I started my IT service management career fifteen years ago. The first five years involved a lot of investment decisions about what to learn, what certifications to pursue, what experiences to seek out, and what to skip. Looking back, the decisions that actually paid off were different from what I expected at the time. Some of the things that felt important turned out to be less important. Some things I underweighted turned out to matter more.
This is the honest retrospective in case it helps anyone earlier in their ITSM career calibrate their own investment decisions.
What helped: getting actual operational experience
The single most valuable investment in my early career was getting actual operational experience in service management roles, even when those roles weren't the most prestigious or highest-paid options available.
Working on a service desk taught me what incident management actually looks like in practice. Working on a change advisory board taught me what change management feels like when stakeholders have competing interests. Working on a problem management initiative taught me how root cause analysis goes wrong in real organisations. None of this learning was available from training courses or certifications.
The roles that gave me this experience weren't always the most attractive on paper. Some involved shift work. Some involved being on call. Some involved tedious administrative work. The compensation was generally modest. The experience was disproportionately valuable to my career development.
If I were starting again I would prioritize operational roles in the early career years even at some compensation cost. The capability built from sustained operational experience is hard to replicate through any other path. The career trajectory of people who took this path generally exceeds the trajectory of people who optimized for compensation or prestige in their early years.
What helped: learning to write clearly
The investment that produced the most career return relative to its time cost was learning to write clearly. Service management produces enormous amounts of written communication — incident reports, change requests, problem analyses, knowledge articles, process documentation, status updates, business cases. The people who can write these clearly stand out significantly from the people who can't.
I didn't take any specific writing courses. I just paid attention to my own writing, read more carefully, and gradually developed the discipline of writing for the reader rather than for myself. The improvement happened over years rather than overnight but the cumulative effect on my career has been substantial.
The colleagues I respect most professionally are mostly people who write clearly. The colleagues whose careers have stalled despite technical capability often write poorly. The correlation isn't accidental. Clear writing reflects clear thinking, and clear thinking is what eventually drives career progression.
For anyone earlier in their career, investing in writing capability is one of the highest-return investments available. It doesn't require specific courses. It requires sustained attention to your own writing and willingness to revise. The returns compound over years.
What helped: working on initiatives that crossed organizational boundaries
The career-defining experiences in my early years were the initiatives that crossed organizational boundaries — service management transformations that affected multiple business units, tool implementations that integrated across teams, process improvement work that required coordination across functions.
These initiatives are uncomfortable because they involve managing relationships and politics that pure within-team work doesn't involve. They're also where most of the actual capability development happens. Working only within your team produces depth in your team's work but limits exposure to the broader organisational dynamics that matter for career progression.
I sought out cross-organisational work even when it wasn't directly required for my role. Volunteering for transformation initiatives, participating in CAB or governance forums, getting involved in tool selection projects — these all built capability that pure within-team work wouldn't have built.
For people earlier in their careers, the equivalent advice is to look for opportunities to work outside your immediate team. The opportunities are usually available if you ask. The capability built from cross-team work compounds with time in ways that purely within-team experience doesn't.
What was wasted: pursuing every certification I could get
In my first three years I accumulated certifications aggressively. ITIL v3 Foundation, then several Intermediate modules, then PRINCE2, then a few other frameworks. The certifications cost meaningful money and time. The career return was modest beyond the basic credentials.
What I should have done is gotten the foundational credentials and then focused on actual capability development rather than additional certifications. The marginal certification produces less career return than the marginal hour invested in actually doing the work and being good at it.
The hiring managers I have subsequently worked with have generally weighted certifications meaningfully but not overwhelmingly. The candidates who get hired with multiple advanced certifications but limited actual experience generally don't get hired over candidates with foundational credentials and real experience. The certification accumulation strategy was misaligned with how hiring actually works.
For people earlier in their careers, I would recommend taking the foundational certifications, then focusing on building experience and capability rather than continuing to accumulate credentials. The marginal certification past a certain point produces diminishing returns relative to the alternative investment in actual work.
What was wasted: chasing the latest technology trend
In my first few years I spent significant energy trying to stay current with whatever technology trend was prominent at the moment. Cloud, agile, DevOps, then various more specific frameworks and tools. The fear of falling behind drove constant investment in keeping up with the latest discussions.
Most of these trends turned out to be less important than they felt at the time. Some were genuinely transformative — cloud is genuinely different now than it was fifteen years ago — but most were variations on themes that the underlying capability rendered learnable later if needed.
The energy I spent on trend-chasing would have been better invested in building deeper capability in fewer areas. The deep capability is more valuable in the long run than broad surface familiarity with everything.
For people earlier in their careers, I would recommend choosing a few areas to develop deep capability in and being willing to be relatively surface in others. The professionals I have most respected across my career are mostly deep specialists in particular areas combined with sufficient breadth to navigate adjacent topics. The broad-but-shallow professionals are less commonly in roles I would aspire to.
What was wasted: optimizing for promotion timing
I spent meaningful energy in my first five years trying to optimize the timing of promotions and role changes. Should I push for a senior title now or wait six months? Should I move to that other team that has an opening or stay where I am? Should I take the offer from another company or hold out for a better one?
The optimization was mostly noise. The career trajectories that worked out best in retrospect were not strongly affected by these timing decisions. The careers that stalled didn't stall because of timing decisions either. The substantive factors — actual capability, the relationships built, the reputation developed — mattered more than the timing details.
I would have been better off making reasonable decisions about timing and then putting my attention into the substantive work that the timing decisions were ultimately about. The energy spent optimizing timing was energy not spent on the underlying capability development.
What I underweighted: relationships
The thing I most underweighted in my first five years was the value of professional relationships. I treated work as primarily about the work and underestimated how much of career trajectory depends on the relationships built across years.
The colleagues I worked closely with in my early career have shaped my subsequent career significantly. Some have referred me to roles I wouldn't have known about. Some have hired me into their teams. Some have been the people who answered when I needed advice on difficult professional decisions. None of this was visible in the moment when the relationships were forming.
I now invest more deliberately in professional relationships than I did in my early career. The investment isn't transactional networking — it's actually staying in touch with people whose work and judgment I respect, helping when I can, asking when I need help. The cumulative effect across years has been substantial.
For people earlier in their careers, I would recommend taking professional relationships more seriously than the work-only framing of early career suggests. The relationships built across years matter for career trajectory more than most early-career people realize.
What I underweighted: my own writing and thinking time
I also underweighted the value of dedicated time to think and write about my work outside the pressure of immediate operational demands. The reflection time I started building into my schedule later in my career produced disproportionate value relative to the time investment.
Reading widely about the field, writing about specific situations I had encountered, thinking explicitly about what was working and what wasn't — these activities helped me develop perspective that pure operational work didn't develop. The perspective made my operational work more effective and my career decisions more grounded.
For people earlier in their careers, I would recommend building some reflection time into the schedule even when operational demands feel like they consume all available time. The compound benefit over years is significant. The cost of not making the time accumulates as missed opportunities to develop perspective.
What I would tell my younger self
If I could send a single message back to my early-career self it would be roughly this:
Take operational roles even when they don't pay well or feel prestigious. Get the foundational certifications and then stop. Invest in writing capability deliberately. Look for cross-organizational work. Don't chase trends. Don't over-optimize timing. Take professional relationships seriously. Make time to think and reflect.
The career that resulted from the path I actually took has been good. The career I would have had with these adjustments would probably have been better. The compound effect of better decisions across the early years extends across decades.
For anyone earlier in their ITSM career reading this, the specific advice may or may not apply to your situation. The general approach of being honest about what's actually paying off versus what feels productive matters across most career situations. Career investment decisions made on honest assessment produce better outcomes than career decisions made on what feels professionally appropriate at the time.
