To be ITIL Master, you will need to get first the ITIL Foundation Certification. It is the introduction of the ITIL good practice and the basics of the IT Service Management (ITSM). Contrary to the intermediate level, you don’t need to be accredited by a certificate training center, so you can study by yourself.

There are books that you can buy (may be you can lend one in your usual library). In my opinion, any book is as good as any other. I mean, no matter which book you will choose, the goal is to provide you the knowledge for the ITIL Foundation.

Once you read it and you have the basic knowledge, I will recommend you to download the sample question paper available for free at the Axelos website or just clicking ITIL 4 Foundation sample exam (I also included the ITIL V3 Practitioner). It helps me a lot to be ready and when I answered wrongly, I used the book to understand why.

Once you will feel ready, take the exam. I passed the ITIL V3 Foundation that I ordered it online costing me around 230 euros so I believe the price for the ITIL 4 Foundation will be around this price. The process should be the same so you will have 2 choices, doing it in a training center or at home:

• For the first option, during the ordering process, it will ask you in which center you want to go
• For the second option, it will ask you to install a program and you will need a webcam. You can choose between “live monitored” or “video recorded” (I took this option)

If you will take the same option like me, you will need your ID because the system will take a picture and it will ask you to record your environment. Those data will be used by an employee to check that it is you and that you don’t cheat after finishing the exam.

The exam is made of 40 questions with multiple choice answers (1 question with 4 answers, only 1 is correct) and you have only 1 hour. Each correct answer gives you 1 point and you need to have 26 points (65%) to be certified. The result will be given to you at the end of the exam so you will know straight away if you have it or not. In my situation, I had to wait 1 week for the confirmation in spite of the good result due to select the “video recorded” option.

Following the exam content:

• Service management as a practice
• The ITIL service lifecycle
• Generic concepts and definitions
• Key principles and models
• Selected processes
• Selected functions
• Selected roles
• Technology and architecture
• Competence and training

In my experience, I didn’t take a lot of time reading the book, I used most of the time practicing sample questions until I got a very high score. Once reaching the level that I fixed for myself, I took the exam, which I got it at the first try. This certification gave me my first 2 points for my way to the ITIL Master.