The ITIL Service Value System and Value Chain
What this domain tests
This domain tests the components of the ITIL service value system (SVS) and the six service value chain activities. You must show how value streams combine activities and how practices support them.
SVS and value chain
The SVS components are guiding principles, governance, the service value chain, practices, and continual improvement. Opportunity and demand enter the system; value exits. Governance provides direction, control, and accountability. The value chain is the operating model with six activities:
- Plan: shared vision, strategy, portfolio, architecture, and policy.
- Improve: continual improvement of products, services, and practices.
- Engage: stakeholder needs, relationships, demand, and feedback.
- Design and transition: design services that meet expectations and transition them into live use.
- Obtain/build: create or acquire service components.
- Deliver and support: deliver services and support them in live use.
The activities are interconnected, not a linear waterfall. A value stream selects and sequences the activities needed for a specific outcome; not every value stream uses all six equally.
Worked example
A password-reset value stream starts with engage: the user reports a lockout. Deliver and support verifies identity and restores access. Improve analyses repeat contacts and proposes self-service. Plan sets the password policy. Design and transition builds and tests the self-service option. Obtain/build configures the tool. The sequence is not fixed; feedback from deliver and support triggers improve. Reasoning: the value chain describes capabilities, while the value stream describes the actual flow for this scenario.
Traps
Treating the chain as a mandatory sequence; assuming every value stream uses all activities equally; confusing practices with value chain activities; treating governance as day-to-day management; ignoring feedback loops; placing “plan” only at the top of the organization.