ITIL 4 CI flashcards

32 cards. Read the term and the definition here. The deck at the top of this page is optional.

Continual improvement

A recurring organizational activity performed at all levels to ensure that an organization's performance continually meets stakeholders' expectations; it is a component of the ITIL 4 service value system.

Baseline

A measured record of the current state, including performance metrics, cost, risk, and satisfaction, taken before an improvement starts so that progress and success can be verified against a known starting point.

Focus on value

The guiding principle stating that everything the organization does must map directly or indirectly to value for itself, its customers, and other stakeholders; if an activity does not create value, it should be removed.

Start where you are

The guiding principle requiring assessment of what already exists before building something new; existing services, processes, and data should be reused or improved rather than discarded without evaluation.

Progress iteratively with feedback

The guiding principle that organizes improvement into small, manageable iterations, each producing feedback that informs the next step, instead of attempting one large change with delayed learning.

Collaborate and promote visibility

The guiding principle that improvement requires involvement of the right stakeholders and transparent sharing of information, objectives, and progress so that decisions are based on common understanding.

Keep it simple and practical

The guiding principle that improvement should use the minimum number of steps and controls needed to achieve the objective, removing complexity that adds cost without adding value.

Optimize and automate

The guiding principle that a process must first be optimized to remove waste and manual effort, and only then automated; automating a poor process preserves and magnifies its inefficiency.

PDCA cycle

Plan-Do-Check-Act: a four-stage improvement cycle that maps to the ITIL 4 continual improvement model, where Plan sets vision and target, Do executes, Check measures, and Act standardizes or adjusts.

Service value system

The ITIL 4 framework element comprising guiding principles, governance, the service value chain, practices, and continual improvement, which together turn demand into value for stakeholders.

Service value chain

A set of six interconnected activities - plan, improve, engage, design and transition, obtain/build, and deliver and support - that the organization combines in different ways to create value.

Improve activity

The service value chain activity that ensures continual improvement of products, services, and practices across all value chain activities and the four dimensions of service management.

Four dimensions

Organizations and people, information and technology, partners and suppliers, and value streams and processes; every improvement must be assessed across all four to avoid local optimization.

Continual improvement practice

The ITIL 4 practice whose purpose is to align the organization's practices and services with changing business needs through ongoing identification and improvement of services, components, and practices.

Improvement register

A record of improvement opportunities containing description, source, owner, priority, target date, expected benefit, status, and closure evidence; it is reviewed at a defined cadence.

Governance

The SVS component through which the governing body evaluates, directs, and monitors the organization; it sets improvement direction and holds accountability while delegating execution.

Maturity levels

The five-level progression in continual improvement: initial, managed, defined, quantitatively managed, and optimizing; level five requires quantitative data and feedback-driven change.

Critical success factor

A statement of what must go well for a service, practice, or improvement to succeed; each critical success factor should be measured by one or more key performance indicators.

Key performance indicator

A metric selected to measure progress toward a critical success factor; it must be specific, measurable, and linked to a stated success factor to be meaningful.

SMART target

A target that is specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound; without a time-bound measure, success cannot be verified in the check stage of improvement.

Value versus effort matrix

A prioritization grid plotting improvement opportunities by expected value against effort, producing quick wins, major projects, fill-ins, and thankless tasks; it is documented in the improvement plan.

Five Whys

A root cause analysis technique that repeatedly asks why a problem occurred, typically five times, to move from symptom to underlying cause; it is suited to relatively simple problems.

Ishikawa diagram

A fishbone diagram that groups potential causes of a problem into categories such as people, process, technology, and environment, used in continual improvement to structure root cause analysis.

Pareto analysis

An 80/20 prioritization technique that identifies the small number of causes responsible for most of an effect, so improvement effort is directed where it produces the largest benefit.

Corrective improvement

An improvement type that fixes an identified defect or gap in a service, practice, or process; it restores expected performance rather than creating new value.

Preventive improvement

An improvement type that reduces the likelihood or impact of a future failure, such as adding a control or redundancy, rather than correcting an existing defect.

Innovative improvement

An improvement type that introduces new value, such as a new service or capability, rather than restoring or protecting existing performance; it typically carries higher uncertainty.

Value stream

A combination of value chain activities and practices that creates value for a service consumer; improvement in a value stream targets end-to-end flow, not isolated activity efficiency.

Value stream mapping

A technique that visualizes the steps, handoffs, and waiting time in a value stream to identify waste such as rework, over-processing, and delay, and to prioritize improvement opportunities.

Organizational change management

The discipline of preparing people for change through communication, role clarity, and aligned incentives; continual improvement fails at the execution stage without it.

Blameless review

A post-incident or post-improvement review that treats failure as a learning input rather than grounds for punishment, increasing reporting and improving root cause quality.

Work in progress

The amount of work started but not finished in a value stream; reducing work in progress generally reduces lead time and improves flow through the improvement pipeline.