With my ITIL 4 Managing Professional certification (ITIL MP) in the pocket, it was time to go for the next one, the ITIL 4 Strategic Leader (ITIL SL), this is the last step before to be eligible for the ITIL Master. Again, study was the key to get my certification but comparing to the other one, this one is a little different.

Before to talk about my experience, let me just do a quick resume, to be ITIL SL, there are 2 paths:

• The beginner one, in which you have to get first the “ITIL Foundation” then “ITIL 4 Strategist Direct, Plan and Improve” then finally “ITIL 4 Leader Digital and IT Strategy”
• The expert one, in which you must be already certified in ITIL MP, in this case, you just need to get “ITIL 4 Leader Digital and IT Strategy” (ITIL DITS)

First thing to do, it was to find a training center, in this case, it was easy because I took the same one that I did for ITIL MP. As I said, ITIL DITS is a little different because for the other certifications, I just had the multiple choice exam. In this case, I had first a practical assignment, a kind of case study in which I had to select one of the 3 companies:

• MCL
• The New Hospitality Company (TNH)
• InteLearn

I chose InteLearn and I couldn’t change, I mean, for instance to answer questions 1, 2 and 3, I am InteLearn, and for questions 5, MCL and for questions 6 and 7, TNH. Once I took InteLearn, all answers for all questions are InteLearn.

This case study is totally open book meaning that I could use every resource I wanted. Once done, I sent to my trainer for the score, I needed to get 30 out of 40 to pass, and after waiting 2 working days, unfortunately, for my first attempts, I failed.

She gave me some clues to improve my answer for the second try, and if I failed again, I will have to pay again the full training but fortunately, I passed. It seems that if you failed on the second try, your trainer can give you some tasks to get the minimum score but I can’t confirm. What I know it is that for the case study, normally, you have only 2 attempts. You can download here the case study.

With the case study passed, it was time to study a little bit more for the multiple choice exam, in this case, there are only 30 questions and I needed to get 21 out of 30. This one is like the others, one question and 4 answers to choose between A, B, C or D. You can download here the sample exam questions/content exam training. In the other hand, you can download them in Axelos.

It was the moment of truth, when at the end, I clicked on the button “show result” and fortunately, I passed. I got the ITIL DITS certification and at the same time, the ITIL SL certification. If you are interested, read my course ITIL 4 Strategic Leader Certification Course.