ITIL4 Foundation

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Agenda
• ITIL Guiding Principles
• Governance
• The Service Value Chain
• Continual Improvement
Guiding Principles
 1- Focus on Value

• Who is the customer? What do they value?

• Who are the other stakeholders? What do they value?

• What is it about the service that creates value?

• Why does the consumer use the services?
• What do the services help them to do?
• How do the services help them meet their goals?
• What is the role of cost/financial consequences for the service
consumer?
• What is the role of risks for the service consumer?
 Customer Experience (CX)

CX: The sum of functional and emotional interactions with a service and service provider as perceived by
a service consumer.

• May influence how the consumer feels about the service provider and the products.
• Partly objective
• Partly subjective
 Apply the Principle

• Know how service consumers use each service.

• Encourage a focus on value among all staff.

• Focus on value during normal operational activity

as well as during improvement initiatives.

• Include focus on value in every step of any

improvement initiative.
 2- Start Where You Are
• Often there are existing practices and capabilities to be leveraged.

• Measure or observe directly current practices.

• Reports often are misleading.
• Assumptions can lead to poor decisions.

• Ask for clarifications if activities are unclear.

• Metrics and measures support direct observation.

• Measuring things often affects people’s behavior.

• People will do what you measure, so be careful!
• According to Goodhart’s law, “When a measure becomes a
Arthur Ashe – American Tennis Player
target, it ceases to be a good measure.”
 Apply the Principle

• Look at what exists as objectively as possible, using the

customer, or the desired outcome, as the starting point.

• When examples of successful practices or services are found

in the current state, determine if and how these can be
replicated or expanded upon to achieve the desired state.

• Apply your risk management skills.

• Recognize that sometimes nothing from the current state can

be reused.
 3- Progress Iteratively with Feedback
• Resist the temptation to do everything at once.

• Break work into small, manageable chunks.

• Major initiatives can be decomposed into smaller initiatives.
• Use feedback to drive further improvements.
• Assess to maintain focus on value.
Time-Boxing

• Time is the limited constraint.

• Time-boxing activities improve focus and drive results.
• Benefits include:
• Greater flexibility.
• Faster responses to customer and business needs.
• The ability to discover and respond to failure earlier.
• Overall improvement in quality.
 Feedback
Feedback loop: A technique whereby the outputs of one part of a system are used as inputs to the
same part of the system.

• Business context changes in real time emphasize the necessity for useful feedback.

• Feedback enables us to assess the value of an iteration, and whether to continue or

change direction.

• Feedback loops facilitate:

• An understanding of end user and customer perception of the value created.
• An improvement in efficiency and effectiveness of value chain activities.
• Increased effectiveness of service governance as well as management controls.
• Ensuring an interface between the organization and its partner and supplier
network.
• Encouraging demand for products and services.
 Apply the Principle

• Comprehend the whole, but do something.

• Fast does not mean incomplete.
• Strive for an MVP.

Minimum Viable Product (MVP):

A product with just enough features to satisfy early customers,

and to provide feedback for future product development.
 4- Collaborate and Promote Visibility
• Silo behavior can happen for many reasons, but impedes collaboration and communication. Right
People

• Working together requires information, understanding, and trust.

• Make work visible
• Avoid hidden agendas
• Share information

• When improvements lack communications, people make poor guesses. Right roles
Better
Outcomes
Make work visible
• Important to prioritize improvements to demonstrate commitment.
Right
Information
• Easier to do this when value and work is more visible.
• Understand the flow of work in progress
• Identify bottlenecks, as well as excess capacity
• Uncover waste

• Address the need to provide the right information to all stakeholders.

 Stakeholder Identification
• Identifying your stakeholders is fundamental to the Collaborate and Promote Visibility principle.

• Customer collaboration leads to better outcomes and better understand business issues.

• Developers working with operations to:

• Ensure delivery efficiency and effectiveness
• Investigate defects
• Identify workarounds or permanent fixes

• Suppliers collaborate on shared process and automation opportunities.

• Suppliers collaborate to find innovative solutions to problems.

• Relationship managers work to understand service consumer needs.

 Communications

• Good communication provides clarity, direction, and motivation around and in service management.

• Improvement comes from feedback from different perspectives.

• External customers
• Internal customers
• Other stakeholders

• Different levels of engagement are appropriate.

• Operational—daily communications with users about operational
needs and issues.
• Tactical—regular communications with the customer about service,
service performance, and potential service improvement.
• Strategic—communications that assess strategic needs at the organizational level.
 Apply the Principle

• Collaboration does not mean consensus.

• Engage stakeholders, but then act!

• Communicate in a way the audience can hear.

• Right stakeholder, right message, right medium.

• Decisions can only be made on visible data.

• Decisions driven by quality and availability of data.
• What data is needed?
• How much does it cost to get the data?
• Balance cost of data against potential costs of not having it.
 5- Think and Work Holistically
Systems thinking: A holistic approach to analysis that focuses on the way that a system’s constituent
parts work, interrelate, and interact over time, and within the context of other systems.

• Everything in IT service management is interrelated and interdependent.

• Consider everything works together to accomplish the objective.

• Using systems thinking:

• Consider the whole, not just the subset parts.
• Consider all four dimensions.
• Improve the whole!

• Consider how value is created from demand:

• Who are the Organizations and People?
• Who are the Suppliers and Partners?
• What are the Processes and Value Streams?
• What are the Information and Technologies?
 Apply the Principle

• Recognize the complexity of the systems.

• Collaboration is key.

• Look for patterns in the needs of and interactions between

system elements.

• Automation can facilitate working holistically.

 6- Keep It Simple and Practical
• Assess practices for value:
• Always use the minimum number of steps needed to accomplish an objective.
• If a process, service, action, or metric provides no value or produces no useful
outcome, then eliminate it.
• If ignored, the results might be overly complex work methods.
• Design rules to handle exceptions generally.

Manage Conflicting Objectives

• Often different stakeholders have competing objectives.

• One may want more data
• One may want much less
• Focus on Value!
• Consider what will most aid the decision-making process.
• Simplify and streamline the process.
• Then, automate where possible.
 Apply the Principle

• Ensure value.

• Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.

• Do fewer things, but do them better.

• Respect the time of the people involved.

• Easier to understand, more likely to adopt.

• Simplicity is the best route to achieving quick wins.

 7- Optimize and Automate
• Maximize the value of technical and human resources.
• With automation, technology takes on the frequent, repetitive tasks.
• Human resources are liberated for higher-value work.

• Systems should be optimized before they are automated.

• Consider:
• Financial limitations
• Compliance requirements
• Time constraints
• Resource availability

Automation

• Typically involves technology performing activities

with little or no human intervention.

• Can also be the creation of predefined rules so human responses are “automated.”
•
• Advantages of automation:
• Saving costs.
• Reducing human error.
• Improving the employee experience.
 Apply the Principle
• Simplify and optimize before automating.

• Define your metrics.

• Outcome-based
• Focused on value

• Use the other guiding principles when applying this one,

specifically:
• Progress iteratively with feedback
• Keep it simple and practical
• Focus on value
• Start where you are
 Interaction Between the Principles
• The guiding principles naturally interact with one another.

• When you Progress Iteratively with Feedback:

• Think and Work Holistically to ensure that each iteration delivers real results.
• Feedback is key to collaboration.

• Focusing on what will truly be valuable to the customer makes it easier to keep things simple and
practical.

• Don’t use just one or two of the principles; consider:

• The relevance of each.
• How they are applied together.

• Not all principles will be critical in every situation.

• Review each occasion to determine relevance.

 Governance
Governing Bodies and Activities

• All organizations are directed by a governing body:

• A person or group
• Accountable at the highest level
• Organizational performance
• Compliance of the organization
Evaluate Direct Monitor
• All sizes and types of organizations perform governance
activities:
• Board of directors
• Executive managers when performing governance
activities
• Compliance to policies and external regulations
 Governance Activities
Evaluate Direct Monitor
Governing body Defines organizational strategies. Monitor organizational
evaluates the performance.
organization’s: Sets the direction and prioritization.
• Practices, products, and services to execute
• Organizational activity
• Strategy the strategy
• Future investment
• Portfolios • Compliance with policies
• Relationships with other parties Policies establish the boundaries Use monitoring data as feedback
Reviewed on a regular for behavior across the to subsequent evaluation and
basis as stakeholders organization and with suppliers, direction.
needs and external partners, and other stakeholders
circumstances evolve • What is permitted
• What is not permitted
Organizations are then responsible
to:
• Execute the strategy
• Comply with the policies
 Governance and the Service Value System

The role of governance in the SVS:

• Begins at the top, but may have parts delegated (e.g., IT governance).
• Fundamental to the SVS, and subject to continual improvement.
• Uses ITIL guiding principles or tailors them as needed to meet organization needs.
• Needs to have visibility into improvement activities and value delivery.

To establish the governance in the SVS:

• Service value chain and the practices must work in line with the direction given by the governing
body.
• Governing body and management at all levels maintain alignment through a clear set of shared
principles and objectives.
• Governance and management at all levels are continually improved to meet expectations of the
stakeholders.
 The Service Value Chain
• Value streams describe activities an organization takes in the creation of value:
• Convert inputs into outputs
• Activities may trigger other activities

• Value chain activities use different combinations of ITIL practices:

• Internal or third-party resources
• Processes
• Skills and competencies

• Activities:
• Plan
• Improve
• Engage
• Design and Transition
• Obtain/Build
• Deliver and Support
 Inputs and Outputs The Plan Activity

• Inputs are received from other components of the SVC. • Purpose is to ensure a shared understanding
of:
• Outputs are produced and used elsewhere in the SVC.
• Vision
• The Input / Output relationships: • Current status
• Improvement direction
• Are interconnected in a complex and dense manner.
• Fundamental part of planning is prioritizing
• Support the interactions among all activities in the different alternatives and making decisions.
SVC. • During this activity, you create strategic plans,
• The Input / Output relationships are not: project plans, and service plans.
• Must consider all four dimensions of service
• Linear
management to ensure a holistic approach.
• One-to-one • All other SVC activities will use and apply
plans from this activity.
The Improve Activity The Engage Activity

• Purpose is to ensure continual improvement of: • Purpose is to provide:

• Products and services • A good understanding of stakeholder needs.
• Practices • A means to facilitate transparency.
• Continual engagement and good relationships
• Includes all value chain activities and all four with all stakeholders.
dimensions of service management.
• Engage with different stakeholders using
different practices. For example:
• Requires performance information from all
aspects of the SVC.
• Operational day-to-day collaboration with users
in Service Desk practice.
• In turn, provides improvement plans and • Tactical engagement with customers through
improvement status information to all other Service Level Management practice.
SVC activities. • Strategic engagement through Relationship
Management.
 The Design and The Obtain/Build Activity
Transition Activity • Purpose is to ensure that service components are:
• Available when and where they are needed
• Purpose is to ensure that products and services
meet stakeholder expectations for: • Meet agreed specifications
• Quality
• Costs • A large part of this activity is determining whether
• Time-to-market
to obtain or build.
• As customer needs change, necessary activities
are adjusted accordingly. • To assist in decision making, consider if capacity to
build is readily available and strategic to
• “Design” activity requires:
• The plan, the architecture information, customer
organization’s competitiveness.
requirements, and other Information from Engage.
• Component information from Obtain/Build.
• If third part has economies of scale that make it
• “Transition” requires knowledge transfer of the more cost-effective to buy, then buy.
improved product or service to other SVC
activities.
• Whenever components need to be built or acquired,
they are acquired through the Obtain/Build activity.
 The Deliver and Support Activity

• Purpose is to ensure that services are delivered and supported according to:
• Agreed specifications
• Stakeholders’ expectations

• In this activity, you create data about incidents, service requests, events, and other performance
data that is used to identify potential service improvements.

• The Improve, Engage, and Plan activities extensively use this data.
The Continual Improvement Model
 What is the vision?
• Organization’s vision and objectives need to be translated for the specific business unit,
department, team, and/or individual.

• Context, objectives, and boundaries for any improvement initiative are understood.

• High-level vision for the planned improvement needs to be created.

• Ensure that:
• High-level direction has been understood
• Planned improvement initiative is described and understood in that context
• Stakeholders and their roles have been understood
• Expected value to be realized is understood and agreed
• Role of the person or team responsible for carrying out the improvement is clear in relation to
achieving the organization’s vision
 Where are we now?
• Current state assessment:
• Existing services
• Perception of value received
• People’s competencies and skills
• Processes and procedures
• Technical capabilities

• Culture:
• What level of organizational change management is required?

• Objective measures should be used whenever possible

• Baseline enables later comparison

 Where do we want to be?
• Initial vision may be aspirational.

• Identify the next step of the improvement journey.

1. Perform a Gap Analysis. Specific
2. Identify and prioritize improvement opportunities.
3. Set objectives.
Measurable
4. Establish critical success factors (CSFs) and key Achievable
performance indicators (KPIs).
Relevant
• Use SMART criteria. Time-bound
 How do we get there?
• Plan the improvement.
• Can be simple or complex
• Do in iterations with feedback
• Check progress and re-evaluate as needed

• Experiment with different alternatives, when appropriate and needed.

Take action
• Execute the improvement.
• Use a Waterfall or an Agile approach.
• Remain open to feedback and course correction as needed.

• Maintain a continual focus on:

• Measuring progress towards the vision.
• Managing risks.
• Ensuring visibility and overall awareness.
 Did we get there?
• Organizations often assume expected has been achieved.
• Success must be validated.
• Have the original objectives been achieved?
• Are those objectives still relevant?
• If the desired result has not been achieved, additional actions to complete the work are selected
and undertaken—commonly resulting in a new iteration.

How do we keep the momentum going?

• If the improvement has delivered the expected value:
• Market the success
• Reinforce any new methods introduced
• If the expected results of the improvement were not achieved:
• Inform stakeholders of the reasons for the failure
• Document and communicate lessons learned
• Record what can be done differently in the next iteration
• Transparency is important for future efforts
 Continual Improvement Model, Value Chain,
and Practices
• Continual improvement takes place in:
• All areas of the organization
• All levels, from strategic to operational

• Each person who contributes to the provision of a service should keep continual improvement in
mind, and should always be looking for opportunities to improve.

• The Continual Improvement model applies to:

• SVS
• Products and services
• Service components
• Relationships

• ITIL SVS includes:

• ITIL Continual Improvement model – Structured approach to implementing improvements.
• Improve service value chain activity – Embeds continual improvement into the value chain.
• The Continual Improvement practice – Day-to-day improvement efforts.
 How Continual Improvement Maps to Guiding
Principles
Focus on Start Where Progress Collaborate Think and Keep it Simple Optimize and
Value You Are Iteratively with and Promote Work and Practical Automate
Feedback Visibility Holistically

What is the vision?

X X X X X X X

Where are we now?

X X X X X X X

Where do we want
to be? X X X X X X X

How do we get
there? X X X X X X X

Take action
X X X X X X X

Did we get there?

X X X X X X X

How do we keep the

momentum going? X X X X X X X
 Theory of Constraints

• Theory of Constraints is used to focus on the work that is the

highest priority.

• The weakest link in the value chain determines the flow and
throughput of the system.
• The weakest link must be elevated as much as possible.
• Sometimes this will reveal a new weakest link!
• All the other steps in the value chain must be organized around it.

• As improvements are executed, a new weakest link forms.

• Weakest link can be identified using LEAN practices like Value

Stream Mapping.
Questions??