An ITIL® practitioner is an individual who has completed ITIL® training and certification to the second of three certification levels. The qualification held by such a person is officially known as the ITIL® Practitioner Certificate in IT Service Management. ITIL® stands for Information Technology Infrastructure Library. It is a registered trademark of the Office of Government Commerce (OGC), originally devised in the United Kingdom and now utilized by governments and corporations throughout the world.
The ITIL® practitioner certification is obtained at ITIL® version 2 (v2). In order to obtain a v2 ITIL® certificate at practitioner level, the candidate must pass a foundation ITIL® exam followed by at least one of the three following intermediate exams: “Release and Control,” “Support and Restore,” and “Agree and Define.” The practitioner’s certificate is usually considered to be an indication that the candidate has a deep understanding of one of the ITIL® processes.
The ITIL® Practitioner – Release and Control (IPRC) path to certification focuses on change management, release management, and configuration management. Incident management, service desk processes, and problem management are the focus of the ITIL® Practitioner – Support and Restore (IPSR) path. The ITIL® Practitioner – Agree and Define (IPAD) path focuses on the following processes: service level management, and financial management.
An individual who has successfully passed one of the three examinations at practitioner level usually will have completed a five day training course. The course is normally followed by a multiple choice examination consisting of 40 questions. The candidate must answer 26 of the 40 questions correctly in order to obtain a pass mark.
Each of the ITIL® examinations, when passed successfully, also gives the candidate credit points which may be used towards the next level of ITIL® certification, ITIL® Expert in Service Management. In ITIL® version 3 (v3), the three practitioner modules were replaced with nine different courses, four in “Service Capability” and five in “Service Lifecycle.” Both the ITIL® V2 Practitioner qualifications and the new “Service Capability” and “Service Lifecycle” qualifications give successful candidates credit points towards the ITIL® Expert in Service Management certification.
An individual who has successfully attained this certification may be listed on the ITIL® Successful Candidate Register provided on the official website. This register shows interested parties the date and training provider for successful candidates who have chosen to be publicly listed.