What would be the most useful certification for a developer (ITIL)?

Question

Hi,

I am quite busy balancing my career, practise (working on 5 projects outside of work of varying sizes), and finishing my certs. While I have 70-536 and 70-560 (MOSS Config) an 2 non MS exams, and 2 ASP.NET exams to finish, I want to complete one certification which is not strictly related to development and thus will make more unique.

The CTO in my company mentioned ITIL and how this can really benefit one's career. Would this be useful for a .NET developer?

Thanks

Answer 1

Short answer: Project Management cert.

Long asnwer:

I would strongly suggest project management cert - it's a bit harder to obtain, at least here in USA (>1 class) but you actually learn VERY useful skills even if you never work as a project manager per se as your main title.

<subjective> Having said that, ITIL is a boatload of junk in practice from my experience with both the subject; and also and the people partitioning it were mostly empty suits (at least as of 4 years ago). It may help your career as an instrument of impressing said empty suits, but IMHO not help your skills.

P.S. If I were your CTO, I'd worry that your performance at work would suffer from all the non-related loads. Especially if any of the 5 projects are for-pay - many companies make that a fireable offense. </subjective>

Answer 2

Depends on the size of your company and your datacenter. If you are running 100+ applications and/or servers, ITIL is a must, even for developers - it defines all the boring processes everyone has to follow to somehow manage the unavoidable mess.

It's not so much useful in smaller companies, where the roles overlap and everyone does bit of everything, since there is little need to have a rigid process in place.

Answer 3

I think a good understanding of ITIL is very useful to a Developer at a large company. You have to get your code into production and knowing the basis for the change control processes you will be following mades your job so much easier.

I think that the two most valuable ITIL certifications for a Developer are: 1. ITIL v3 Foundations 2. ITIL v3 Release, Control and Validation

Answer 4

But what if your running less than 100 servers in the company, isn't an ITIL certification still imperative? I mean surely all developers need at least a v3 or something despite the scope of the company!

Can someone please pick up on this!

Thank you for your time,

Harrisd78