ITIL v4 Framework

What is ITIL 4?

Digital Transformation with Value & Agility!

The purpose of ITIL 4 is to provide organizations with comprehensive guidance for the management of information technology in the modern service economy.

ITIL 4 will evolve to provide an end-to-end IT/Digital Operating Model, covering the full delivery (and sustaining) of tech-enabled products and services, guiding how IT interfaces with, and even leads, the wider business strategy.

ITIL 4 looks at value streams, and digital transformation, as well as including prevailing ways of working, such as Lean, Agile, and DevOps.

Designed to deliver a flexible, coordinated and integrated approach, ITIL 4 provides the guidance organizations need to address new service management challenges.

In particular, ITIL 4 considers how to utilize the potential of modern technology for the effective governance and management of IT-enabled services.

Components of ITL 4

ITIL4 consists of two components: The four dimension model and ITIL Service Value System.

1. The four dimension model

To support a holistic approach to service management, ITIL defines 4 dimensions that collectively are critical to the effective and efficient facilitation of value for consumers in the form of products and services.

The 4 dimensions are the structure that must be in place within your organization to deliver an effective and efficient ITSM capability, they are relevant to and impact upon the Service Value System.

They define the 4 key areas that must be addressed with equal vigor to ensure product and services can deliver to the required standard and in line with the value expected. Failure to address the 4 Dimensions can lead to poor quality of services, service unavailability or not meeting the needs of the organization and thus impairing value realization. Due to consideration to all 4 dimensions will ensure that the breadth and depth of an organizations ITSM delivery capabilities is and can be designed/improved where required and in line with strategic objectives.

a. Organizations and People

This dimension has a focus on the organizational structure of your ITSM department and the skills and competencies of your staff. For ITSM to work as a system as defined in the Service Value System, organizations need to ensure that the structure matches the type of services being delivered in line with the standards and methodologies in place and planned. Failure to address this dimension will lead to gaps in service provision, poor working practices and a lack of morale and a culture of service excellence amongst staff.

As ITSM organizations evolve into the digital age they can become ever more complex, with this complexity comes a need to ensure:

.A suitable structure and effective management

.Systems of authority are defined, communicated and governed

.Communication methods are established and consistent (information cascade)

.A service-based culture is in place to ensure objectives are achieved

.Staff have the right levels of competency and skills to fulfil their roles

.All leaders champion and advocate values that motivate their staff and peers

.There is a continual promotion of a culture based upon trust and transparency

.Silos are identified and broken down as necessary

It is important to understand when looking at this dimension that structure and systems of authority are not, by themselves, sufficient to improve organizational effectiveness. The organization also needs a culture that supports its objectives.

This dimension will enable organizations to define, implement, manage and improve:

.Management capabilities and leadership styles

.Formal organizational structures

.Staffing and competency levels required

.Systems for communication/collaboration

.Broad knowledge (Business and IT) as well as deep specialization

b. Information and Technology

This dimension has a focus on the technology needed to deliver services and products, it also ensures that data and information are considered.

It looks at 3 core areas:

.Information and Knowledge

.Technologies

.Relationships between components

All ITSM organizations by their nature have to manage and provide technology product solutions which enable the services they provide to their customers; they also need to understand the requirements for the supporting technologies which are critical to the delivery and support of their products and services. Alongside these technology considerations is the management and protection of data and the provision of knowledge.

Some of the key consideration’s organizations need to address in this dimension are:

.Is this technology compatible with the current architecture?

.Does the organization have the right skills to support and maintain it?

.Does it raise any regulatory, compliance, or information security control issues?

.Does it have sufficient automation capabilities to be developed, deployed and operated?

.Will it continue to be viable in the foreseeable future?

.Does it have additional capabilities that can be leveraged for other products or services?

.Does it align with the service provider or service consumer strategy?

.Does it introduce new risks or constraints to the organization?

Whilst the above considerations apply to all types of ITSM organization, it is important to note that organizational culture and the nature of the organization’s business will also have an impact on which technologies it chooses to use. Some organizations may operate or offer steady state services and technologies whilst higher velocity ones may have a strategy for a more leading-edge approach.

When giving specific focus to the component of this dimension, organizations should consider:

.What information is managed by services?

.What supporting information and knowledge is needed to deliver and manage the services?

How will the information and knowledge assets be protected, managed, archived and disposed of? For many services, information management is the primary means of delivering customer value. The information architecture should be well understood and continually optimized.

When assessing the capability and operation of any technology the below should be assessed in line with the business requirements and agreed operational targets:

.Availability

.Reliability

.Accessibility

.Timeliness

.Accuracy

.Relevance

The challenges of information management, such as those presented by security and regulatory compliance requirements, are also a focus of this dimension.

c. Partners and Suppliers

This dimension has a focus on the 3rd parties that are critical to the delivery of IT products and services. Every ITSM organization will have a dependency to some extent on services and products provided by other organizations. These services can be related to strategic advice and guidance, provision of professional or supporting services, cloud and hosting service and component level resources.

Many services provided by ITSM organization have a critical path to suppliers and partners. As such is it vital that due diligence and careful management be performed in this dimension.

In order to understand and identify the scope of this dimension, relationships need to be defined for all 3rd parties in line with the organization’s services covering:

.Design

.Development

.Deployment

.Delivery and Support

d. Value Streams and Processes

This dimension has a focus on the activities required to deliver the objectives of the ITSM organization and meet the demands of the consumer. This dimension will require the ITSM organization to define, document and communicate how various parts of the organization work together to enable value creation through products and services. To enable this level of understanding and clarity this dimension defines the activities, workflows, controls and procedures needed to achieve agreed objectives and targets.

The service provider will also need to ensure there us focus on the service provider will also need to ensure there us focus on:

.What activities the organization undertakes

.How activities are organized

.How value is created for all stakeholders both efficiently and effectively

All ITSM organizations will have evolved into providing products and services through the implementation of processes, whether they be informal and based upon loose collaboration or more mature in nature with comprehensive documentation, communication, measurement and improvement. To achieve the required level of competency and success in the dimension the service provider will need to understand the nature and definition of value streams, a value stream is defined in ITIL 4 as:

“A value stream is a series of steps an organization undertakes to create and deliver products and services to service consumers”

“A value stream is a combination of the organization’s value chain activities”

A value stream will incorporate a number of ?processes, resources, capabilities and tools.

Value Streams Purpose of each activity must be understood as below;

PLAN: To ensure a shred understanding of the vision, current status and improvement direction for all four dimensions and all products and services across the organization

IMPROVE:To ensure continual improvement of products, services and practices across all value chain activities and the four dimensions of service management

ENGAGE:To provide a good understanding of stakeholder needs, continual engagement with all stakeholders, transparency and good relationships with all stakeholders

DESIGN AND TRANSITION: To ensure that products and services continually meet stakeholder expectations for quality, costs and time to market

OBTAIN/BUILD: To ensure that service components are available when and where they are needed, and meet agreed specifications

DELIVER AND SUPPORT: To ensure that services are delivered and supported according to agreed specifications and stakeholders’ expectations

When optimizing a value stream, there may be benefit in optimization, encompassing process automation or in the adoption of emerging technologies, in order to improve the speed or efficiency of the stream. Recognition or mapping of the total end-to-end value stream is important as a first step to recognizing where to.

In essence a value stream is a specific activity passing through the Service Value Chain and thereby (co)creating value.

Examples of value streams are:

.An incident that needs to be resolved

.A request that needs to be delivered

.A change that needs to be managed and delivered

.A product that needs to be defined and implemented

It should be noted that any of the 4 Dimensions can be affected by external factors, these are grouped into 6 areas:

.Political

.Economic

.Social

.Technological

.Legal

.Environmental

Consideration needs to be given to the impact these external factors (known as PESTLE) can have on the ability to deliver ITSM across the 4 Dimensions, for example service providers need to be aware of regulations relating to how they manage data (GDPR) or hardware assets as well as understanding the impact of political and economic change on the geographical and market areas in which they exist.

2. ITIL Service Value System

A set of activities that an organization performs to deliver a valuable output to end-users. It includes elements explained below in detail.

1. Guiding Principles:

The purose is to create value for your customers and your organization.There are Seven guiding principles for teh Service Value System.

a.Focus on Value

Everything an organization does needs to link back to value, this value should be clear for providers, customers and stakeholders. To enable a focus on value the organization has to identify who is receiving services and how they will receive and measure value through the services being delivered.

There are 4 key characteristics of value that an organization must understand:

.It is defined by the customer

.It changes over time and circumstance

.There must be an affordable mix of features

.There must be an achievement of objective

Value can come in many forms and it is vital that the relationship between the provider and consumer addresses this, value may be monetary based but often encompasses much more (for example quality, experience, trust and innovation).The service provider needs to know what is of value to the consumer(s).

.Why consumers use the services

.What the services help them to do

.How the services help them to meet their goals

.The risks involved for the consumer

.The role of cost/financial consequences to the customer

The service provider will need to know how consumers use each service and continually encourage a focus on value amongst all staff. Any improvement initiative should have a focus on value within every step. Work that does not clearly produce some form of value should be stopped.

b.Start Where you are

This guiding principle encourages the organization to avoid “re-inventing the wheel” and starting over without first considering what is already available (the current state) and can be leveraged. Starting where you are can avoid unnecessary cost and shorten the time to value realization for the customer.

Most organizations will have lots of good practices embedded in current service, processes, technologies etc, these should be evaluated as fit for purpose on any new initiative or service improvement. When assessing current state care should be given to ensure reports match the reality, measurements should be used in live with existing data to give a true picture of performance and capability.

c.Progress iteratively with feedback

This guiding principle has its roots in an agile approach to ITSM, it is based on resisting the temptation to do everything at once and rather taking the approach to organize work into smaller manageable sections, the focus on each effort will be sharper and easier to maintain, improvements should be implemented as sequential or simultaneous. The propose of this guiding principle is to ensure value can be delivered quickly and when and where it is needed.

Feedback should be sought and used before, throughout and after each iteration, it helps participants to understand where their work comes from, outputs go and how their actions affect the outcomes. A good approach to adopting this guiding principle is the use of feedback loops, they aid:

.End user and customer perception of the value created

.The efficiency and effectiveness of the value chain activities

.The demand for products and services

d.Collaborate and Promote Visibility

This guiding principle is essentially about breakdown silos within organization and promoting effective collaboration. This comes from the ethos that inclusion is generally better than exclusion and collaboration with cooperation is better than isolated work. Collaboration should have no limits to its scope all stakeholders should be encouraged to engage regularly and effectively.

Recognition of the need for genuine collaboration has been one of the driving factors in the evolution of what is now known as DevOps. Without effective collaboration, neither Agile, Lean, nor any other ITSM framework or method will work.

Collaboration and visibility promote: Shared goals, Trust ,Improved decision making. Increased chances of success .A clear understanding of the way forward. Alignment will be kept as work progresses.

e.Think and work holistically

This guiding principle in based in the fundamental understanding that no service, process, department or supplier stands alone, all services must be delivered through the capabilities enabled within the 4 dimensions of service management.

Taking a holistic approach enables an understanding of how all parts of the organization work together in an integrated way, it recognizes that systems may be complex and as such need to not only deliver to detail but never lose site of the complete picture. Collaboration is key to thinking and working holistically, the service provider will need to draw on knowledge in every area to identify what is essential for success.“Holistic” – Dealing with or treating the whole of something and not just a par.

f.Keep It Simple and Practical

It suggests some simple rules to follow to enable the principle:

.Ensure value – Every activity should contribute to the creation of value

.Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication –it may seem harder to simplify but it is often more effective

.Do fewer things but do them better – allows focus on quality

.Respect the time for the people involve

.Avoid bureaucracy

.Easier to understand, more likely to adopt

Keeping it simple and practical is the best route to achieving quick wins. Documents that are simple can be significantly more effective in communication than large

detailed volumes. Processes that are simple will have a better chance of being seen, understood and observe.

g.Optimize and Automate

This guiding principle is key to effectiveness and efficiency. Automation frees up expensive human ?resources and enables them to concentrate on more human intensive areas and the overall customer experience.

"Optimization” - To make something as effective and useful as it needs to be “Automation” - Typically refers to the use of technology to perform a step or series of steps correctly and consistently with limited or no human intervention.

To enable success in adoption of this guiding principle, organizations should:

.Optimize before automating

.Define relevant metrics intended and actual results should be evaluated, metrics should be outcome based and focused on value

.Eliminate anything that is truly wasteful and use technology to achieve whatever it is capable of

2. Governance:

The purpose is to controls and monitor the performance of the organization.

Governance refers to the means by which an organization is directed and controlled. In service management, governance defines the common directions, policies, and rules that the organization uses to? deliver and maintain its services.

Every organization, regardless of the size, takes direction from a governance body: a person or group of people who are accountable at the highest level for the performance and compliance of the organization. The governing body is accountable for the organization’s compliance with policies and any external regulations, and can be comprised of:

.A board of directors

.A regulatory body

.An executive management team

Governance Activities:There are three main activities by which governance is realized: as Direct,Monitor and Evaluate.

Direct:This involves the assignment of responsibility for organizational strategy and policies, and the direction of their preparation and implementation. Strategy sets the direction and prioritization for organizational activity including vision, mission and plans, while policies establish the requirements for behavior by those participating in organizational activities, whether they are staff, vendors or contractors.

Monitor:This involves determining whether the performance of the organization and its practices, products, and services is in line with the strategy and policies set in the direct activity.

Evaluate:This involves the performance of regular reviews of the organization, its strategy, portfolios, and relationships with other parties, accounting for changing external circumstances and stakeholder requirements.

Governance in the SVS:The? Servive Value System (SVS) is a universal model that can be applied across an entire organization, or to one or more of its units or products. So, if you’re delegating governance authority across different levels, then the governance body should retain oversight to?entire alignment with the objectives and priorities of the organization.

In ITIL 4, the ITIL guiding principles and continual improvement apply to all components of the SVS, including governance. Therefore, the governance body can adopt and adapt the guiding principles and communicate them across the organization as part of the “direct” activity. The governance body can also “monitor” outcomes of continual improvement activities and measurement of value.

Regardless of the scope of the SVS and the positioning of the components, it is critical to make sure that:

• The service value chain and the organization’s practices work in line with the direction given by the governing body.
• The governing body of the organization, either directly or through delegation of authority, maintains oversight of the SVS.
• Both the governing body and management at all levels maintain alignment through a clear set of shared principles and objectives.
• The?governance and management at all levels are continually improved to meet the evolving expectations of the stakeholders.

3. Service Value Chain:

The Service Value Chain is the model which shows how the components and activities work together to achieve the three main goals of service management:

.Run the business?- Deliver value from services?today?(by operating the “Live” Service Portfolio).

.Grow the business?- Improve?services (incremental innovation) to deliver more value, make customers even happier, reduce costs, and eliminate risks to make services more resilient (high availability).

.Transform the business?- Create?new?services (radical innovation) to satisfy new customer demands (new definitions of value) and bring them into production—redefining the way the organization operates, the products and services it offers to customers, and how it interacts with customers (transforming the customer experience).

How Does the Service Value Chain Work?

There are six kinds of activities in the Service Value Chain. Each one represents a broad activity type into which?any and all?of your current (and future) service management activities will fit:

.Plan?- All types of planning, at all levels

.Engage?- Any and all interactions with people who are?external?to the service value chain (employees, customers, management, partners/suppliers)

.Design and Transition- Business analysis and development of new and improved services

.Obtain/Build?- Any new resource brought into the value chain is sourced via obtain/build

.Deliver and Support?- Provisioning services and providing help and information

.Improve?- Improvements at all levels

Everything you do today and in the future as a service organization will fit into one of these activity types. For every service outcome - whether that is to deliver a service, restore a service, improve a service, or create a new service - it will involve steps of these types. This allows you to map activities to activity types, giving them a consistent structure that can be understood across the organization.

4. Continual Improvement:

An iterative approach ensuring that the organization's performance meets customers' expectations.

This dimension covers contracts and other agreements between the organization and its partners.

Relationships between organizations with regards to service design and provisioning can often be complex in nature and may involve different levels of integration and formality. Some partners and suppliers will be mission critical and require more intense management and engagement, others may be more commodity or point of time base and require less rigor.

Some relationships with external organizations will require formal contracts with very clear separation of responsibilities, others will be based on informal partnerships based upon share goals and generic agreements. In this dimension it is important for the ITSM organization to understand the appropriate level of relationship and formality for each supplier and partner and establish processes and working practices accordingly.

Given the complexities and scope of supplier and partner management, organizations are looking to specific methods to ensure quality and compliance, one of which is the Service Integration and Management (SIAM) operating model. SIAM This involves the use of a specially established service integrator to ensure that service relationships are properly coordinated. SIAM may be kept within the organization but can also be delegated to a trusted partner.

There is a plethora of factors that will influence and organizations strategy and operational approach when selecting and using suppliers, these include:

.Strategic Focus: focus on core competencies and outsource non-core to third parties

.Corporate culture: long-standing cultural bias can be difficult to change

.Resource scarcity: key resources or skills might be in short supply

.Cost concerns: what is the most economical way to source a particular requirement

.Subject matter expertise: a supplier might have the relevant expertise required, whereas the provider might not

.External constraints: Government regulations or policies, industry codes-of-conduct, legal, political, social – all of these might affect a supplier strategy

.Demand patterns: seasonal or highly fluctuating

5. Management Practices:

34 different management practices designed to help organizations meet their business goals.

ITIL 4 groups practices into 3 areas:

1. General Management Practices – These have been adopted and adapted for service management from general business domains.

.Architecture management

.Continual improvement

.Information security management

.Knowledge management

.Measurement and reporting

.Portfolio management

.Organizational change management

.Project management

.Relationship management

.Risk management

.Service financial management

.Strategy management

.Supplier management

.Workforce and talent management

2.Service Management Practices – These have been developed in service management and ITSM industries.

.Availability management

.Business analysis

.Capacity and performance management

.Change enablement

.Incident management

.IT asset management

.Monitoring and event management

.Problem management

.Release management

.Service catalogue management

.Service configuration management

.Service continuity management

.Service design

.Service desk

.Service level management

.Service request management

.Service validation and testing

3.Technical Management Practices – These have been adapted from technology management domains for service management purposes by expanding or shifting their focus from technology solutions to IT services.

.Deployment management

.Infrastructure and platform management

.Software development and management

How ITIL practices fit within the service value chain

1.Continual improvement including & the continual improvement model

The purpose of the continual improvement practice is to align the organizations practices and services with changing business needs through the ongoing improvement of products, services, and practices, or any element in the management of products and services.

There should be nothing that is outside the scope of continual improvement for any ITSM organization. It is recognized that a lack of continual improvement can lead to inertia and an eventual decay of service excellence - this impacts cost and the ability to build new services effectively (via technical det). The danger of not addressing the required capabilities and resources required for continual improvement is that an organization can stand still whilst competitors evolve and gain market share. Worse still by failing to improve the customer move to another provider or company and take over service and products currently delivered. The bar is ever being raised by modern service providers, that bar sets the expectation for service quality and value.

Value Chain Interaction:This practice will most heavily contribute to Plan, Improve, Engage, Design and Transition, Obtain/Build, Deliver and Support.

2.Change Enablement

The purpose of the organizational change management practice is to ensure that changes in an organization are smoothly and successfully implemented, and that lasting benefits are achieved by managing the human aspects of changes.

This practice addresses one of the key reasons that organizations fail to implement change. Namely that organizational-level changes require much more care and attention around people and how change impact them. Changes can either fail completely or fail to deliver the benefits identified at the outset, simply by not addressing or understanding the human dynamics of change.

It is key that organizations can identify those affected by organizational change and work with them to help acceptance and support of the change. Organizations are now starting to understand that no matter what the nature is of a change is – e.g. to structure, technology, process or service – it is people that are critical to success. Organizational change management will contribute to every part of the service value system.

For organizational change to work it must ensure that the following are established and maintained:

.Clear and relevant objectives

.Strong and committed leadership

.Willing and prepared participants

.Sustained improvement

Whilst all of the above are vital to organizational change, however studies have shown that poor change leadership is the most common cause of failure.

3.Incident Management

The purpose of the incident management practice is to minimize the negative impact of incidents by restoring normal service operation as quickly as possible.

“Incident” – an unplanned interruption to a service or reduction in quality of that service.

Incident management is a key activity of every ITSM service provider no matter of type or industry. Incidents and their management are one of the key factors in the evaluation of satisfaction by customers.

Having the right skills in the right place with access to appropriate levels of knowledge and support technologies can greatly enhance the execution of activities for this practice. Incidents cause business disruption and can cost money, regulatory compliance and reputation.

The impact and costs of incidents (and their management) is a drive behind the focus on first time fixes and the approach to both “shift left” ethos (move resolution close to the customer, usually the front line) and the technique of ‘swarming”, (having second line teams on hand to move in quickly and avoid lengthy escalation).

4.Problem Management

The purpose of the problem management practice is to reduce the likelihood and impact of incidents by identifying actual and potential causes of incidents and managing workarounds and known errors.

“Problem” – a cause, or potential cause, of one or more incidents.

“Known error” – a problem that has been analyzed but has not been resolved.

?“Workaround” – a solution that reduces or eliminates the impact of an incident or problem for which a full resolution is not yet available. Some workarounds reduce the likelihood of incidents.

Problem management is a key practice that can elevate a service provider from a purely “break-fix” mentality and customer perception.

Ultimately problem management looks to identifying the cause of incidents and recommend a resolution (through change control) to avoid further occurrence. Until a permanent fix is found problem management can aid incident management.

The 3 practices, incident, problem and change, are designed to work together as part of the service value chain) by identifying workarounds that incident management can use to help restore normal service operation (albeit on a temporary basis until the issues recurs).

There are 3 phases of problem management:

.Problem identification

.Problem control

.Error control

5.Service request management

The purpose of the service request management practice is to support the agreed quality of a service by handling all pre-defined, userinitiated service requests in an effective and user-friendly manner.

“Service Request” – a request from a user or a user’s authorized representative that initiates a service action which has been agreed as a normal part of service delivery.

Service requests may require complex or simple workflows, manual tasks where human action adds no value to the delivery chain should be automated where possible.

Service requests may require changes to services or their components, these are usually classed as standard changes (it is important to note that the definition and criteria for a standard changed is within the remit of the change management practice).

Service requests may require authorization for completion, this should be done in line with associated policies.

6.Service Desk

The purpose of the service desk practice is to capture demand for incident resolution and service requests. It should be the entry point and single point of contact for the service provider with all of its users.

The service desk can be considered a strategic asset for any IT service provider. It is the visible face of IT and provides a consistent and friendly interface into the service provider for the consumer.

Effective service desk operations not only concentrate on the logging, management and resolution of incidents and the fulfilment of requests but have a string focus on the quality of the user experience and interactions.

Service desk can support the organization for a single location (centralized), virtual (agents work from multiple geographical locations). The decision of service desk type and level operation will depend on business or contracts requirements (for example 24x7 and technical capabilities).

7.Service Level Management

The purpose of the service level management practice is to set clear business-based targets for service levels, and to ensure that delivery of services is properly assessed, monitored, and managed against these targets.

“Service Level” – one or more activities that define expected or achieved service quality.

“Service Level Agreement (SLA)” – a documented agreement between a service provider and a customer that identifies both services required and the expected level of service.

Service level management needs to understand the criticality and specific operational performance for services and translate these into meaningful business outcome-based targets which are communicated to all relevant practices of the provider and form the basis for measurements against key performance indicators.

Every service within the service catalogue should be covered by an associated service level agreement.