Customer Reviews

ITIL V3 Foundation Complete Certification Kit - 2009 Edition: Study Guide Book and Online Course

5 star:		(225)
4 star:		(140)
3 star:		(24)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

As is illuminated in other reviews, the Amazon purchase provides the book and the online course (standard CBT fare -- flash slide shows with a voiceover; instant setup via autoresponder, once I followed the steps in the front of the book -- took only a few minutes to set up). Truth be told, I'd probably recommend that people go straight to the online course, and only use the book as reference material, because while the book is bad, the online course is great. By virtue of being an online course, though, you can't skim or speed read as effectively, so I think readers will have the best experience doing the classroom environment first, and then catching any missed details with the book. But first things first.

The book looks like it was put together, as one other reviewer suggested, by a high school student. The content is fine, but the presentation is bad, the editing appears to be non-existent (and dramatically, painfully so), and at times the writing is unclear. The unclear writing does threaten your ability to follow the content, but mostly the writing seems just sub-par and shows no signs of any instructional method. The lack of editing is shown by the innumerable grammatical errors, occasional spelling errors, and (in the subjective realm), odd writing habits, such as ending an exciting sentence with three exclamation points in a row. The core problem I had with the book was my grave concern that given the above, the content was not to be trusted; that it was just some person in a basement, putting out a book based on only sketchy knowledge. I'm happy to say that while the book never eased those concerns, the online course did.

The online course is extremely professional, and well put together. I found it significantly easier to follow, and I say this as someone who is drastically better at visual learning than auditory learning. I had the misfortune to read through the book and leave myself only a little bit of time with the online course, but I felt enormous relief at listening to the online course and seeing the professionalism combined with the hallmarks of instructional method (such as the way they repeated things, to ensure understanding). I haven't run through the entire online course (I did two of the six major sections), so it's possible that there are surprises in some of the sections, but what I did take felt very solid. The only downside, to me, was that having read through the book, I had already grasped much of the content, so it was difficult to pay enough attention to grasp the missing details amongst the major concepts that I was already comfortable with. Thus my recommendation that the online course be done first, and the book second.

Overall, I am satisfied with my purchase. The book is laughable, but as a Complete Certification Kit, it met my needs. As a mid-level IT engineer with only superficial ITIL knowledge coming in, I easily passed the exam with ~10-15 hours of preparation.

Having worked in IT for 15 years I had never had to implement ITIL based methodoligies in any formal manner. When at last I did, this book provided me with the foundation to build a successful and highly regarded ITIL based process for a new venture my employer was persuing. The venture came off, and my ITIL framework is in place and doing what it should, providing a quality of service we couldn't have achieved without it.

The book is well structured, easy to follow, and concise enough to easily meet the ITIL certification requirements. I highly recommend it to anyone with little to no experience with ITIL.

This book when it arrived , i looked at the size of the book and though it does not have everything, but this book supplemented with the online course that is available is more than enough if you want to take ITIL foundation. I am a PMP and wanted to see what ITIL has to offer and found out both to be complimentay to each other. This book is a great for taking ITIL foundation exam or for understanding ITIL, what this is not is a reference manual.

[...]

This book is difficult to read and effectively understand what they're saying. There are a lot of words that somehow form sentences, but they are vague, unclear, and overly complex.

There are many ways to effectively convey information (some may even say "good practices" around how to convey information), but this book doesn't utilize any of them. The authors of this book might know ITSM very well, but their communication skills are mediocre at best. The content presentation is difficult to consume. It almost seems like an attorney wrote it. If you understand the concept being communicated, after reading that section of the book, you say to yourself "they could have said that in such simpler terms!"

Also, I find that the information was not adequately proof-read before publishing. There are typos and some of the sample review questions ask about information not yet covered in the book. For example, in the Service Strategy review questions (section 4), you're asked about Requirements Portfolio. If you check the index, the only time it is covered is in the actual question.

Illustrations were poorly done in PowerPoint (it seems) and don't clearly illustrate the concepts.

Overall, this is a very poorly-written book that's not worth its price tag. Unfortunately, there aren't many other good books out there.

PS -- Their audio recording (separate purchase which essentially covers the same material) is even worse.

Most of the image titled under "crow copyright 2007 Reproduced under license from OGC" ,if it is not all, can't show up on my Mac and ipad. it is a critical failure and the book just can't serve the purpose.
I'd spend the whole day to find a way to report this problem or make a return. however, it seems Amazon have no proper management on kindle book related service.

I thought the book could have used better proof reading as I noticed a number of gammical errors and some of the practice questions clearly had the wrong answer identified as correct. The online presentations didn't add much to the material covered in the book and in places is out-of-sync with the book causing some confusion.
Overall I passed with an 82%, but there were questions on the actual test where the material was not cover in the book or online material. A plus is that the course, after passing the test, is worth 18 PDUs for PMI continuing education requirements.

Well written and concise, when used in conjunction with the web presentations, whose access info is contained within the book,
it provides you everything you need to know to successfully pass
the exam. Read the book three times, watched the web presentations,
skipped the book quizzes, but did all the web quizzes and blew through the exam, which is pretty straightforward, in 12 minutes.

The Art of Service not only publishes a great course, they operate under the service principles they teach. My interactions with them were professional, courteous, and helpful. When I had a small issue with logon access to their site, my inquiry was answered and the problem resolved right away. Later, when I inquired about certification vouchers, again the response was detailed and very helpful.

As for the book, I found The Art of Service to have published the most comprehensive and digestible course around. I recommend this study book and online course to anyone looking to become comfortable with v3 concepts. And it is a must for anyone wanting to study for the certification exam.

QUICK SUMMARY: I bought this "Complete Certification Kit" on the strength of others' reviews, most of them 4- or 5-stars. Having read the book and gone through the online course, I think the kit is sufficient to help someone pass the ITIL V3 Foundation exam. However, this material is so dry, both the book and the online course, that I read and watched in very short clips to muddle through it. I recommend you look for alternatives to this course.

WHAT I LIKED:

- Having the companion guide for the online course helps put it altogether
- The online course has some handy PDFs for printing and studying
- I like the sample questions (book and online course); it builds confidence before the exam
- The materials are, I think, sufficient to the task of exam preparation

WHAT I DIDN'T LIKE:

- The book was in need of editing! A surprising number of typos and omissions are in the book.
- The book's written material wasn't perfectly aligned with some of the charts used in the book.
- The online course was, frankly, very boring to sit through. My eyes glazed over several times.
- The narrator kept using the word "actually" throughout the entire online course, which made the presentation almost unlistenable. Yes, it was really that bad!
- Too few attempts at making the material come alive, and when an attempt was made, it was poorly executed.
- The online slides were both repetitive and unimaginative. The underlying technology used, Adobe Captivate, has much more capability than what was used.

CONCLUSION: The concept here is great, but the execution feels like a two-man show, where neither person was adept at either editing a book or producing an online course. If it were done by a couple of college students, and if they offered this all for $40, I'd say it was a good value. Clearly, my opinion runs against the grain of how others have reviewed this course, so the materials seem to resonate with many others. However, if I had to do it over again, I'd look to just buy a single ITIL book -- no recorded, online course -- and save myself $50.

The first thing that should be said about what you are paying for with this book is that it also includes access to their website for an audio program, quizzes, and tests. This is key because the book cannot stand well on its own. However, the next key is that the on-line offering is valid for only 90-days after which you need to pay if additional access is required. The problem is that no where in the description of this program nor in their book is this 90-day limitation noted. Now, if you intend to do the required study after getting this book and do not encounter any disruptions in your ability to study, you should not have an issue in completing the program in much less than 90-days. If, like me, you wind up having to shelve this process for some number of months because something else comes up, you will run into this problem. I will say that fortunately these folks take the "service" notion seriously as they agreed to extend my access another 90-days after I explained their omission of this access limitation. They also sent me an additional practice exam which I appreciated. Having said that and I find it inexcusable that they still do not correct their own marketing to clearly indicate this 90-day limitation. This program is not cheap and this is a major omission that can now only be called purposeful.

The book itself is low quality in terms of content, construction, and editing. It's very dry consisting of lists and definitions and it contains a number of grammatical errors and in one case it simply stops dead in the middle of a sentence. The book is meant to be paired with their on-line audio program which is also not of high quality. Technically the audio isn't clean (background noises, changing volume levels, etc.) and is presented very fast as if the author wanted to get through the material as fast as possible. Additionally, it is clear that a script wasn't used as the use of some words, most especially "actually", are so common that by the end became a major distraction. There was also one section presented by a different person where you got the feeling she didn't understand any of the material she was reciting. The in-browser audio player doesn't have any time index to tell you where you are in the presentation. Just very recently I noticed they finally put the length of each recording within the title so you can now at least know how long a presentation is going to be.

You can take on-line quizzes of 10 questions after each section and your grade is recorded for later reference should you take the quiz again. There are also quizzes at the end of each section of the book, but you'll have to hunt around the back of the book to find out where the answers are recorded. The on-line exam, as well as the additional one I was sent, was helpful in my final study.

The material covered in ITIL v.3 Foundations isn't voluminous and frankly isn't really deserving of a credential by itself. It is worthwhile information to be sure, but it really should be part of a larger program. This is not the fault of the authors whom are just filling a need since the credential does exist. Having said that and the overall information presented in the book and on-line is sufficient to pass the actual 40-question exam. There are other sites giving free practice exams that are also worth going to for practice.

While I have not used any other ITIL program, I do find myself comparing this study guide to the one I used for the PMP exam. It does not escape my notice that this book is considerably more expensive and covers substantially less material (because ITIL Foundations covers less material than the PMP). Also, the quality of the PMP study guide and on-line resource were substantially higher than this program. While PMP and ITIL are different and cover different material, as an overall study program this package delivers far less for quite a bit more money. There might not be better alternatives in the ITIL space, but it is still disappointing.