ITIL Managing Across the LifeCycle

The Concept

The intent of the Managing across the Lifecycle (MALC) qualification is to give candidates the skills to support an organization’s service delivery by bridging the service lifecycle stages. The qualification demonstrates that candidates have learned the value of one combined service management practice as opposed to separate subject areas. ITIL processes and practices, as learnt from the lifecycle and capability streams of the intermediate certificates, are put into a context of delivering this value.

The learning outcomes are intended to bring a candidate from ITIL content knowledge to ITIL content application and integration knowledge, and provide skills that can be used in the workplace in a tangible way. Testing and validation of knowledge take place at Bloom's taxonomy level 4 (analysing) and level 5 (evaluating), reflecting the focus on integration when compared with the ITIL intermediate qualifications.

While MALC encompasses the broadest perspectives of service management skills, for example those related to project management and application design, it is not intended to teach these practices, rather to refer to them as contexts for ITIL application. A high-level understanding of these is still expected.

Target Candidates

The qualification prepares candidates to work in established service management roles, as well as to implement and improve service management practices. The target group for the MALC qualification includes, but is not limited to:

Chief information officers
Senior IT managers
IT managers
Supervisors
IT professionals
IT operations practitioners
IT development practitioners
Individuals who require a business and management level understanding of the ITIL service lifecycle and how it may be implemented to enhance the quality of IT service provision within an organization
Individuals seeking the ITIL Expert in IT Service Management certificate, for which this qualification is the final mandatory module
Individuals seeking progress towards the ITIL Master in IT Service Management, for which the ITIL Expert in IT Service Management certificate is a prerequisite.

Qualification Learning Objectives

Upon successful completion of the education and examination components related to this qualification, candidates can expect to gain competencies in the following:

Key concepts of the service lifecycle
Communication and stakeholder management
Integrating service management processes across the service lifecycle
Managing services across the service lifecycle
Governance and organization
Measurement
Implementing and improving service management capability.

In addition, the training for this qualification will include examination preparation, including a mock examination opportunity.

Route to Expert Credential

There are many possible combinations of modules from the ITIL framework available to those wishing to attain the ITIL Expert level, but there are some key requirements:

All candidates must hold the ITIL Foundation certificate or a Bridge certification equivalent
Candidates must have earned a minimum total of 17 credits from the Foundation and Intermediate modules.
Some credits from earlier qualifications and complementary certifications can also count towards these 17 credits. See the ITIL Credit System page for more information.
The Managing Across the Lifecycle (MALC) module must then be taken and passed to achieve a total of 22 credits, which is the minimum required for ITIL Expert level.

Once you have successfully completed all ITIL modules required and have earned sufficient credits, you will have achieved a balanced knowledge across the full ITIL service lifecycle and can be awarded the ITIL Expert certificate.

While candidates can earn 17 credits through various learning paths leveraging any combination of the Foundation and Intermediate courses, the experience of trainers worldwide has shown that students wishing to pursue the Managing Across the Lifecycle (MALC) module benefit from taking the Continual Service Improvement and Service Strategy modules from the ITIL Intermediate Level as part of their learning path.

Earlier ITIL Service Manager Qualification
Holders of the ITIL Service Manager Certificate who would like to take any ITIL Intermediate examinations will be required to pass the current ITIL Foundation examination to gain an understanding of the Service Lifecycle approach to service management.

In order to reach ITIL Expert level, holders of the ITIL Service Manager certificate must successfully pass the following examinations:

Current ITIL Foundation Level, PLUS
Service Strategy (SS) module OR Continual Service Improvement (CSI) module, PLUS
Managing Across The Lifecycle (MALC) certification.

This route is only available to holders of the full ITIL Service Manager certificate i.e. those individuals who have passed both the Service Support and Service Delivery examinations. Please note that the credit system does not apply to this particular route to ITIL Expert level.

Earlier Practitioner Qualifications
Holders of ITIL Practitioner certificates can enter the ITIL certifications scheme to gain Intermediate modules, and can also work towards ITIL Expert level. In order to enter the scheme, holders of the Practitioner certificate must hold an earlier Foundation plus Bridge, or must successfully pass the current ITIL Foundation examination.

Practitioner certificate holders should note that the following ITIL Practitioner and Intermediate modules have a high degree of content overlap, so credits from only one of these modules can be used towards ITIL Expert level: