ITIL 4 MEM cheat sheet

The ITIL 4 service value system (SVS) has five components: guiding principles, governance, service value chain, practices, and continual improvement.

Four dimensions of service management: organizations and people; information and technology; partners and suppliers; value streams and processes. All four apply to every service.

Seven guiding 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.

The service value chain has six activities: plan, improve, engage, design and transition, obtain/build, deliver and support. Activities are not sequential steps; they are combined into value streams.

Utility = functionality offered (what the service does, fit for purpose); warranty = assurance of fitness for use (availability, capacity, security, continuity). A service needs both to create value.

34 management practices are grouped into three types: 14 general management, 17 service management, 3 technical management.

A service relationship includes service provision, service consumption, and service relationship management; a service offering may include goods, access to resources, and service actions.

Outputs are tangible or intangible deliverables; outcomes are results enabled for a stakeholder. Value is co-created through the interaction of provider and consumer.

Definitions: an incident is an unplanned interruption or reduction in quality of a service; a problem is a cause, or potential cause, of one or more incidents.

Value stream mapping in CDS: identify the demand trigger, sequence of activities, handoffs, wait times, and constraints; lead time = value-adding time + wait time, so reducing queues shortens delivery.

A minimum viable practice set for a new value stream typically includes service desk, incident management, problem management, service request management, change enablement, and service level management.

Workflow management tools: Kanban boards visualize work in progress, apply WIP limits, and manage flow; a queue with utilization near 100% increases wait time non-linearly (queuing theory effect).

Change enablement decision rule: change models define pre-approved, normal, and emergency changes; the change authority is assigned by risk, not by job title.

Deployment vs release: deployment moves components into a live environment; a release makes functionality available to users. They can be separated (e.g., feature toggles, dark launches).

Service desk models: local, centralized, virtual, and follow-the-sun. Choice depends on coverage hours, language and cultural needs, and cost.

Team topologies for value streams: cross-functional product teams with end-to-end ownership; platform teams provide self-service; enabling teams build capability in others.

Shift-left means moving quality, testing, and control activities earlier in the value stream; it works only when the receiving team's standards and tooling are made available.

Service performance measures include SLA (agreed targets), OLA (internal agreement supporting an SLA), and underpinning contract (external supplier agreement supporting an SLA).

The customer journey has five stages: explore, engage, offer, agree, and onboard (with co-create/realize and value-tracking following onboarding).

Customer journey mapping records touchpoints, actions, emotions, and pain points from the customer's perspective; it is used to redesign the experience, not to document internal process.

Service relationship types: basic (single transaction), cooperative (informal agreement), and partnership (shared goals, risk, and value).

Stakeholder mapping uses power/interest or influence/impact grids; high power and high interest stakeholders require active management and co-creation.

Demand management tactics: shape demand (pricing, incentives, scheduling, differentiation) and manage capacity to absorb demand; demand is a pattern, not a single number.

The Net Promoter Score (NPS) = % promoters − % detractors, where promoters score 9-10 and detractors score 0-6 on a 0-10 likelihood-to-recommend question; passives score 7-8.

Customer satisfaction measurement should combine transactional (post-interaction) and relational (relationship-level) surveys; only relational surveys measure overall relationship health.

Service level agreements should reflect customer outcomes; operational metrics (e.g., ticket closure time) are internal proxies and must not substitute for outcome measures.

Communication in engagement: each interaction should confirm the request, set expectations on timing, and confirm resolution; complaint handling treats complaints as feedback for improvement.

HVIT's core question is how to co-create value rapidly and reliably; it emphasizes fast flow, feedback loops, and safe-to-fail experimentation.

Four dimensions of high-velocity work: velocity (speed), resilience (ability to absorb change), agility (ability to change direction), and value (outcomes for stakeholders).

DevOps practices include CI/CD pipelines, infrastructure as code, automated testing, trunk-based development, and observability; CI/CD reduces batch size and lead time.

Lean concepts in HVIT: eliminate waste, reduce batch sizes, limit WIP, and use value stream mapping to expose delays.

Resilience engineering: design for failure, use chaos engineering and fault injection, and prefer graceful degradation over total failure.

Agile ways of working: iterative increments, cross-functional teams, and empirical control (transparency, inspection, adaptation); velocity is a planning metric, not a productivity KPI.

The three ways of DevOps: flow (accelerate delivery), feedback (amplify and shorten feedback loops), and continual learning and experimentation.

Technical debt is a deliberate or accidental shortcut that increases future cost; it must be made visible and managed as a backlog item, not hidden.

Post-incident reviews in high-velocity models are blameless and focus on system conditions; the goal is learning and improved resilience, not assigning fault.

Governance in ITIL 4 is the means by which an organization is directed and controlled; it evaluates, directs, and monitors. It is distinct from management, which plans and executes.

The service value chain's 'plan' activity covers strategy, policy, and portfolio; governance sets direction and controls, while management runs the operation.

Risk management: identify, assess (likelihood × impact), treat (avoid, reduce, transfer, accept), and monitor. Risk appetite defines how much risk is acceptable.

Continual improvement model has seven steps: 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 do we keep the momentum going.

Improvement prioritization: use a value/effort or impact/confidence matrix; the improvement register records ideas, owners, and status.

Measurement: choose metrics that are specific, measurable, and tied to outcomes; avoid vanity metrics and metric gaming (Goodhart's law: when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure).

Organizational change management: communicate the why, involve stakeholders, provide training, and address resistance; change succeeds when it is adopted, not when it is announced.

Strategy formulation includes defining vision, mission, objectives, and a portfolio of services aligned to customer and business outcomes.

Control and compliance: policies set mandatory rules; controls verify adherence; audits provide independent assurance. Controls should be proportionate to risk.