It is always good for professionals to combine the right sets of
expertise. For someone involved with IT infrastructure projects, ITIL
is a great complementary certification. What I find is that often the
specialty knowledge drives the PRODUCT of efforts, but the project
management skills drives the PROJECT that produces the PRODUCT. On
solid technical teams, that second mindset is often missing.

Background
When you get any level experience in the workplace, you realize that
the world is a collection of operations and projects. We are always
seeking to systematize where possible, to streamline operations, and to
improve results. We are always trying to create a "business as usual",
"runs by itself" environment, although in reality the full achievement
of this is elusive. For more detail go to www.positive-idea.com
We are always cognizant of change in external conditions, and of the
need to be proactive in changing our operations when necessary. This
intersection of operations and project management, is, I believe, where
ITIL and project management come together.

The IT Infrastructure Library® (ITIL®) describes a set of best
practices processes for stable, high quality IT services. Project
management, as a discipline, provides the capability to implement a
defined change in a controlled way, so that cost, schedule, and quality
of deliverable are as expected. It would seem that awareness of ITIL in
an environment where it is embedded would be an input to project
management. Likewise, project management is a great skill to use in
implementing and continuously improving the best practices provided by
ITIL.

PRINCE2 and ITIL
PRINCE2 and ITIL originate from a single source, the OGC (The Office of
Government Commerce) in the UK. While I do not have hard core
statistics, ITIL seems to be more strongly on the radar screen in the
United States than PRINCE2, probably in part because the PMI PMBOK is
more heavily established. But the practice of ITIL does seem to draw on
PRINCE2 to an extent due to its common origins, despite the fact that a
project management framework such as PMBOK can, in my opinion, be just
as effective.

Both ITIL and Prince2 have a mechanism for evaluating the change or
project. The Post Project Review in Prince2 is the same as the ITIL
Post Implementation Review. A successful review can therefore lead to
the end of the project.

Where ITIL and Project Management Meet
IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) is all about providing service within
the operations of IT in an organization. This includes management of
the Service Lifecycle, Service Strategy,
Service Design, Service Transition, and Service Operation. It also
means continual improvement of the whole set of services that are in
place. Management challenges within this realm include Service Desk and
Incident Management, Configuration and Release Management, Service
Level and Capacity Management, Problem and Change Management,
Continuity and Availability Management, and Financial and Security
Management.

ITIL itself, as a discipline, addresses the operations within the
defined services realm. However, any changes to that services realm can
and should be handled by applying a good project management discipline.
The difference is that the ongoing operations will be concerned with
maintaining and improving services as an in-place, as-is process. The
project management discipline will be concerned with defining the
beginning of an initiative, delivering the product of that initiative,
and turning over the results of that effort to be incorporated into the
operation before finally closing out the project.

The two disciplines are substantially different, and using the wrong
one can definitely result in lower effectiveness. In the case of ITIL
and Project Management, both disciplines will provide inputs the other.
For example, ITIL will provide the current situation to a project. It
will also provide certain procedures, such as configuration management,
that must be followed within the confines of the project. The results,
or "product of the project", will become the key input to changes or
improvements to be implemented within the ITIL implementation framework
in the organization. The professional that understands both sides in
depth will be quite valuable to the organization and will have a leg up
in knowledge and credibility.

A Little about ITIL (ITIL certification, that is)
ITIL certification has 3 levels: the Foundation Certificate, the
Practitioner Certificate, and the Manager's Certificate. Project
Management Training Online offers ITIL training in preparation for the
Foundation Certificate.

In a nutshell, here is what these 3 levels are about:

The Foundation Certificate: There are no entry requirements, and the
foundation test consists of a one hour long multiple choice examination
testing a candidate's basic understanding of the principles and
terminology of the IT Infrastructure Library. It is designed to provide
familiarity with the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) best practices
for IT Service Management.

The Practitioner Certificates: This is aimed at those who are
responsible within their organization for designing specific processes
within the IT Service Management discipline, and performing the
activities that belong to those processes. The Practitioner's
Certificates focus on the depth of understanding and application of
those subjects, treating each subject as a specialty. Prerequisites
include the Foundation certificate and mandatory attendance at an
accredited training course.

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Submitting articles to article directories is one of the latest methods
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The problem is if you submit exactly the same article to multiple
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Mix and match the article elements
Your typical article directory article consists of a title, a summary,
a body, an author/resource box and article keywords. The theory is if
you have multiple versions of each element and combine those elements
differently each time you post your article, there is less chance the
search engines will see the article as a duplicate and give the article
it‘s rightful place in the main index.

Let us say you have four different versions of each of the four major
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for a little extra effort you can have 4 x 4 x 4 x 4 = 256 versions of
basically the same article reducing the chances of the articles being
penalized.

Article Body
The best tip with the article body is to structure the text into blocks
that can be rearranged at will and still make sense. The filter will
not be able to identify duplicate content as easily as exact copies.
This approach also makes writing the article far easier than trying to
create a 500 word block of text.

Another tip when dealing with the body copy is to replace words and
phrases with meaningful, but different equivalents. For example, in
writing this article I can substitute the term SEO practitioner, for
search engine marketer, webmaster, web site owner, online marketer or
even Google guru. The article still makes sense, but it is textually
different to other versions. In other words the article still has the
same tone and meaning but has a large proportion of different words.

Article Summary
In forum posts discussing the duplicate content penalty a consistent
theme is that the article summary, or snippet as it is often called, is
examined very closely by the search engines for existing duplicates. As
with the title, it is useful to have numerous and very different
versions of that article summary.

Article Titles
The article title is very important from a reader point of view as well
as a duplicate penalty point of view. Many article directories use the
title of the article as the basis for creating the url to that articles
page. By varying the article title there is less chance of the search
engines believing they have already indexed that page.

Article resource box
As most SEO practitioners realize, the resource box is a very important
element, if not the most important element, of the article. It is in
the resource box that article authors get the opportunity to link to
the most appropriate pages in their web site .For more information
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As with the other elements it can be beneficial to change the text in
this section so as to avoid the duplicate content penalty. Just by
rearranging the order of links and anchor text can produce excellent
results.