical knowledge while preparing for the PMP, but experience teaches him things that are generally mostly not in the book.

No situation has a fixed solution. One cannot use a standard set of practices to deal with people issues; while you could very well do that with Windows servers. Later on in the career, a project manager might have déjà vu moments that could deem helpful.

I have been managing people for some time now, and I want to share some issues that cropped up and how they were mitigated.

• Trust

I was a new manager then, and I replaced the earlier project manager due to resignation. The team knew more than I did on the project, obviously! Many seniors in the team doubted some of the decisions I made, and I knew the frequency of their brain waves within a couple of working weeks. I had to gain their trust, and show them that I knew what I was doing, and was quite competent at it. Proving your worth to your juniors is a mandatory exercise if you ask me.

Gaining trust is not a one day job, it is a process that could take several days, and luckily for me, I was on a long term project.

I stuck to the task. I was there when my team members needed me. I ensured that I attended each and every meeting including the technical ones, and got into the nitty gritties of the project activities.

When my team knew that I was identifying myself as a part of the unit, and was offering my support rather than just ensuring that the project performance was at par, they started to trust me, and my decisions were accepted fairly.

Being a part of the team, attending meetings and looking out for my team helped me gain their trust. It may not work in all situations. If you are looking into reining your team in, be innovative and earn what pushes their buttons the right way.

• Team Building

Most organizations are rigorously working on this concept, and the key to success will be shouldered on how well the team gels and the result will reflect it. Tons of team building exercises are available today.

Like gaining trust, building a team is an arduous task. It is harder if the team is spread across different geographies, worst if they are in different time zones. Co-location works best if team building is a priority.

In my project, my team sat on the same floor, and they knew each other pretty well even before I joined. This made my job simpler. And yet, I wanted to build it further, so I organized Friday luncheons, monthly outings, and a big outing every quarter. The big outing was sponsored by our client, and the rest were paid from our pockets, and my team members had no qualms over it as long as they had a good time.

During these outings, I never ever spoke about work. I wanted keep work where it belonged, and bring the team together outside the usual boundaries. By doing this, the team knew that their bonding was not restricted professionally, but also at a personal level. Each person knew the other well, and that knowledge helped them perform better. I was amazed to know that several of my team members were far more talented than I assumed. This method is one of the tried and tested ones, and the failure rate is close to nil.

• Conflict Resolution

If any manager says that he will ensure that conflicts don’t crop up, I would say that he’s blatantly lying. Each individual in a project team has a different mindset, approach and mannerisms, and conflicts are bound to surface. The longer the project duration, higher the conflicts within the team. Keeping them to a bare minimum is smart management rather than trying to eliminate it.

There is no single potion to manage conflicts. Managers are required to wear different hats while they try and resolve differences in the team.

One such hat is that of a facilitator. Let’s say that your team members are fighting out on an approach to follow. They find it hard to come up with a solution that screams consensus. You, as the project manager can put all the things on the table, bring out the pros and cons of all the approaches on offer, and basically facilitate in arriving at a solution. Your team members will appreciate this approach more than anything else.

In the second case, let’s say that a project team member is erring, and project delivery is at stake. At this point in time, there is no sense in facilitating to bring the erring employee back in line. Time is money, and errors are generally not paid for. You have to don the hat of a dictator, and take appropriate action as deemed best by you. You don’t have to consult your team, and your decision stays final unless it is vetoed by the higher ups.

The in-between approach is finding support amongst project managers these days. The project manager brings his team together, asks them to share ideas, and take note of all the brilliant ones. This brings in a feeling among team members that their inputs are well considered. On the other hand, the project manager would have already made up his mind on the decision to take; maybe he will enhance it with the ideas of his team. He plays dictator while his team sees him as a facilitator; two birds in one shot.

I have played donned all three hats, and it is indeed important to know which one to use. Things can slip out of your hands if you end up wearing the wrong mask, beware!

I like to think of the project management plan as an encyclopedia that tells me what will go on in a project, providing insight into the strategy and execution of the project.

Planning is the Key in Project Management

The key word is “plan”, and you may have probably heard earlier that planning solves half the problem, while execution takes care of the rest. This statement is an axiom, and a major portion of the effort in the initial stages goes into planning a project. And, as you would expect, it is the responsibility of a project manager.

When a project manager sits down to draft a project management plan, he pretty much will have to visualize the project in motion. It’s a lot like a movie director envisioning the movie in his head before it pans out on the theatre screen.

Timing: When Do You Plan?

Planning is done in the initial stages of a project. The project management plan is most definitely drafted in the nascent stages, and agreed upon with the stakeholders before the first brick is laid in realizing the project.

To give you an idea of the sequence of events before a project starts executing, a project manager is chosen first, and the initial document that he is entrusted to prepare is a project charter. The project charter is similar to a project management plan, but just scans the surface and gives a very brief idea of what will go on in this project. It’s a lot like a movie trailer; an agreed project charter gives way to the creation of project management plan.

Contents of a Project Management Plan

As I mentioned earlier, the project management plan consists of anything and everything that the project encompasses. You think of an element in a project, and voila! You can find it in the project management plan.

The following are some key elements of a project management plan

• Project Schedule

The key milestones in a project definitely finds mention in a project management plan. These milestones are important to track the progress, and for the client to expect part deliverables and the final one of course.

• Cost Plan

Those in business know that money plays a major part in any project. Project cost estimates are a part of a project management plan, along with the degree of variation from plan to reality.

• Resources

Human resources who are involved in the project and the material resources that are needed during the project is planned in. For the human resources, the general practice is to name the roles and the responsibilities they are entrusted with.

• Risks

No project is free from risks. Assessing risks before the project kicks off is an art of experience, and risk management specialists are generally employed for inputs for this section.

• Quality

For a client to accept a deliverable, the output of a project should be in compliance with certain quality requirements. The required quality is agreed with the client during the initial stages and is put in writing in the plan. A classic example of quality in the software industry is the number of defects that are injected into the system.

• Communications

Experts believe that communication consists of 70% of a project in general. A specific plan is needed to address the various communications that will go out on a regular basis, and the medium is generally planned in as well. An example could be a progress report that goes to the client every Friday by email and a monthly status call done via video conference on the first business day of every month. It could be drilled further by stating that the email will be sent to XYZ and project sponsor, project stakeholder ABCD, quality expert and project management office will be copied in.

• Changes

A project management plan once created will not stay in the locker until completion. It goes through changes as and when new risks crop up, and due to unexpected turn of events. There has to be a plan to address a change in the project, for a simple reason that any change in the project will alter the entire characteristic of a project, the quadruple constraints mainly. Two cents – If a project manager can control changes effectively, a project will succeed more often than not.

Sample Project Management Plan

Here’s a sample project management plan, thanks to Washington State transport department for sharing it on the net.

It starts with a brief project description which defines the purpose of the project. Milestones come in next followed by the roles and responsibilities of people resources. Another vital section in a plan is the compliances, which is covered in the example document. Compliances generally draw a boundary line to make the delivery acceptable in lieu of government guidelines and ISO certifications.

Every project management plan is different as the nature is highly subjective, and a common template might not fit every project under the sun. However, this project management plan template by PM Docs covers most of the sections that an average plan consists of. Using it as a base will help you avoid reinventing the wheel for the most part.

Schedule is NOT a Plan

MS Project is a tool developed by Microsoft that is used widely to create a project management schedule. As I mentioned earlier, the schedule consists of all the major milestones and the list of activities against the project timelines of completion.

Many project resources and junior project managers (and leads likewise) I have interacted with, point to a project schedule and call it a project management plan. It is a common slip-up in the IT industry especially.

To reiterate, a project schedule is not a project management plan, but a subset of it. Generally a project management plan is a word or a PDF document with plenty of attachments embedded in it, along with myriad of information.

A Project without a Project Management Plan is NOT a Project

Sure, you can have projects without a plan, but it won’t be considered a project in the most common sense, and no client will shell out a single dollar without seeing a plan of action.

My last comparison of the day, as one would need a roadmap to reach a destination in an unknown land, a project needs a project management plan to realize its existence.

You might hear housewives say that they have taken up a new project to redo their garden or a high school kid talking about a science project. Even though it means something different to different people, the core idea behind a project always remains the same. Albeit it’s used in a wrong sense by others who might say that living their lives or playing a sport is a project.

Formal Definition of a Project

The Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) is considered as the bible of project management. As per the bible, the definition goes something like this:

A project is a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service or result. The temporary nature of projects indicates a definite beginning and end. The end is reached when the project’s objectives have been achieved or when the project is terminated because its objectives will not or cannot be met, or when the need for the project no longer exists.

So, the next time you use the word project, ponder over the following questions:

1. Is the activity that you refer to a project, temporary?
2. Does it produce a unique solution?
3. Does it have a definite beginning and an end?

If you answer yes to all of the above, then you’re definitely dealing with a project.

Project in Layman Terms

A project is a set of activities that are grouped together to collectively bring in a desired solution. The activities could be as simple as buying a commodity or as complicated as building a solar powered car; in short, an activity is subjective and complexity varies according to the desired solution and the required skill set.

Let me consider a simple example to illustrate a project. Cleaning a car sounds easy and something most of us would have done at some point in time. Confession time! I don’t do it anymore.

The process involved in cleaning a car varies but I will try to keep it straightforward and uncomplicated:

1. Bring the cleaning supplies, hose pipe and other accessories that you might need
2. Rinse your car with water to remove loose dirt
3. Mix water with car shampoo in a bucket
4. Apply the soapy water on the car’s body using a soft cloth
5. Rinse the soap with water
6. Dry the car using a dry cotton cloth

Although cleaning your car sounds like an activity, it can be further broken down into seven individual activities, or maybe more. In this case, car cleaning is a project and the seven tasks listed above need to be accomplished to complete your project, right?

I am going to pose the same questions which I asked you earlier for the car cleaning illustration:

1. Is the activity that you refer to a project, temporary?

Yes, cleaning a car is a temporary endeavor, although it can be repetitive in nature over a period of time.

2. Does it produce a unique solution?

Most definitely, a clean car is unique.

3. Does it have a definite beginning and an end?

Yes, it does.

Key Elements in a Project

I need to probably write a thesis on the key elements if I have to cover each and every bit of a project. I am going to wear blinders and talk about the primary ones, and scan the surface to give you a gist of what constitutes a project.

1. Project Manager

Just as every kingdom needs a ruler, a project needs one too, and he’s the project manager. He is the alpha and the omega, and is omniscient of the project’s needs, progress and outcomes.

The project manager is responsible for running a project, and it includes all aspects of a project, be it finances, client communication, people management, vendor management and the list of responsibilities can go on and on for pages, and I am not kidding.

2. Human Resources

However good the project manager is, he cannot alone run the project with computers and servers. He needs people who do the actual work. People (human resources) form an integral part of a project. Talented and skilled personnel have a higher chance of ensuring a project’s success, and hence are in demand. The project manager falls under human resources as well.

3. Balancing Quadruple Constraints

Scope, cost, time and quality are considered the four constraints that make or break a project.

Scope provides the boundary line and a direction towards the realization of the project’s goal. Cost refers to the financials that are required for the project to complete, and the time reflects when the project needs to be complete. The latest addition to constraints is quality; it provides a benchmark for the delivery to be accepted by the client.

Increasing one of the constraints will affect the rest. For example, if you decrease the time of a project, quality is likely to go down as well, and there might be some questions raised on the scope. If the scope increases, time and cost will go up; and in all likelihood quality usually lags due to lack of preparation.

Right, the examples above were meant to provide an understanding of the quadruple constraints. Balancing the four in optimum levels is a challenge that will plague a project from the initial stages until closure. If this can be taken care of, a project is successful more often than not. In reality, projects will tweak the four constraints throughout its life-cycle.

4. Communication

Communication in a project is prime. Like the constraints, the project hinges on to communications at each and every activity and phase. A project is a collection of activities working towards a common goal, and if the communications are not managed, you can imagine where the project heads to.

Project management practitioners believe that around 70% of the project hours in successful projects accounts towards communication. It could be discussions, war room meetings, stakeholder communication or generating reports.

In essence, actual work amounts to 30% of the total hours in successful projects.

Operations are Not Projects

Operations are ongoing and repetitive. They don’t have a definite end date although they may have a start date. The work performed may not lead to a unique solution.

An example could be MS Exchange administration, where the administrator is in charge of adding and deleting users, managing group mailboxes and troubleshooting exchange issues amongst others. The outcome of this activity is repetitive and will keep going on and on. It’s operations, and contradicts projects from every angle.

If you are to upgrade MS Exchange from MS Exchange 2007 to MS Exchange 2010, then the activity of transitioning from a lower version to a higher one can be considered as a project. In this case, you do have a start and end date, the upgrade is temporary and it produces a unique result.

The Art of Project Management

Managing projects is an art, and it requires your right brain as much as the left one. Project management is a vast study in vogue, and is on a continuous improvement mode.

The Project Management Institute (PMI) acts like a legal guardian for project management in providing direction and certifying project managers across the globe.

I have studied and worked on project management aspects for a number of years, and yet find a number of things that could have been dealt differently for better results. It is knowledge that tinkers with your thinking cells in your brain, and keeps you on your toes even in sleep.

Project management is a good career aspiration and it can take you places where you’ve never been before.

For organizations, the people who man vital solutions such as Exchange are critical resources. Exchange administrators draw high salaries however, the number of technology refreshes and required certifications is demanding.

The latest in the queue being TS Microsoft Exchange Server 2010, Configuring: Exam 70-662. If you are familiar with Microsoft certifications, this one is coded Exam 70-662, the suffix TS abbreviates Technology Series, and the exam will earn you MCTS certification. Passing this exam will also adds credit towards Microsoft Certified IT Professional (MCITP): Enterprise Messaging Administrator 2010 certification.

Overview of Exchange Server 2010 MCTS Certification

You could consider this a certification that will test your basics in Exchange 2010 environment. The technical details will not be too riveting and the exam hovers around testing your competency in handling and maintaining MS Exchange server.

The exam will not focus on intricate details of Exchange Server but will assess your administration and maintenance skills in the enterprise environment. Some typical activities that fall under the certification include adding and deleting users, creating and deleting groups, and delegating roles amongst others.

Job profiles that you may bag post certification are most likely Exchange Administrator, Desktop Engineer, Systems Administrator and Server Support Analysts.

If you believe that you don’t belong to this league, the next in line in the professional series is the Designing and Deploying Messaging Solutions with Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 certification which is Exam 70-663. I will discuss this certification in more detail in an upcoming post.

Exchange 2010 Exam 70-662 Prerequisites

This is a technology based certification and not a professional one; although Microsoft has not specified any definite prerequisites, you should have at least a couple of years of hands-on experience with Exchange 2007 and 2010 in order to pass the exam.

If you don’t have the prior experience with Exchange, my advice is to work in the environment and try to understand the system as much as you can before attempting the certification exam.

If you rely on understanding concepts and processes through text and visualizing them in your mind, Exam 70-662 might be one of the toughest exams you will face. Hands on experience is a vital component in preparation for this exam.

Exchange 2010 Exam Topics Covered

MS Exchange 2010 is an upgrade of Exchange 2007. The core features of Exchange 2010 have not changed.

Microsoft added, modified and removed certain features from the 2007 version in its new release. If you are familiar with 2007, you need to identify the changes, unlearn what you already know and cram the new set of features.

The 2010 exam covers sections and weights as follows:

• Installing and Configuring Exchange Servers – 15 %
• Configuring Exchange Recipients and Public Folders – 14 %
• Configuring Client Access – 15 %
• Configuring Message Transport – 15 %
• Monitoring and Reporting – 13 %

All of the sections on the exam are even, as far as points distribution is concerned. This most necessarily means that you have to prepare in all the above mentioned sections if you want to have a realistic chance of passing the exam.

More detailed information on the skills measured can be found at Microsoft Learning.

Exam 70-662 Study Materials

Although the 70-662 exam was announced just a few months ago, there are already a few study materials available.

Train Signal is preparing to release their Exchange Server 2010 training which features comprehensive 70-662 exam coverage in multiple file formats for convenience.

Taught by Exchange guru J. Peter Bruzzese, the training will help you gain hands-on experience by walking you through everything including the installation, configuration, maintenance, etc.

And as a bonus you’ll get a free practice exam to test your skills.

Two popular book options that are starting to get recommended by those who passed the exam are:

  •   Exchange 2010 Administrator’s Pocket Consultant by William Stanek and

  •   MCTS Self-Paced Training Kit (Exam 70-662) Configuring Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 by Orin Thomas and Ian McLean.

The former addresses the ‘how’ part rather than the ‘why’, which is in line with the exam objectives. Also, the chapters are stacked according to the skills being measured on the exam.

However, the books can only take you so far, especially when hands-on, practical skills are concerned. Plenty of practice and classroom training or an equivalent, like video training, would do a world of good if you are serious about understanding the nuances of Exchange 2010 and passing the exam.

Practice exams are also a great way to prepare for the exam. Transcender, MeasureUp, and a few others offer comprehensive and quality practice exams that will help you make sure you’re ready to sit for your exam.

Exam 70-662 Logistics

Like all other Microsoft exams, this one is outsourced to Prometric as well. You are required to register on the Prometric website, choose the examination you want to take, in this case Exam 70-662, then choose your preferred location and proceed to payment.

The cost of this exam is $125, which is moderate at best. And if you didn’t know already, this is a proctored exam so beware — you are being watched!

Exchange 2010 Exam Details

The 70-662 exam contains 64 multiple choice questions generally, with some rare cases where candidates have received 68-70 questions. Different weights are assigned to each of the questions, and it amounts to a total of 1,000 points. To pass the exam, you need a minimum of 700 points and, you have 3 hours to complete the exam.

The average scores hover around 800+ for IT professionals who have taken this exam in the past month and a half.

From what I have seen and heard, if you have excellent knowledge of Exchange 2007, you will probably be able to answer many of the questions on the 2010 exam. I also heard that the updated exam covers much less PowerShell and that 3 hours is plenty of time to complete the exam.

How Should You Prepare for This Exam?

If you’re new to Exchange, start with the theory and once you understand it try relating it to what you already know. Practice is key for this exam, so make sure you get plenty of hands-on time with the technology in order to build up your skills. This will also come in handy on the job, trust me.

This is definitely one of the harder MS exams, so make sure you prepare well. Take a couple of practice exams to build up your confidence and celebrate once you complete your cert!

Call centers have become an integral part of the system, and one cannot imagine living without them. The need for such a call center is to provide a contact line from the company, or as it’s called in IT terms, a single point of contact (SPOC).

In Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) framework, the first point of contact or the SPOC is called as the service desk.

Difference Between a Service Desk, a Call Center and a Help Desk

Service desk is similar to a call center but differs in the way it functions. You can say that a call center is the interface between a customer and a company representative. And, calls made by the customer land in a call center and a call center employee’s communication does not go beyond customers and vice versa. Call centers only exchange information and do not indulge in resolving technical issues.

In a service desk, a service desk agent communicates with the user/customer (as in a call center) and alongside, they interact between the technical people who resolve issues, third party service providers, and other departments within the company. So, their interactions are multi-dimensional and apart from the communication, there are other responsibilities that are bound to the service desk function which I am going to discuss in the reminder of this article.

In between a call center and a service desk, you have another entity called as a help desk which is not a part of ITIL. A help desk is a call center which is capable of resolving technical issues. They do not liaise with any other resolver groups, third party service providers and other departments.

Responsibilities of a Service Desk

Being a single and first point of contact with customers/users, resolver groups, third party service providers and other departments, is not the only responsibility of the service desk, although it is their primary role.

The service desk is responsible for taking ownership of issues that are reported by users, and track the issue until closure. At different stages of issue resolution, they have to communicate with the users and other stakeholders apprising them of the resolution status.

The Service Desk Environment

ITIL governance is followed primarily in the service industry. A service industry can be defined as any organization which performs certain tasks for a client, and mainly the work revolves around maintaining IT infrastructure, applications and other business processes.

Service desk is best suited for service organizations, although non-service organizations can easily customize the concept to suit their needs.

Different Types of Service Desks

A service desk can be implemented in a number of ways. Each type of service desk has its own set of pros and cons and has a different price tag attached to it. An organization needs to be prudent in choosing the one that’s most appropriate for them.

To explain the different types of service desks, I’m going to consider an example of an organization which is located in eight locations around the globe. Two of their offices are in Australia, one in India, one in the UK and two in the US.

1. The Local Service Desk

 
If the organization decides to set up a service desk in each of the eight locations, they would be setting up a local service desk. Calls from the Indian location would land in the India service desk, UK calls in the UK service desk, and so on. You get the idea, right?

Pros: Being a local service desk, lingua franca can be the mode of communication. Users and the service desk personnel can relate to each other which can lead to a better understanding of the issues on hand, followed by quick resolutions. Customer satisfaction will boom as well.

Cons: Local service desks are expensive. The organization will have to set up eight service desks around the globe, which includes personnel, infrastructure and management around it.

2. The Centralized Service Desk

 
As the name suggests, the service desk is located centrally and all company locations dial into the centralized service desk. And, it is up to the company to decide on the extent of centralizing it.

For example, they may decide to have a centralized service desk for the US located in one of the locations and another covering UK and India. At the end of the day, it is the company’s decision and they will need to think over cost implications mainly, along with availability of personnel, office space, etc.

Pros: Centralized service desks ring several bells, the most important being costs. Cost savings are immense and companies can leverage on technologies like VoIP to further reduce the calling costs from far locations.

Cons: As the saying goes, further the distance, farther the heart; the personal touch imparted by a local service desk is an obvious miss. Also, any breakdown in the calling infrastructure or issues with telecom service providers will hamper the purpose it is set to serve.

3. The “Follow the Sun” Service Desk

 
Follow the Sun is a support model which works best for service desks that work around the clock, i.e 24 hours a day and 7 days a week.

The organization which we are using in our example has offices spread worldwide and the Follow the Sun support model works wonderfully well for it. We can strategically place service desks in the US, Australia and India to provide 24X7 support to all locations.

The concept works something like this: During the US day time, service desk in the US is operational, and all calls from each of the eight locations land in the US service desk. As the sun moves away from the US and towards Australia, the service desk function is picked up by the Aussie counterparts and all the calls land in Australia, and the same process follows when the sun moves towards India. Hence, the name Follow the Sun.

The Follow the Sun service desk works best for larger organizations with bases spread across the globe, similar to our example.

Pros: Resiliency is the biggest advantage in such a model. If any of the service desks are down, the company will have at its disposal other service desks that can take over, and hence eliminate single point of failure. In some countries, staffers will need to be paid extra if they are to work beyond a certain time in the evening; this model eliminates this burden.

Cons: It may not be as cost effective, because you would need a dedicated management to keep a finger on the service desk’s pulse. Coordination will be the biggest challenge and you would need able managers to run the show ably, and as you would expect, good managers come at a cost, usually inflated.

Service Desk Makes a Difference

Many companies feel that the service desk is an overhead and hence optional. But, what they fail to understand is that the service desk integrates different departments of the company, and can help a smooth passage of communication if used strategically.

A company without a service desk is like a football team that zips its mouth throughout the game.