ITIL® Lifecycle vs Capability

If you are familiar with the ITIL v2 certification scheme, you can translate Lifecycle and Capability modules into Service Manager and Practitioner modules. If you are unfamiliar with v2, Lifecycle courses are for those individuals working "on" ITSM implementation and Capability courses are for those individuals working "in" the daily process activities.

Lifecycle Stream
The Lifecycle stream focuses on how the discipline of the Lifecycle phase is managed. Rather than just pure theory, the courses mix instructor led sessions with discussion and syndicate work. The Lifecycle modules tend to focus within the particular phase rather than across the lifecycle as a whole. All courses look at Service Management as a discipline, the processes associated, the roles required and the technology implications for the lifecycle phase.

Each course leads to an ITIL Lifecycle examination which can be taken stand-alone or combined with other examination towards the ITIL Expert qualification. Lifecycle exams towards this qualification may be taken in any order and may be mixed with Capability exams.

The courses are aimed at individuals that are managing or will manage tasks associated with the phase and that need more information and skills to enable this.

Capability Stream
The Capability stream focuses on how the disciplines of Service Management are performed. Rather than just pure theory, the courses mix instructor led sessions with discussion and syndicate work. Capability modules focus mainly within a particular phase of the lifecycle but also combine this with processes which are aligned together to provide a capability across more than one phase. The main aim is to understand management of an area of capability rather than just a single lifecycle phase. All courses look at Service Management as a discipline, the processes associated, the roles required and the technology implications for the Capability.

Just like the lifecycle stream each course leads to an ITIL Lifecycle examination which can be taken stand-alone or combined with other examination towards the ITIL Expert qualification. Again like with the Lifecycle exams Capability exams may be taken in any order and may be mixed with Lifecycle exams to the required value in order to achieve ITIL Expert once the ‘Managing Across The Lifecycle’ has been passed.

The Capability courses are aimed at individuals that are performing, or will perform tasks associated with the particular Capability and that need more information and skills to enable this.

Posted by Chris Jones on Wed, 17/02/2010 - 4:12pm