ITIL 4 Foundation Notes

1. Concepts of service management

 Service Management
o A set of specialized organizational capabilities for enabling value for customers in the
form of services

 Service
o Means of enabling value co-creation
o by facilitating the outcomes that customer want to achieve
o without customer managing cost and risks

 Value
o Utility
 Fit for purpose
 Functionalities
 Supports performance of consumer and remove constraints
o Warranty
 Fit for use
 Availability, Capacity, Security, Continuity
 Assurance that product or service will meet agreed requirements

 Outcome
o Results desired by a stakeholder
o Service providers help service consumers achieve outcomes
o Can be enabled by more than one output

 Cost
o Cost imposed vs Cost reduced
o Removing costs from consumer can be part of value proposition

 Risk
o Risk introduced vs Risk removed

 Organization
o Varies in size and complexity
o Uses function to achieve its objectives

 Customer
o Define requirements
o Responsible for outcomes
  User
o Use the services, submit requests

 Sponsor
o Authorize budget

 Output
o Tangible or intangible deliverable created by carrying out an activity
o Contribute to the achievement of outcomes

 Service Offering
o A package that comes with products and services
 Goods
 E.g. Laptop, software, license
 Access to resources
 E.g. Login credentials
 Service action
 E.g. Support

 Service Relationship Management

o Identify consumer roles
 To provide value by removing constraints
o Service provider and consumer works together to ensure continual value co-creation
o Service provision
 The management of resources configured to deliver the service

2. 4 Dimensions
 Partner and Suppliers
o Understand the level of integration and formality involved in the relationships
between organization

 Value Stream and Processes

o Focus on activities/workflows and how these are coordinated

 Organization and People

o Governance, management and communication
o Roles and responsibilities
o Organization structure, culture and leadership
 Created from shared values based on how work is carried out
 Based on the objectives of the organization
  Information and Technology
o Information security compliance
 Protect knowledge assets
o Knowledge base
o Management systems

3. Service Value System

All components of the Service Value System work together to facilitate and ensure continual
value co-creation.

 Guiding Principles
 Governance
 Service Value Chain
 Practices
 Continual Improvement

4. Guiding principle
Guiding principles should be used and considered in ALL initiatives and circumstances. This helps
an organization in decision making to adopt and adapt ITIL guidance.

 Focus on value
o Focus on customer and user experience at every step of improvement
o Concern about consumer’s revenue and growth
o First step is always to know who is your consumer

 Start where you are

o The use of measurement should support, not replace what is observed (direct
observation)
o Use measurement data to assess the current state
o Assess what can be reused based on data
o Use existing services, processes and tools as much as possible

 Progress iteratively with feedback

o The ability to discover failures and respond fast (Fail fast, learn fast, improve fast)
o Organize work into small and manageable sections
o Important to do work instead of spending too much time analyzing
o Each improvement iteration should be continually re-evaluated based on feedback

 Collaborate and promote visibility

o Increase collaboration and visibility for improvement
o Better information is available for decision making
o Understand flow of WIP, identify bottleneck, uncover waste
  Think and work holistically
o Consider the 4 dimensions of service management and ensure their coordination for
every initiative
o Focus on the end-to-end service delivery

 Keep it simple and practical

o First step is to understand how each element contributes to value creation
o Use minimum number of steps to create value

 Optimize and Automate

o Starting point is to understand company vision and objectives
o Standardize before automating

5. Service Value Chain

An operating model which outlines the activities to respond to demand and facilitate value
realization.
Each value chain activity uses a different combination of practices to convert input to outputs
Outputs helps to deliver an expected outcome which is business VALUE REALIZATION

 Plan
o Ensure understanding of vision, current status and direction for all products and
services through proper communication.

 Engage
o Good relationship with stakeholders
o Great understanding of stakeholder needs
o Transparency between service provider with all stakeholders

 Design and Transition

o Ensure services meet stakeholder expectation of stakeholders in terms of quality,
time, budget and cost.

 Obtain and Build

o Ensure components are ready for use with correct specifications and agreed level
when needed

 Deliver and Support

o Ensure delivery and support of services is according to agreed level and
specifications

 Improve
o Ensure continual improvement of the 4 dimensions
6. Practices
 Continual Improvement
o Purpose
 Continually improve alignment between business and IT
o Continual Improvement Model
A set of defined steps for implementing improvements
 What is the vision?
 Where are we now?
 Where do we want to be?
 How do we get there?
 Take Action
 Did we get there?
 How to keep the momentum going?
o Continual Improvement Register (CIR)
 Identify and log opportunities in CIR
 Improvement ideas are documented, assessed and prioritized here
 Should be reprioritized as ideas are documented
o An organization should always develop competencies in methodologies and
techniques that will meet their needs
o Making business cases for improvement action
o Select a few key methods for the types of improvement that the organization
handles
o Improvement should be based on accurate and carefully analyzed data
o Use balanced set of metrics to provide an outcome-based view of services
o At least one team dedicated to leading continual improvement efforts
o Responsibility for everyone in the organization
o Balance Score Card (BSC) reviews and maturity assessment technique
 SWOT analysis

 Service Level Management

o Purpose
 Set clear business based targets for service performance and assess,
monitor and manage service delivery against target
o Service level agreement
 Define the required performance outcomes of a service
 It should be simply written and easy to understand
o Customer engagement
 Ask customer about their work and how technology can help them
 Identify metrics that reflect customer experience by asking customer open
questions about the requirements
 Capture information about the metrics and progress discussion
o Customer feedback
 Use of event-based surveys to gather feedback from customers
o Key areas of competences
  Listening
 Business Analysis
 Commercial management

 Supplier Management
o Purpose
 Manage suppliers and their performance through contracts/agreements to
ensure seamless provision of all products and services
o Supplier strategy depends on corporate culture
o Anything you want from supplier has to be included in contracts

 Information Security Management

o Purpose
 To protect information
o Manage risks to CIA
 Confidentiality
 Integrity
 Availability

 Change Control
o Purpose
 Ensure risks have been properly assessed for every change
o Definition of change
 Addition, modification, or removal of anything that could have an effect on
services is assessed and authorized
o Type of change
 Normal change
 Changes that need to be scheduled and assessed following a
proce2ss
 E.g. change a particular feature in an application
 Emergency change
 The assessment and authorization of emergency changes is
expedited to ensure they can be implemented quickly
 E.g. Security patch to a critical application
 Standard change
 A change that is normally implemented as a service request
 A full risk assessment and authorization should be done when the
procedure for the standard change is created
 E.g. The installation of a software application in response to a
service request

 Release Management
o Purpose
 Make new and changed services available for use
 Monitoring and Event Management
o Purpose
 Detect change of state that has a significance

 Incident Management
o Purpose
 Restore normal service operation as soon as possible
 Incident is an unplanned interruption or reduction in quality
o Log incident and collect initial information e.g. incident symptoms
o Categorize
 Direct incident to the correct support group
o Prioritize based on business impact and urgency
 Low impact incidents should be resolved efficiently so the resource required
is reduced
 High impact incidents should be resolved ASAP
 Collaboration between teams helps solving incident quickly
 Might trigger disaster recovery
o Initial Diagnosis
 Refer to problem and known errors for workarounds to enable quick and
efficient diagnosis of incidents
 Use scripts for simple incidents
o Escalation
 Incident category helps assign to the correct group
o Resolution
 Target resolution time should be agreed, documented and communicated
to set user expectation
o Provide good quality updates when expected
o Automation (Tools)
 Automate the matching of incidents to problems/known errors

 Problem Management
o Purpose
 Management of vulnerabilities that were not identified before the service
went live
 Identify the underlying cause of incidents
 Reducing the likelihood of incidents
o 3 phases of problem management
 Problem Identification
 Problem Control
 Error Control
o Proactive problem management
 Trend analysis
o Problem Prioritization
 Based on risks (impact x probability)
 o Problem
 A cause or a potential cause of one or more incidents
o Workaround
 Documented after the problem has been analyzed
 Reassessed whenever a workaround is used
o Known error
 A problem has been analyzed and has not been resolved
 When a workaround becomes permanent, problem stays at known error
status
o Key characteristics of problem teams
 Understand complex systems
 Creative
 Good analytical skills
o Interact with Incident Management (Reactive), Continual Improvement(Proactive)
and Change Control (Permanent fix)

 Service Request Management

o Purpose
 Manage the lifecycle of service requests
o Depends on predefined processes and procedures to maximize efficiency
o Set user expectations by communicating the time needed to realistically deliver the
service
o Should be well known and proven and part of normal service delivery like the
following:
 Info, query, advice
 Standard change
 Access to standard services
 Feedback, compliments and complaints
o Leverage existing workflows whenever possible for new type of service requests

 Service Desk
o Purpose
 Capture demand for incident and service requests
 Single point of contact for service consumers and all users
o Coordinates the following for all incidents and service requests
 Classification
 Ownership
 Acknowledgement
 Communication
o Detect recurring issues and help identify problems
o Work closely with support and development teams
 o Key skill areas
 Incident analysis skills
 Understand business
o Automation tools
 Allows service desk to focus more on customer experience when personal
contact is needed.
 Example of tools – Chatbot (automated service desk for FAQs)

 Relationship Management
o Purpose
 Establish and nurture the links between the organization and its stakeholder
at strategic and tactical level

 IT Asset Management
o Purpose
 Manage lifecycle of all IT assets
 Optimize cost, manage risks and maximize value
o IT Asset
 Anything that is financially valuable

 Service Configuration Management

o Purpose
 Accurate and reliable information is available about configuration items and
relationship between them
o Configuration Item
 any components that need to be managed in order to deliver an IT Service

 Deployment Management
o Purpose
 Move components into live environments