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IT ImplementationIT Service Management
Written By Taylor .
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As I seek to become more knowledgeable about ITIL, this serves as a guide for the ITIL 4 Foundation exam and helps me teach you along the way.
For you to gain the most value from the articles, whenever there are underlining likes this, the specific area is for those seeking an ITIL certification (thus will be relevant for your exam).
Guiding Principles have specifically 6 questions for the exam. Therefore, this section will be more elaborate.
These constitute recommendations which guide organizations in any case, as well as for implementation of ITIL 4. In other words, they apply in any industry, and organization.
Value Focus
Anything done must (in)directly central and valuable to stakeholders. Here, it can be “valuable” to question if what we do provides value.
2. Start Where You Are
When possible, (re)use resources at your disposal, to maximize the utility of current assets. Do baseline assessments and get to know the current possibilities to not start from scratch.
3. Iteration From Feedback
Test areas or parts of a project before full-scale roll-outs to learn along the way from feedback, which might already be part of an agile culture in the organization.
4. Collaborate and Promote Visibility
Measure and gather data with the right people for informed decision-making and timing (co-creating value with stakeholders). To visualize a project it can be beneficial here to utilize come-on boards, from the likes of SCRUM and SAFe.
5. Think and Work Holistically
Since everything is connected, think about how your actions affect other elements. In other words, understand how a project may impact other areas, such as people, knowledge-base, operations, technical components etc.
Essentially, deep knowledge is not necessary, but having a grasp on the company as a whole can prevent silo-thinking, to mitigate departmental or team-only focus.
6. KISS, Optimize and Automate
Keep it simple stupid or in ITIL lingo, keep it simple and practical. Think about the outcome of a process and use the least complicated way to achieve it. Maximize value through optimizing and automating human work. Here it should be a value judgment from a cost perspective.
Example
Automating a script for compliance inputs, costs 10x more, than having someone doing manual entries a couple of hours a week, as it probably won’t break even before new compliance regulations emerge. Often it only makes sense to automate after optimization, hence the chronology. Here one could apply DevOps.
Governance
Governance is not part of the actual ITIL 4 Foundational exam, yet the exam specifies that good governance should be applied. To cover it briefly, In ITIL 4, governance ensures an organization is directed and controlled through policies and practices involving:
Evaluating: Assessing the current and future state.
Directing: Setting objectives and allocating resources.
Monitoring: Tracking performance and compliance.
Governance is integrated into the Service Value System (SVS), engages stakeholders, and remains adaptable to changing needs. Overall good governance is facilitated by using the guiding principles written above.
Wrapping Up
In summary guiding principles are applicable in any process or initiative, as they are well-proven and good practice. They are not a must, yet can be applied stand-alone while better in combination. Furthermore, the guiding principles have a strong relation to Agile and LEAN thinking. The Guiding Principles are fundamental for good governance, and help assist in enabling ITIL through
References:
Axelos. (2024). Resource Hub. Retrieved from Axelos
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ITIL 4ITIL 3IT-implementationIT Service ManagementITIL 4 Foundation ExamThe Guiding Principles
Taylor .
