ITIL 4 Foundation cheat sheet

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.

Value: the perceived benefits, usefulness and importance of something, as judged by the relevant stakeholders; value is co-created by provider and consumer.

Utility = fit for purpose (functionality offered to meet a need). Warranty = fit for use (assurance of availability, capacity, security and continuity). A service needs both to create value.

Output = a deliverable of an activity. Outcome = a result for a stakeholder enabled by one or more outputs.

Service relationship components: service provision, service consumption and service relationship management.

Stakeholders: customer (defines requirements, accountable for outcomes), user (uses the service), sponsor (authorizes the budget for consumption).

Service offerings may include goods, access to resources, and service actions.

Products are configurations of an organization's resources created to offer value to customers; services are realized through service offerings.

Organization: a person or a group of people with its own functions, responsibilities, authorities and relationships to achieve its objectives.

SVS components: guiding principles, governance, service value chain, practices and continual improvement.

SVS inputs: demand (need or desire for products and services) and opportunity (options to add value). SVS output: value.

Governance: the means by which an organization is directed and controlled; it evaluates, directs and monitors.

Guiding principles are recommendations that guide the organization in all circumstances; they are not mandatory.

The service value chain is the central element of the SVS; it defines six activities that transform inputs into outputs.

Practices are sets of organizational resources designed for performing work or accomplishing an objective; ITIL 4 defines 34 practices.

Continual improvement is a recurring activity performed at all levels of the SVS to meet objectives.

The SVS describes how all the components and activities of the organization work together as a system to enable value creation.

Four dimensions: organizations and people; information and technology; partners and suppliers; value streams and processes.

The dimensions are interdependent: a change or constraint in one dimension affects the others.

Organizations and people: structure, roles, responsibilities, culture, competence, staffing and leadership.

Information and technology: information, data, knowledge, technologies, IT architecture, and security and compliance requirements.

Partners and suppliers: other organizations involved in design, development, deployment, delivery and support, plus contracts and relationships.

Value streams and processes: how activities are organized into value streams, and how processes transform inputs into outputs.

External factors affecting all four dimensions: political, economic, social, technological, legal and environmental (PESTLE).

Omitting any one dimension from a design or change leads to suboptimal or failed value creation.

Seven principles: focus on value; start where you are; progress iteratively with feedback; collaborate and promote visibility; think and work holistically; keep it simple and practical; optimize and automate.

Guiding principles are recommendations, apply universally, and support continual improvement; they are not mandatory rules.

Focus on value: all activities should link, directly or indirectly, to value for the organization, its customers and other stakeholders.

Start where you are: assess the current state and reuse what already exists instead of starting from scratch.

Progress iteratively with feedback: small iterations with feedback loops before, during and after each iteration; avoid doing everything at once.

Collaborate and promote visibility: involve the right stakeholders, work across boundaries, and make work and information visible.

Think and work holistically: no service, practice, team or supplier stands alone; outcomes are delivered by the whole system.

Keep it simple and practical: use the minimum number of steps needed and eliminate activities that add no value.

Optimize and automate: optimize a process or service before automating it; automation applied too early or at the wrong level adds cost and complexity.

Six activities: plan; improve; engage; design and transition; obtain/build; deliver and support.

Plan: shared understanding of the vision, current state, direction and improvement opportunities across all four dimensions.

Improve: continual improvement of products, services and practices across all value chain activities and the four dimensions.

Engage: a good understanding of stakeholder needs, transparency, and ongoing engagement with all stakeholders.

Design and transition: products and services continually meet stakeholder expectations for quality, cost and time to market.

Obtain/build: service components are available when and where needed and meet agreed specifications.

Deliver and support: services are delivered and supported according to agreed specifications and stakeholder expectations.

The activities are not a fixed linear sequence; each activity interacts with the others.

A value stream is a series of steps the organization undertakes to create and deliver products and services to consumers; it combines value chain activities for a specific scenario.

34 practices in total: 14 general management, 17 service management and 3 technical management.

Technical management practices (3): deployment management; infrastructure and platform management; software development and management.

General management practices (14) include architecture, continual improvement, information security, knowledge, measurement and reporting, organizational change, portfolio, project, relationship, risk, service financial, strategy, supplier, and workforce and talent management.

Incident management purpose: minimize the negative impact of incidents by restoring normal service as quickly as possible at the agreed quality.

Problem management: reduce the likelihood and impact of incidents by identifying actual and potential causes; phases are problem identification, problem control and error control.

Change enablement: maximize successful service and product changes by assessing risk, authorizing changes and managing the change schedule.

Standard change is pre-authorized, low-risk and repeatable; normal change is assessed and scheduled through a change authority; emergency change is expedited.

Service desk: the entry point and single point of contact for users; it captures demand for incident resolution and service requests.

Service level management: negotiates, agrees, monitors and reports on service levels with customers, and reviews service performance.

Model steps: 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.

Step 2 establishes a baseline of the current state; step 3 sets measurable targets; step 6 evaluates results against those targets.

Step 7 sustains momentum by embedding the change, communicating results and recognizing contributors.

Continual improvement is a recurring activity performed at all levels of the SVS and is also one of the 14 general management practices.

A continual improvement register records, prioritizes and tracks improvement opportunities and their actions to keep them visible.

Sources of improvement opportunities include incident and problem reviews, customer feedback and surveys, audit findings, metrics and reports, benchmarking and maturity assessments.

Each improvement is justified by the value it brings to the organization and stakeholders relative to effort and cost, and is tracked against a baseline.

The continual improvement practice applies to the SVS, the value chain, practices, products and services.

SLA: a documented agreement between a service provider and a customer that identifies both the services required and the expected level of service.

Three SLA types: customer-based (one customer or group), service-based (one service for all customers), and multi-level (a hierarchy).

Multi-level SLA hierarchy: corporate level (all customers), customer level (a customer group), service level (a specific service).

OLA: an internal agreement between an organization and an internal group supporting the SLA. Underpinning contract (UC): an agreement with an external supplier supporting the SLA.

SLM activities: engage stakeholders, negotiate and agree SLRs and SLAs, monitor and measure, report and review, and improve.

SLAs are expressed in business and user terms (outcomes), not only technical terms, and must be measurable and achievable.

Service level requirements (SLRs): customer requirements for a service, forming the input to SLA negotiation.

SLAs relate to warranty (availability, capacity, security, continuity); the service must also deliver utility for value to occur.

Service reviews are regular meetings with customers to review performance against SLAs and agree improvements.

CSF: a necessary precondition for achieving intended results. KPIs measure progress against CSFs.

Metrics hierarchy: vision and objectives, then CSFs, then KPIs, then metrics; each metric should link to an objective.

Lagging indicator measures results after the event (for example customer satisfaction). Leading indicator predicts future performance.

SMART criteria for objectives and metrics: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound.

Qualitative metrics are non-numerical (for example sentiment); quantitative metrics are numerical and countable.

Process metrics measure the performance of a process; service metrics measure end-to-end service outcomes; technology metrics measure component performance.

Not every metric is a KPI: a KPI is a metric important enough to evaluate success against a CSF.

The measurement and reporting practice supports decision-making by decreasing uncertainty through accurate data and analysis.

Baselines and targets are defined before measurement begins; measuring only after the fact cannot establish a baseline.