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.