ITIL 4 Foundation Summary (v2)

5 marks
KEY CONCEPTS AND DEFINITION
Service Management: A set of specialized organizational capabilities for enabling value for customers in the
form of services.
Value: The perceived benefits, usefulness, and importance of something.
Organization: A person or a group of people that has its own functions with responsibilities, authorities, and
relationships to achieve its objectives.
Customer: A person who defines the requirements for a service and takes responsibility for the outcomes of
service consumption.
User: A person who uses services.
Sponsor: A person who authorizes budget for service consumption.
Service: A means of enabling value co-creation by facilitating outcomes that customers want to achieve,
without the customer having to manage specific costs and risks.
Product: A configuration of an organization’s resources designed to offer value for a consumer.
Service offering: A description of one or more services, designed to address the needs of a target consumer
group.
9 May include goods, access to resources, and service actions.
Service relationship: A cooperation between a service provider and service consumer.
9 It includes service provision, service consumption, and service relationship.
Output: A tangible or intangible deliverable of an activity.
Outcome: A result for a stakeholder enabled by one or more outputs.
Cost: The amount of money spent on a specific activity or resource.
Risk: A possible event causing difficulties, alternatively uncertainty of outcome.
Utility: What the service does (fit for purpose) (functionality)
Warranty - How well it does it (fit for use) (service level)
9 Availability, Capacity, Security, Continuity.

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The 4 DIMENSIONS OF SERVICE MANAGEMENT

Organizations and People Information and Technology

• Organizational Structures. • Information and knowledge needed.
• Decision making habits. • protected, managed, archived, disposed Info.
• Staffing and skill requirements. • Relationship between components.
• Culture and leadership styles. • Impact of organization culture on technology.

Partners and suppliers Value Streams and Processes

• Relationship with other organizations. • Activities the organization undertakes.
• Factors that influence supplier strategies. • Organization of these activities (Workflows).
• Organization's partner and supplier strategy. • Ensuring value to stakeholders.
• Service integration and management. • Examine value stream mapping.

Value Streams: Steps to create and deliver products and services to consumers.
Processes: Activities that transform inputs into outputs.
Partner: Flexible partnerships where parties share common goals and risks, and collaborate to achieve
desired outcomes.
Supplier: Formal contracts with clear separation of responsibilities.
External factors: Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Legal, and Environmental. (PESTLE model)
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Service Value Streams (SVS)

Describes how all the components and activities of the organization work together as a system to enable
value creation.
Purpose: Ensure that the organization continually co-creates value with all stakeholders through the use and
management of products and services.
Include: Guiding principles, Governance, Service value chain, Practices, Continual improvement.

GUIDING PRINCIPLES

A recommendation that guides an organization in all circumstances, regardless of changes in its goals,
strategies, type of work, or management structure.
A guiding principle is universal and enduring.

PRINCIPLE APPLYING

• Know how service consumers use each service.

• Encourage a focus on value among all staff.
1. Focus on value.
• Focus on value during all activities.
• Focus on value in every step of improvement initiative.

• Look at what exists as objectively as possible.

• Determine if you can replicate or expand upon successful
practices and services to achieve the desired state and how.
2. Start where you are.
• Apply your risk management skills.
• Recognize that nothing from the current state can be re-
used.
• Comprehend the whole, but do something.
• The ecosystem is constantly changing, so feedback is
3. Progress iteratively with feedback.
essential.
• Fast does not mean incomplete.
• Collaboration does not mean consensus.
4. Collaborate and promote visibility. • Communicate in a way the audience can hear.
• Decisions can only be made on visible data.
• Recognize the complexity of the systems.
• Collaboration is key to thinking and working holistically.
5. Think and work holistically. • Where possible, look for patterns in the needs of and
interactions between system elements.
• Automation can facilitate working holistically.
• Ensure value.
• Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.
• Do fewer things, but do them better.
6. Keep it simple and practical.
• Respect the time of the people involved.
• Easier to understand, more likely to adopt.
• Simplicity is the best route to achieving quick wins.
• Simplify and/or optimize before automating.
• Define your metrics.
• Use the other guiding principles when applying this one:
7. Optimize and automate. o Progress iteratively with feedback.
o Keep it simple and practical.
o Focus on value.
o Start where you are.

SERVICE VALUE CHAIN

An operating model which transforms demand into actual value.

1. Plan: Ensure a shared understanding of the vision, current status and direction.
2. Improve: Ensure continual improvement of products, services, and practices.
3. Engage: Provide a good understanding of stakeholder needs and demands.
4. Design & transition: Ensure services continually meet stakeholder expectations.
5. Obtain/build: Ensure components are available when and where needed.
6. Deliver & support: Ensure services are delivered and supported according to agreed specifications.
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PURPOSE AND KEY TERMS OF 8 PRACTICES*

Practice: A set of organizational resources designed for performing work or accomplishing an objective.

Practice Purpose Key terms

Protect the information needed by the • Confidentiality

organization to conduct its business.
Information • Integrity CIA
security • Availability
management • Authentication
• Non-repudiation

Establish and nurture links between the Identification > Analysis > Monitoring >
Relationship
organization and its stakeholders at improvement
management
strategic and tactical levels.

Supplier Manage suppliers to ensure seamless

management delivery of products and services

Plan and manage the full lifecycle of IT IT Asset: any financially valuable
IT asset
assets. component that can contribute to
management
delivery of an IT product or service.

Observe, record and report changes of Event: any change of state that has
state. significance for the management of a
Monitoring and service or other configuration item (CI).
event management
Events Type:
Informational, Warning, Exception.
Make new and changed services and Release: A version of a service or other
Release features available for use. configuration item, or a collection of
management configuration items, that is made
available for use.

Service Accurate and reliable information about Configuration Item (CI): Any
configuration services and CIs when and where it's component that needs to be managed to
management needed. deliver an IT service.

Move new or changed components to Definitive media library: for software

live environments. and documentation.
Deployment
management Definitive hardware store: for hardware
components

* You are required to understand the ‘purpose’ and key terms used in 8 of the ITIL practices
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7 PRACTICES IN DETAIL*

Continual Improvement
Purpose: Align the organization’s practices and services with changing business.
• Continual Improvement happens everywhere in the organization (SVS, SVC, Practices).
• Ideas need captured, documented, assessed, and prioritized. Continual Improvement Register (CIR).
• It is a responsibility of everyone.
• Organizations may have a Continual Improvement Team for better coordination.
• All 4 Dimensions need to be considered during any improvement initiative.
The continual improvement model:
1. What is the vision?
2. Where are we now?
3. Where do we want to be?
4. How do we get there?
5. Take action.
6. Did we get there?
7. How do we keep the momentum going?

Change Enablement
Purpose: Maximize the number of successful changes by ensuring that risks have been properly assessed,
authorizing changes to proceed, and managing a change schedule.
Change: The addition, modification, or removal of anything that could have a direct or indirect effect on
services.
Change Types:
1. Standard: low-risk, pre-authorized changes.
2. Normal: Need to be scheduled, assessed, and authorized.
3. Emergency: Must be implemented as soon as possible.

Incident Management
Purpose: Minimize the negative impact of incidents by restoring normal operation as quickly as possible.
Incident: An unplanned interruption to a service or reduction in the quality of a service.
• Every incident should be logged, prioritized, and managed through their lifecycle.
• Incidents may be resolved by people in many different groups based on the incident category.
• Major incidents, often require a temporary team to work together to identify the resolution.
• Swarming: Technique that involves many different stakeholders working together initially…

Problem Management
Purpose: Reduce the likelihood and impact of incidents by identifying root causes and eliminates those.
Problem: A cause, or potential cause, of one or more incidents.
• Known Error: A problem with a known root case and has not been resolved.
• Workaround: Alternate solution to reduces or eliminates the impact of an incident.
• Three phases: Problem identification > Problem control > Error control

Service Desk
Purpose: Capture demand for incident resolution and service requests. Single point of contact for the service
provider with all of its users.
The focus should be on people and business, not technical issues
Need customer service skills:
1. Incident analysis and prioritization.
2. Understand business priority.
3. Effective communications.
4. Emotional intelligence.
5. Empathy.

Service Level Management

Purpose: Set clear business-based targets for service performance, so that the delivery of a service can be
properly assessed, monitored, and managed against these targets.
Service level: One or more metrics that define expected or achieved service quality.
• This practice involves the definition, documentation, and active management of service levels.
• Service level agreement (SLA): Agreement between a service provider and a customer.

Successful SLAs:
• Relate to a defined 'service' in the service catalogue.
• Defined outcomes and not simply operational metrics.
• Involve all stakeholders including partners, sponsors, users, and customers.
• Simply written and easy to understand for all parties.

Service Request Management

Purpose: Support the agreed quality of a service by handling all pre-defined, user-initiated service requests
in an effective and user-friendly manner.
Service Request: A request from a user or user’s authorized representative that initiates a service action that
has been agreed as a normal part of service delivery.
• Steps to fulfil request should be well knowing (for both simple and complex requests).
• When defining new workflows, try to reuse already existing ones.
• User expectations must be managed in regards of what can be delivered.

* The ITIL4 Foundation course syllabus says that you will be expected to understand the following 7 ITIL Practices in detail.

Abdullah AlShetwi References: ITIL 4 Edition +