The Why and What

I keep six honest serving men, they taught me all I knew. Their names are What and Why and When and How and Where and Who.

Update Summer 2024 

I have updated my qualifications in the past year with a refreshed Prince2 and ITIL 4 Specialist in Monitor, Support and Fulfil which when combined with my Create Deliver support that is part of the ITIL Managing Professional qualifiaction gives me the ITIL Practice Manager. ITIL Practice Manager plus ITIL Managing Professional and ITIL Strategic leader gives me ITIL Master.

Introduction 

The bulk of this post will concentrate on how I passed eleven Axelos exams in a year. I did this as a challenge to myself but also to show others what I have learnt about these passing exams and to encourage others to do the same.  In this post I will look at the “why” and the “what” and in a follow up post will be the “where”, “when”, “who” and “how” I have used this Best Practice Guidance in my day-to-day work over the last twenty years. This partly to demonstrate the usefulness of the  Best Practice Guidance, but also as a counterpoint to the current trend on Linkedin that says these qualifications only provide the theory.

I am no stranger to the Axelos exam scheme having passed my first ITIL foundation way back in 2005 when the examination board was ISEB. I kept the ITIL up to date by doing the two ITIL v2 Senior Manager exams in 2007. This required one to write five essays per exam on each of the processes in the Service Support and Service Delivery best practice guides. This was quite achievement for me as I have dyslexia. I went on to do Prince2 2009 version and the bridge exam to become an ITIL Expert in 2016.

These two best practices served me well in my roles since I became first aware of them in the early 2000 after moving to Germany. I was running a Service Desk and first level support for ~eight thousand users for a large German bank. I then went on to run a programme to off-shore Procurement processes for an IT supplier and create two service desks, one in Hungary the other in Slovakia. Currently, I am running an extensive multi-platform lifecycle programme, updating hardware and software for a multinational retailer.

This year my intention was to focus my studies on passing the exams to bring my ITIL and Prince2 qualifications up to date. Then, with the announcement of the new ProPath scheme, I decided to add the additional MSP, MOP, P3O & MOR certificates. The full list of exams  are at the end of this post.  

The Why 

Initially however, I want to explain the why. I have been an enthusiastic believer in life-long learning since a young age. Because of my dyslexia, I must study harder to give myself confidence that I am keeping up with my peers. So why would I want to spend a huge amount of my free time doing something this hard? 

To express it another way, and paraphrasing the work of the late Donald Kirkpatrick in Evaluating Training Programs, and the 8-fields model by Joseph Kessels and Cora Smit, training should have a goal that is applicable to your day-to-day experience.

4. Goal/Problem – Business Results

3. Wish – Functioning

2. Competences – Learning/proving

1. Intervention – The learning process

Although learning is a great thing to do in and of itself, and comes with its own intrinsic rewards, the end goal is that I wanted to make my CV stand out in the current marketplace. “The value of certification for project managers” whitepaper and the “Power of Professional Certification” report both very much mirror my own views. I wanted to position myself in such a way as to ensure I was able to take advantage of the best possible opportunities when looking for my next contract and hopefully then apply these new learnings in that role. 

I already have worked in a wide range of senior service & programme management roles over the past twenty years which indicates that I have some competency. There are limits to what you can do in terms of re-wording your experience, so investing in yourself and having up-to-date industry standard qualifications is a great way to differentiate yourself. It will help make you eligible for more roles, and at a higher level. It is also a fantastic signal to hiring managers that you are a person who wants to learn and grow and that you take your career seriously.

So that is my personal why but then why did I choose the Axelos suite of qualifications rather than say those offered by the Project Management Institute? As I pointed out here Axelos is the most widely-recognised, particularly in Europe where I work and live. For me, it was also about the wider scope of what Axelos offers, and how, particularly with their ITIL qualifications there was a much better match to my skillset and my experience. 

The What

Going about the process of upskilling yourself can seem quite daunting at first. It can involve some initial research, you must choose a qualification, a provider, buy everything and then commit yourself to hours of hard study. However, if you lay it out beforehand (or I lay it out for you) then the whole path become a lot less confusing. Here is my 10-point plan for getting from zero to practitioner:

1. Purchase course/manual and exam
2. Purchase notebooks and copy the entire course/Best Practice manual into the notebooks
3. Read the Best Practice manuals
4. Watch relevant YouTube videos
5. Search the Web for summary guides, 
6. Search the Axelos Resource Hub for useful material such as syllabus and practice exams
7. Practice the foundation exam and take it
8. Mark up the manual 
9. Practice the Practitioner exam with marked up manual
10. Take the Practitioner exam

1 Purchase course/manual and exam.

Due to covid I bought self-paced online training courses. This I feel was a bit of a mistake for me. Most of the courses are merely a reiteration of the manuals – and reading from a screen is always inferior to reading from a book. Instead, I recommend buying just the exams & manuals, unless you can get a good discount from an approved training provider. The manual is enough to get you through exam if you follow steps 2 & 3.

2 Purchase notebooks and copy the entire course/manual into the notebooks

I recommend an A4 or A5 notepad, particularly hardbacked ones. I then watched the course and made detailed notes. I marked the notepads up with highlighter pens and then created a revision schedule to read a set section on each day and revise the previous days section. As I stated previously you could probably do this with just the manuals. This is a lot of work, but I find the act of transcribing makes the knowledge stick better than merely reading or watching videos. I recommend adding page tabs to the manuals if you can as well – this really helps not just when revising but when you’re taking the practitioner exam because it makes it quicker and easier to find things! Find the downloads here.

3 Read the best practice manuals

The manuals including the appendices are very comprehensive and it does not matter how detailed your course or notes have been, there is always something that you didn’t notice before. This also helps for when you come to doing the Practitioner exam as you will need to be even more familiar with the manual and its layout.

4 Watch relevant YouTube videos

YouTube has many videos about Axelos courses. Often, they tasters for the complete course. They give you basic understanding and a flavour of the complete course. You can pick up information about key components of the qualification. Some even explain the Syllabus and pointers on how to pass the exam. I think this combined method of learning really helped.

5 Search the web for summary guides

There are many unofficial websites that have very good resources summarising key components of the Best Practices. Two I particularly recommend are 

Brendan Martin – More ok days… and Henny Portman’s Blog on Portfolio, Programme and Project Management

6 Search MyAxelos for useful material such as syllabus and practice exams

The Axelos website has many resources related to exams. Believe it or not, it’s in their interest for you to pass them! You can find the syllabus, top tips & practice papers for exam. For example

ITIL Practitioner Syllabus – English | Axelos

PRINCE2 Practitioner Syllabus | Axelos

MSP Practitioner Syllabus | Axelos

Management of Risk (M_o_R) Syllabus | Axelos

Management of Portfolios (MoP) Syllabus | Axelos

P3O Syllabus | Axelos

There are also sample papers which include the answers and most importantly the rationale for the answers

ITIL Axelos Best Practice Sample Papers | Axelos

PRINCE2® Agile Axelos Best Practice Sample Papers | Axelos

MSP® Axelos Best Practice Sample Papers | Axelos

M_o_R® Axelos Best Practice Sample Papers | Axelos

MoP® Axelos Best Practice Sample Papers | Axelos

P3O® Axelos Best Practice Sample Papers | Axelos

7 Practice for the foundation exam & then take it

Take those foundation sample papers, if you have followed steps 1-6 you should be getting close to or above 80% on your first attempt. Mark the papers each time and check the rationale, not only for those you got wrong but also the ones you got right to ensure your thinking is correct. This helps you when you’re under pressure in the real exam and sometimes the choices can be quite similar. I generally schedule redoing the sample papers every night and reviewing my answers during the week prior to the foundation exam. After a week you should be getting almost 100%. 

8 Mark up the manual 

As you have already familiarised yourself with the manual in step 3 this should be an easy task. The practitioner exam is open book and you will need to know your way around the relevant manual during the exam (this is where those tabs can really help!). There are plenty of websites that offer pdfs of tabs for each section of the best practice manuals, although creating your own in word is simple enough. Find the downloads here.

Tabbed Manuals

9 Practice the Practitioner exam with marked up manual

It is vital that during the exam you know where to find the source material, so as well as tabbing the manual, use it when you take the sample papers. Follow the same process you did with the foundation exam, practising, checking the rationale and reviewing every evening. 

10 Take the Practitioner exam

Breathe deep and focus on the exam questions. Some of these can be quite tricky and some of the answers can be quite similar. The key is that after taking the sample papers you should now be in the same mindset as the examiners. You will start to understand how the questions are phrased and what they are looking for in their answers.

So there you go! That’s it! That’s the why and the what about me taking the Axelos courses and managing to pass them. And then here below is the list of the qualifications and the dates on which I achieved them. It’s been an incredible year. I’ve learnt so much and now my CV looks incredible! I’m already using a lot of what I learnt in my current role, and I know I will in the next. Good luck to you and I hope you come back and read the second part of this series of blogs on the subject.

• MoP Foundation 08 Feb 2021
• MoP Practitioner** 02 Mar 2021
• ITIL 4 Managing Professional* 30 Apr 2021
• PRINCE2 Practitioner 2017*** 07 Jun 2021
• ITIL 4 Leader Digital and IT Strategy* 26 Jul 2021
• P3O Foundation 26 Aug 2021
• P3O Practitioner** 03 Sep 2021
• MSP Foundation 5th Edition 29 Oct 2021
• MSP Practitioner 5th Edition**/*** 08 Nov 2021
• M_o_R Foundation 3rd Edition 06 Dec 2021
• M_o_R Practitioner 3rd Edition*** 13 Dec 2021
• MoR 4 Practitioner Certificate in Risk Management 12 Jan 2024
• PRINCE2 7 Practitioner Certificate in Project Management 11/03/2024
• ITIL 4 Specialist: Monitor, Support and Fulfil****** 12 August 2024
• * ITIL 4 Digital and IT Strategy plus ITIL Direct Plan and Improve adds ITIL 4 Strategic Leader
• ** MoP plus P3O plus MSP 5th Edition Practitioners adds ProPath Programme Leader*****
• *** Prince2 2017 plus M_o_R plus MSP 5th Edition Practitioners adds ProPath Project Expert*****
• ****Prince2 Agile plus M_o_R plus MSP 5th Edition Practitioners adds ProPath Agile Project Expert*****
• *****ProPath Programme Leader plus ProPath Project Expert adds Propath Portfolio Director
• ******ITIL 4 Specialist: Monitor, Support and Fulfil plus ITIL 4 Create Support Deliver adds ITIL 4 Practice Manager
• *******ITIL 4 Practice Manager plus ITIL 4 Managing Professional plus ITIL 4 Strategic Leader adds ITIL Master

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