ITIL 4 Foundations

What are the four steps in establishing where you want to be?

1. Perform a Gap Analysis—In this analysis approach, you identify the gaps in performance between the initial baseline and the desired targets. If the gap is small enough, then you might be able to close it in one improvement effort. However, you might need to break it up into separate, smaller improvements in order to stay on track to reach the desired objective. Remember to progress iteratively with feedback! 2. Identify and prioritize improvement opportunities. 3. Set objectives. 4.Establish critical success factors (CSFs) and key performance indicators (KPIs).

What happens in each step of the Continual Improvement model?

1. What is the Vision requires you to think about the long term objectives and the desired outcomes. 2. Where are We Now involves identifying the current baseline. 3. Where Do We Want to Be requires setting SMART targets. 4. How Do We Get There involves the Improvement Plan. 5. Take Action requires you to execute the plan. 6. Did We Get There involves measuring again to verify that the desired results were achieved. 7. How Do We Keep the Momentum Going requires you to identify what needs to be done next, the areas to focus on next, and any lessons learned.

Centralized Service Desk

A centralized point for multiple locations

Change Authority

A change authority is the person or group who authorizes a change.

Change Schedule

A change schedule is used to plan changes, assist in communication, avoid conflicts, and assign resources. In its simplest form, it is a calendar for changes.

Configuration Item (CI)

A configuration item (CI) is any component that needs to be managed in order to deliver an IT service.

Feedback loop

A feedback loop is defined as a technique whereby the outputs of one part of a system are used as inputs to the same part of the system. • An understanding of end user and customer perception of the value created. • An improvement in efficiency and effectiveness of value chain activities. • Increased effectiveness of service governance as well as management controls. • Ensures an interface between the organization and its partner and supplier network. • Ensures demand for products and services.

Kanban

A method for visualizing work, identifying potential blockages and resource conflicts, and managing work in progress.

Partnership

A partnership is a relationship between two organizations that involves working closely together to achieve common goals and objectives.

Sponsor

A person who authorizes the budget for service consumption. Can also be used to describe an organization or individual that provides financial or other support for an initiative.

Customers

A person who defines the requirements for a service and takes responsibility for the outcomes of service consumption. Customers can be internal or external. Services can also be internal or external. Internal services are delivered to individuals, groups, or departments within your organization. External services are delivered to individuals or groups outside of your organization and directly affect business outcomes. Knowing the difference between internal and external services is important when it comes to measuring the return on investment of services. Decisions on how to deliver, improve, change, manage, and balance in relationship to all the other IT services must consider both the internal and external customers.

User

A person who uses services.

In the SVS, what is the difference between a practice and a principle?

A practice is a set of organizational resources designed for performing work or accomplishing an objective, while a principle provides guidance that should be applied to all circumstances.

Problem

A problem is a cause, or potential cause, of one or more incidents.

Process

A process is a set of interrelated or interacting activities that transform inputs into outputs.

Minimum Viable Product (MVP)

A product with just enough features to satisfy early customers, and to provide feedback for future product development.

Release

A release is a version of a service or other configuration item, or a collection of configuration items, that is made available for use.

Service Desk

A service desk is defined as the point of communication between the service provider and all of its users. The service desk is the entry point/single point of contact for the IT or service organization. • Report issues, queries, and requests. • Have them acknowledged, classified, owned, and actioned. • Many different models.

Service offering

A service offering is a formal description of one or more services, designed to address the needs of a target consumer group. Three Types of Service Offerings: - Goods - Access to resources - Service actions

Service relationship

A service relationship is a cooperation between a service provider and service consumer.

Service Request

A service request is a request from a user or user's authorized representative that initiates a service action that has been agreed as a normal part of service delivery.

Workaround

A workaround is 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. Workarounds can become a permanent way of dealing with some problems, such as when resolving the problem is not viable or a resolution is not cost-effective.

How does organizational culture affect our practices? How does that help or hinder your ability to co-create value with your customers? What are some potential gaps that might form in this dimension, and what would you need to do to close that gap?

A: Cultures have a lot to do with the success of organizations. They may affect knowledge sharing, other collaboration, and focus on customer value. Departments often implement changes to their practices without a clear understanding of impact on other people and organizations. Effective service management requires that you work collaboratively across organizations to ensure you have collaboration and knowledge sharing, and that you are working to improve the overall service, not just a component.

What is the difference between an incident and a problem? A problem and a known error? Why are the distinctions important?

A: Incidents are disruptions to services experienced by users; the problem is the unknown root cause of the incident. Known errors are known to you—or through your suppliers and partners—and the emphasis is on cost effective removal of errors that can be removed. Also, guidance for handling errors cannot be removed, including workarounds as available.

Achievable Meaning

Achievable means that it is plausible and realistic. Ensure the target is a realistic one; you need to be able to achieve it within the size and scope of proposed improvement.

Who are the downstream consumers of your services? How are relationships managed between organizations? Try to model how one of your service consumers uses your service to produce their own services for their consumers.

Again, it is useful for you to think about the organization holistically; think about what your department, your IT organization, or your enterprise deliver. Then, consider how the services you provide get converted into services that your customers provide downstream to their customers.

What are the benefits of progressing iteratively? How will you create the feedback mechanisms you need?

Agile approaches emphasize early delivery of the highest value pieces, with consistent feedback loops that may lead to reprioritizing the work needed to be done by the teams in a way that delivers better results. Both service providers and service consumers need to understand the value of Agile ways of working and plan for the frequent feedback that is needed to enable better outcomes.

How can you help your team stay focused on what helps co-create value?

Agile teams use practices, such as Personas, to try to clearly depict who their customer stakeholders are, what their preferences and dislikes are, and how the solution creates value for them. This serves as a constant reminder of why and for whom the solution co-creates value.

Why is governance a fundamental part of the SVS?

All aspects of the SVS are subject to the overall governance of the organization.

What are some tradeoffs in balancing change benefits against potential risks?

All change is inherently risky because all incidents come from changes. You need to trade off the risk of making the change with the risk of not doing it.

IT Asset

An IT asset is any financially valuable component that can contribute to the delivery of an IT product or service.

Event

An event is any change of state that has significance for the management of an IT service or other configuration item (CI).

Incident

An incident is an unplanned interruption to a service, or reduction in the quality of a service.

ITIL service value chain (SVC)

An operating model for service providers that covers all the key activities required to effectively manage products and services.

Organization

An organization is defined generically in ITIL as a person or a group of people that has its own functions with responsibilities, authorities, and relationships to achieve its objectives.

What are some potential pitfalls if you don't get feedback in a timely way?

Answers may vary, but late feedback might translate into you and your team getting too far down the road working on something that is no longer needed, or its requirements changed. An increase in the amount of rework can lead to increase in stress and ultimately result in poor quality.

Think about the organizations that you are a part of at work. How does your organization act as a service provider or a service consumer? What are some of the products and services you provide, and to whom?

Answers will differ; in a private class, these may be much more consistent than in a public class. It is useful for you to consider the different organizations that you are part of—departments, division, enterprise. Then, also consider how changing the scope of view changes who the customer is, what the services are, and where value is delivered.

Can you think of examples where you or your team got so caught up in execution that you lost sight of the value proposition?

Answers will vary depending on students' experiences. One example might be getting so excited about the development of a new tool for the internal team, and it not creating any value for the customer because they don't want it.

What costs and risks do you take on, and what costs and risks do you impose?

Answers will vary depending on the service. For example, as the service provider, the cost of providing a cable repair service is the technology, the labor cost, and maybe the cost of keeping service vehicles ready. The main cost that you impose on your consumers would be paying for your services.

What are your goals for ITIL certification?

Answers will vary depending on what students need from ITIL. Some might only need a basic understanding of the foundations, while others might have plans to go all the way to becoming an ITIL Master.

Provide some examples of how PESTLE factors have impacted your organization.

Answers will vary greatly. In short, all practices are subject to change based on other factors that affect their value.

Business metrics

Any business activity that is deemed useful or valuable by the customer. For example, the successful completion of a business activity.

Stakeholders

Any person with an interest in an organization, project, or IT service, including the activities, targets, resources, or deliverables, may be considered a stakeholder.

IT organizations tend to overfocus on tools to solve problems, yet the old adage "a fool with a tool is still a fool" applies. What are some potential gaps that might form in this dimension, and what would you need to do to close that gap?

As alluded to in a previous example, organizations that focus too much on tooling without alignment across the dimensions will end up getting far less value from the tool, and creating conflicts in the other dimensions.

How should an organization establish standard services and the fulfillment procedures to deliver them?

As part of establishing a service, you want to establish standard sets of information you provide about the service and fulfillment procedures for how you will deliver the service when it is requested.

Strategic Communications

Assessment of strategic needs, potentially identifying new services or changes to existing ones that are needed to meet organizational strategic objectives that are often handled by relationship management.

Suppliers

At the other end of the spectrum, the suppliers are stakeholders who are responsible for providing goods and services that are used by an organization.

What is wrong with the following statement? "You should prepare a solution in advance for every potential exception."

Attempting to create a solution for every exception can result in an overcomplicated solution. Sometimes, it's better to deal with exceptions as they arise rather than build them into the process. Solve the problem in front of you.

Many organizations focus on automation using their tools, but don't take the time to optimize their processes, or consider implications for other dimensions. What are the risk factors of automation for its own sake?

Automation allows us to perform a series of tasks quickly and efficiently. However, if they're not the right tasks, you'll just do bad (or not valuable) things quickly!

Automation

Automation typically involves technology carrying out activities with little or no human intervention.

Customer Engagement and Feedback

Because the customer is the person specifying the service requirements, customer engagement is necessary in understanding and confirming the actual ongoing needs and requirements. Your ability to listen is an important relationship-building and trust-building skill.

Most organizations have many existing practices, technologies, and of course, people. What steps should you take in an improvement initiative to "start where you are?"

Begin by assessing current capabilities. Assess your people, practices, tools, and how well they meet the desired objectives. If you can use any of the capabilities you already have, then do so.

What are the benefits of adopting a best practice framework?

Best practice frameworks describe well-structured practices that have been proven to work over many organizations over a long period of time.

When considering the two major components of the SVS, is one of them more important or critical to service management?

Both components of the SVS are equally important. The SVC provides the operating model for service management activities that is structured to ensure that the co-creation of value is always the focus. The four dimensions of service management provide a holistic approach to service management by ensuring that service provision is viewed from the perspective of each of the dimensions.

Value stream

By definition, a value stream is a series of steps an organization undertakes to create and deliver products and services to consumers.

Why are categorization and prioritization important?

Categorizing incidents as they happen enables you to accurately prioritize the incident and ensure that you are always working on the incident of the highest priority.

Change

Change is the addition, modification, or removal of anything that could have a direct or indirect effect on services.

How does change control help you Focus on Value?

Changes should be intended to create value through improvement in service utility and/or service warranty. When you assess a change, you assess the Value of a Change against the costs and risks; you seek to optimize the value and maximize the number of changes, while protecting the organization against risk.

Support team

Complex incidents will usually be escalated to a support team for resolution Typically, the routing is based on the incident category, which should help to identify the correct team.

While it is important to identify a small team to lead this practice, __________ is everyone's responsibility and should be integrated into their job roles and these expectations clearly set.

Continual Improvement

What ITIL Practice is the following statement referring to? "While there are many methods and techniques available, organizations should focus on a few methods as appropriate."

Continual Improvement Principle

Cost

Cost is the amount of money spent on a specific activity or resource.

A __________ is a necessary precondition for the achievement of intended results. In other words, it is something that must happen if an IT service, process, plan, project, or other activity is to succeed. For example, a CSF might be to quickly resolve incidents.

Critical Success Factor (CSF)

Outcome

Customers are more interested in the outcome, which is the result for a stakeholder enabled by one or more outputs.

Operational Communications

Day-to-day communications with users about operational needs and issues, often handled at the service desk.

Value streams and processes

Defines the activities, workflows, controls, and procedures needed to achieve the agreed objectives.

A location for definitive copies of spare hardware is called the ___________.

Definitive Hardware Store

In order to maintain control of the configuration items to be deployed into an environment, ITIL establishes secured locations. The location for copies of all software code, gold disks, and licenses is called the __________.

Definitive Media Library

What types of information are created as part of Deliver and Support?

Deliver and support creates data about incidents, service requests, events, and myriad other performance data that can be used to identify potential service improvements.

Demand

Demand is defined as input to the Service Value System based on opportunities and needs from internal and external stakeholders. In other words, demand is the need or desire for products and services from internal and external customers.

What is the one core technical management practices?

Deployment Management

Insourcing

Developing the products and services in-house, or within the organization.

Progress Iteratively with Feedback

Do not attempt to do everything at once. Divide the project, change, or effort into manageable chunks so you can leverage what you learn, get feedback, and test.

Start Where You Are

Do not start from scratch and build something new without considering what is already available to be leveraged. Use the existing services, processes, and people as a jumping off point. Avoid re-creating the wheel just to do so.

What role can effective tools play in supporting our practice?

Effective tools facilitate communication between groups working on incidents. Additionally, these tools can help us match incidents against previously identified incidents, problems, and known errors to apply workarounds and restore service more rapidly.

Partners and suppliers

Encompasses the relationships an organization has with other organizations that are involved in the design, development, deployment, delivery, support, and/or continual improvement of services.

Organizations and people

Ensures that the way an organization is structured and managed, as well as its roles, responsibilities, and systems of authority and communication, is well defined and supports its overall strategy and operating model.

Prevention

Ensuring that security incidents don't occur.

Error control

Error control includes the identification of potential permanent solutions. When considering actions for known errors, you want to assess some key factors. • Impact on customers. • Availability and cost of permanent resolutions. • Effectiveness of workarounds.

Are there times you will need to start over?

Even if you need to start over, be sure to keep lessons learned at the top of your mind as you begin to rebuild your practice.

Focus On Value

Everything that the organization does needs to map, directly or indirectly, to value for the stakeholders. Follow your customers' lead on what they value and work toward increasing the value of the services you provide.

Which guiding principle has the major point of service management incorporated into its name?

Focus on Value

In an organization, teams or groups are divided by their particular skill set or responsibilities that are identified as their specialization. In ITIL terminology, these are referred to as __________.

Functions

Governance

Governance describes the overall assessment of strategic options, direction of strategies and policies, and monitoring of organizational conformance as the organization executes.

Why is governance a fundamental part of the SVS?

Governance is responsible for evaluating strategic options for the organization, directing action (through strategy and policy) and evaluating performance against those expectations. All aspects of the SVS are subject to the organization's governance.

How does governance differ from management?

Governance is responsible for evaluating strategic options for the organization, directing action (through strategy and policy), and evaluating performance against those expectations. Management is expected to plan, build, and run the services that execute the strategy, and to drive improvement.

What is the role of a governing body?

Governing bodies are ultimately accountable for the performance of an organization. They are accountable to optimize organizational risk, the use of organizational resources, and to deliver benefits to the organization's stakeholders. Governance is responsible for evaluating strategic options for the organization, directing action (through strategy and policy), and evaluating performance against those expectations.

What are the key deliverables a governing body provides to an organization? When a governing body evaluates, what are they evaluating? What are the implications for the organization's strategies and policies?

Governing bodies provide strategies and policy guidance. The governing body evaluates strategic alternatives and chooses strategic courses of action.

Why is it essential to have a specific Continual Improvement practice?

Having a specific practice provides a "game plan" and ensures that the plan is clear to everyone.

Holistic

Holistic refers to the treatment of the whole system and not just the parts.

Optimize and Automate

Human intervention should only happen where it really contributes value.

What is ITIL?

ITIL is a non-prescriptive, vendor neutral, international best practice guidance for IT service management.

Keep It Simple and Practical

If a process, service, action, or metric provides no value, or produces no useful outcome, eliminate it.

How Do We Keep the Momentum Going?

If the improvement has delivered the expected value, then you should market the success and reinforce any new methods introduced.

Product

In ITIL, a product is a configuration of an organization's resources designed to offer value for a consumer.

Service

In ITIL, a service is 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.

Practices

In ITIL, practice can be defined as a set of organizational resources designed for performing work or accomplishing an objective.

Service consumers

In general, service consumers are the ones who utilize a service.

Disaster Recovery Plans

In some extreme cases, disaster recovery plans may be invoked to resolve an incident.

Problem identification

In the Problem Identification phase, you need to identify and log problems. This can include performing trend analysis of incident records and reviewing recurring issues by users, service desk, and technical support staff.

What Is the Vision?

In this first step, the organization's vision and objectives need to be translated for the specific business unit, department, team, and/or the individual.

Where Do We Want to Be?

In this step, knowing that the initial vision may be aspirational, you need to determine where you want to be.

Did We Get There?

In this step, you determine if the improvement or change was successful. If the desired result has not been achieved, additional actions to complete the work will need to be selected and undertaken—commonly resulting in a new iteration.

How Do We Get There?

In this step, you need to plan the improvement that will get you there. Consider the following: • Can be simple or complex • Do in iterations with feedback • Check progress and re-evaluate as needed

Take Action

In this step, you will execute the improvement. You could use either a waterfall or Agile methodology. The key is to remain open to feedback and course correction as needed.

Incident Management

Incident management is the formal process for logging and managing incidents. Investigation of more complicated incidents often requires knowledge and expertise, rather than procedural steps.

Suppliers or partners

Incidents can be escalated to suppliers or partners, who offer support for the products and services they supply.

Chat

Includes chatting live with a person or a chatbot.

Email

Includes logging and updating communication occurrences as well as conducting follow-up surveys and confirmations.

Phone calls

Includes specialized technology, such as IVR, conference calls, voice recognition, and others.

Information and technology

Includes the information and knowledge used to deliver services, and the information and technologies used to manage all aspects of the Service Value System.

Agile teams often use tools like Kanban boards and burndown charts to make information easily visible across the team and any other stakeholders. In Agile, these are called __________.

Information radiators

4 Supplier Relationship Models

Insourcing, Outsourcing, Single-source or partnership, Multi-sourcing

How do organizations benefit from keeping it simple and practical?

It ensures you don't create things you don't need, or over-develop solutions.

What is the value of the Collaborate and Promote Visibility principle?

It provides clarity on roles and on the inputs and outputs needed by the service team.

A __________ is an important metric used to evaluate the success in meeting an objective. KPIs describe how the achievement of the CSF will be measured. For example, a KPI might be to achieve a 10 percent reduction in average resolution time within 60 days.

Key Performance Indicator (KPI)

Output from Problem Management includes information concerning workarounds and known errors that should be captured in a __________.

Knowledge Management system

Known Error

Known error is a problem is a cause, or potential cause, of one or more incidents.

Local Service Desk

Located at the place of business.

Operational metrics

Low-level indicators of various operational activities. Common operational metrics include: • System availability • Incident response and fix times • Change and request processing times • System response times

What happens if you focus on a local improvement, but don't consider the broader implications on the system as a whole?

Many IT improvements focus on improving a technology stack, like certain infrastructure components like servers and storage. This guiding principle reminds you that the objective is to improve the entire system end-to-end, and not just improve local components that may not result in an overall improvement.

Who are the members of your service teams? How do your teams collaborate with one another?

Many organizations are structured in technical/functional silos, and collaboration across work teams can be very difficult.

How do you reconcile improvement is everybody's job with identify a small team to focus on driving improvement activities?

Many people implementing continual improvement guidance in previous versions of ITIL struggled with how to implement the guidance. Improvement requires participation from everyone, because every individual can and will identify opportunities to improve products, services, and practices. An organization overall needs to have a small team focused on driving these improvements through to execution.

Many organizations implement practices without fully considering the engagement implications with their suppliers and partners. How does your organization engage partners to ensure alignment? What are some potential gaps that might form in this dimension, and what would you need to do to close that gap?

Many service management initiatives focus on internal staff needs, and fail to recognize the needs and obligations of third party suppliers and partners. All of your practices need to consider and resolve how you will align your suppliers and partners.

What steps could you take to ensure you are keeping your solutions simple and practical?

Many solutions solve non-problems. In other words, you might anticipate potential problems that are not realistic. As a result, your solutions are often more complex and costly than what is needed. Solutions should focus on what is needed, and you should be pragmatic in using as much solution as you need, without overproducing.

Measurable Meaning

Measurable means the change can be quantified and assessed on that basis. You must be able to measure the target; this means figuring out how to get accurate data to assess current and future performance.

__________ or directly __________ current practices. Remember that reports can often be misleading and assumptions can lead to poor decisions.

Measure, observe

Virtual Service Desk

Multiple locations harboring calls for a single organization.

Think and Work Holistically

No service, or element used to provide a service, stands alone. Consider the entire project, other projects, and all related components as one because they are interrelated and interdependent.

Will a best practice framework be the answer to all of your organization's needs? Why or why not?

Of course not! All aspects of service management need to be adapted to meet the needs of any particular organization. Your challenge is to determine the scope of the framework that applies to your organization.

Many organizations implementing ITIL in the past focused on process adoption without full consideration of the other dimensions. What are some potential gaps that might form in this dimension, and what would you need to do to close that gap?

One challenge with how many organizations implemented ITIL practices in the past was to focus exclusively on process architecture, without fully taking into account the other three dimensions. While establishing coherent value streams and processes is a critical dimension, it is only one of the dimensions, and the others need to be given equivalent weight.

Opportunity

Opportunity is defined as options or possibilities to add value for stakeholders or otherwise improve the organization. There may not be demand for these opportunities yet. You can prioritize new or changed services with opportunities for improvement.

Output

Output is a tangible or intangible deliverable of an activity that produces specific deliverables.

In the context of ITIL, all __________ are suppliers but not all suppliers are __________.

Partners, Partners

__________ are the key component in the Organizations and People dimension. This includes any __________ in the service relationship from customers to service providers.

People, Stakeholders

Deployment Approaches

Phased deployment, Continuous delivery, Big bang deployment, Pull deployment

Access Channels

Phone calls, Service portals and mobile applications, Chat, Email, Walk-in service desk, Text and social media messaging, Public and corporate discussion forums

What are the six activities in the service value chain (SVC)?

Plan, Engage, Improve, Obtain/Build, Design and Transition, and Deliver and Support.

What kinds of plans get created in a service provider organization? How do they help organizations manage tradeoffs and prioritize?

Plans include strategic plans, project plans, service plans, and many others. Eventually a fundamental part of planning is prioritizing different alternatives and making decisions.

Information security must establish policies, processes, behaviors, risk management, and controls, which maintain a balance between what 3 items?

Prevention, Detection, Correction

What happens in the three phases of Problem Management?

Problem Identification is used to trigger problem activities and includes logging the issue; it could come from a major incident, information from suppliers, recurring incidents, and other sources. Problem Control assesses the root cause of the incident or incidents and may identify a workaround as the assessment continues. Error Control publishes guidance about known errors and may trigger a request for change to remove errors from the infrastructure.

Problem control

Problem control includes analyzing the problems and documenting workarounds and known errors. It is not essential, or viable, to analyze every problem.

__________ Management is very closely related to _________ Management.

Problem, Incident

Incident vs. Problem

Problems are unknown root causes of incidents. Known errors are diagnosed root causes of incidents, but which have not yet been resolved. Problems cause incidents, but incidents illuminate the problem.

__________ explain who is involved.

Procedures

Multi-sourcing

Procuring products and services from multiple suppliers.

Single-source or partnership

Procuring products and services from one external supplier. This could also be a single supplier or an external supplier integrator who acts as a coordinator for all of the external suppliers that the organization uses.

Outsourcing

Procuring products and services that used to be developed internally from external suppliers.

What does it really mean to progress iteratively?

Progressing iteratively means to drive improvements in small increments, delivering high value capabilities quickly, and getting feedback that will help determine and prioritize next steps. This will help to better deliver optimal value for customers.

Text and social media messaging

Provides a way to contact stakeholders and also notify them of major incidents as well as providing users with a way to request support.

Text and social media messaging

Provides a way to contact stakeholders and also notify them of major incidents as well as providing users with a way to request support.

Public and corporate discussion forums

Provides a way to contact the service provider and also obtain peer-to peer support.

Detection

Rapidly and reliably detecting incidents that can't be prevented.

ITIL guiding principles

Recommendations that can guide an organization in all circumstances, regardless of changes in its goals, strategies, types of work, or management structure.

Correction

Recovering from incidents after they are detected.

Tactical Communications

Regular communications with the customer about service, service performance, and potential service improvement that is often handled by service level management.

3 Types of General Management Practices

Relationship Management, Information Security Management, Supplier Management

Relevant Meaning

Relevant ensures that the KPI is meaningfully related to its associated CSF. The target needs to be relevant in the context of the larger objectives and critical success factors.

Risk

Risk is a possible event that could cause harm or loss, or make it more difficult to achieve objectives.

What types of mitigation activities could you do?

Risk mitigation activities could include review and approval by a Change Authority, or peer review of potential changes to assess risk and identify mitigation options.

4 Types of Service Management Practices

Service Configuration Management, IT Asset Management, Monitoring and Event Management, Release Management

Service Level Agreements (SLAs)

Service Level Agreements (SLAs) are defined as a documented agreement between a service provider and a customer that identifies both services required and the expected level of service. SLAs are used to measure the performance of services from the customer's point of view. However, SLAs must reflect business context.

How does service level management help understand and set customer expectations?

Service Level Management meets with customers to assess requirements, negotiate targets, and provide regular reporting and reviews about service performance.

Service consumption

Service consumption is activities performed by an organization to consume services. The value is co-created when the provider's service is used by the customer's resources to facilitate the outcomes they want to achieve.

What are some of the key competencies that service desk staff need to have?

Service desk personnel require a combination of technical and business competencies, including customer service skills, empathy, incident analysis and prioritization, effective communications, and emotional intelligence.

Service management

Service management is defined as a set of specialized organizational capabilities for enabling value for customers in the form of services.

Service provision

Service provision is defined as the activities performed by an organization to provide services.

Service relationship management

Service relationship management is defined as the joint activities performed by a service provider and a service consumer to ensure continual value co-creation based on agreed and available service offerings.

Where do service requests come from?

Service requests can come from anyone, but often come from users of the service.

What is the role of a service review?

Service reviews are a natural opportunity to discuss service performance, changes in business needs, and potential needs for changes in the services.

At the heart of the SVS is the __________ model that illustrates the activities that your organization performs to create products and services that ultimately create value for your customers.

Service value chain

ITIL practices

Sets of organizational resources designed for performing work or accomplishing an objective.

Service provider

Simply stated, a service provider is any organization providing services.

Service desk

Some incidents will be resolved by the service desk.

User Self-Help

Some incidents will be resolved by the users themselves. Use of specific self help records should be captured for measurement and improvement.

How would you reassign requests that turn out to be incidents or changes?

Some service requests are subsequently determined to be incidents or changes; these should be reallocated to the correct practice for handling. This may be supported by corresponding tools to enable tracking and management.

Specific Meaning

Specific means the goal is appropriately focused and targeted, not overly general or vague. The target must be specific to the objective at hand; many targets that are too general could be affected by dozens of factors not associated with the improvement.

Walk-in service desk

Staffed and supported by service personnel, such as the Apple store.

Types of Changes

Standard changes Normal changes Emergency changes

Service Catalog

Structured information about all the services and service offerings for a service provider, relevant for a specific target audience.

Incident Management and Suppliers

Supplier support agreements must align to service provider commitments. The management of incidents may require frequent interaction with these suppliers. Suppliers can also act as a service desk, logging and managing all incidents and escalating to relevant subject matter experts or other parties as required.

Service portals and mobile applications

Supported by service and request catalogues and knowledge bases

Swarming

Swarming is a popular Agile technique for managing incidents that begins with multiple stakeholders working together to manage an incident.

How do techniques such as swarming promote better incident management?

Techniques like swarming allow you to take advantage of different skillsets and points of view to quickly identify who should take the lead in resolving an incident to ensure that it's being handled by the correct team.

Continual Improvement Register

The Continual Improvement Register (CIR) is a structured document that is used to track and manage improvement opportunities. In addition, CIRs help to make things visible and keep the following in mind: • What is currently being done. • What is already complete. • What has been set aside for further consideration at a later date.

How do you conceive of the relationships between continual improvement as a principle, as an activity, and as a model?

The Continual Improvement model provides a structured approach to implementing improvement. The Improve activity in the SVC embeds improvement into the value chain, and the Continual Improvement practice supports organizations in their day-to-day improvement efforts.

What are the three ways that continual improvement is addressed in ITIL and the SVS?

The Continual Improvement model, the Improve activity in the service value chain, and the Continual Improvement practice.

Which service chain activity starts with plans and architecture information and finishes with an end product that is transferred to the customer?

The Design and Transition activity.

What is the key consideration when choosing which ITIL guiding principle to apply?

The ITIL guiding principles do not exist in a vacuum, but constantly work together to support effective service management practices. Therefore, you should not cherry pick one or two principles to apply. You need to consider all of them when working in service management.

Which of the six service value chain activities require information from all other activities and in turn informs all other parts of the value chain?

The Improve activity gets information about the performance of the entire value chain since all activities are subject to improvement. In turn, the Improve activity provides improvement plans and improvement status information to all other value chain activities.

Service Value System (SVS)

The Service Value System (SVS) is the foundation on which the entire ITIL framework is built. It is a model representing how all the components and activities of an organization work together to facilitate value creation.

Theory of Constraints (TOC)

The Theory of Constraints (TOC was created by Dr. Goldratt in 1984 to help describe the most important aspect of a system. He found that the weakest link in the value chain determines the flow and throughput of the system.

How does the Theory of Constraints reinforce the guiding principle to Think and Work Holistically? Does it have implications for any of the other guiding principles?

The Theory of Constraints reinforces the idea of Think and Work Holistically because improvements that do not address the bottleneck in systems will not improve the overall system. It has implications for many of the other guiding principles, most especially the focus on value—in order to improve value, you must improve the performance of the whole system.

What's the inherent benefit of starting where you are?

The benefit of starting where you are is that you are able to more accurately assess how far you will need to go in order to reach your destination. In other words, you know what needs to be done or accomplished to achieve the desired outcome because you know the state of the existing service.

What steps could you take to ensure your automation helps produce higher value solutions?

The best practice is to simplify and streamline your workflows first, then automate!

What is the role of the Change Schedule in Collaborate and Promote Visibility?

The challenge is that some IT organizations don't recognize the customer's need to know when a change is coming. Tools like the Change Schedule can raise awareness about changes, and help mitigate potential technical and business risks.

Customer experience (CX)

The formal definition of CX is the sum of functional and emotional interactions with a service and service provider as perceived by a service consumer.

What are the four dimensions of service management?

The four dimensions of service management are the four perspectives that are critical to the effective and efficient facilitation of value for customers and other stakeholders in the form of products and services. They are: organizations and people, information and technology, partners and suppliers, value streams and processes.

Who is the governing body for your organization? For IT?

The governing body for the enterprise is probably the Board of Directors or equivalent. IT governance is often headed by some type of IT governance or steering committee.

Guiding principles

The guiding principles are recommendations that can guide an organization in all circumstances, regardless of changes in its goals, strategies, type of work, or management structure.

How does the distribution of costs and risks help you understand your contribution to the co-creation of value?

The key is to remember that value is created when the outcomes you receive outweigh the costs and risks that you have taken on.

How does following the guiding principles drive a focus on improvement? How does a continual improvement culture drive interest in the use of the guiding principles?

The key point is that improvement activities should operate within the prism of the guiding principles. Improvements should focus on value, start where you are, and so on. As your organization works toward a continual improvement culture, it will be a natural step to consider the guiding principles whenever beginning to plan an improvement.

Governance

The means by which an organization is directed and controlled.

Temporary team

The most complex incidents, and all major incidents, often require a temporary team to work together to identify the resolution. This team may include representatives of many stakeholders.

What is the overall purpose of Incident Management?

The overall purpose of Incident Management is to minimize the impact of incidents and restore service as quickly as possible.

Continual improvement

The practice of aligning an organization's practices and services with changing business needs through the ongoing identification and improvement of all elements involved in the effective management of products and services.

Plan Activity

The purpose is to ensure a shared understanding of the vision, current status, and the improvement direction.

Improve Activity

The purpose is to ensure continual improvement of products and services and also practices. This includes all value chain activities and all four dimensions of service management.

Design and Transition Activity

The purpose is to ensure that products and services meet stakeholder expectations for quality, costs, and time-to-market. As the customer needs change, the activities involved are adjusted accordingly.

Obtain/Build Activity

The purpose is to ensure that service components are available when and where they are needed and that they meet the agreed specifications.

Purpose of Change Control

The purpose of the Change Control practice is to maximize the number of successful IT changes by assessing risks properly, authorizing changes to proceed, and then managing a change schedule. You need to balance the need to make beneficial changes that will deliver additional value with the need to protect customers and users from the adverse effect of changes.

Purpose of Continual Improvement

The purpose of the Continual Improvement practice is to align the organization's practices and services with changing business needs through the identification and improvement of services, service components, practices, and any element involved in the efficient and effective management of products and services.

Delivery and Support Activity

The purpose of the Deliver and Support activity is to ensure that services are delivered and supported according to the agreed specifications and the stakeholders' expectations.

Deployment Management

The purpose of the Deployment Management practice is to move new or changed hardware, software, documentation, processes, or any other component to live environments.

Engage Activity

The purpose of the Engage activity is to provide a good understanding of stakeholder needs, facilitate transparency, and provide continual engagement and good relationships with all stakeholders.

IT Asset Management

The purpose of the IT Asset Management practice is to plan and manage the full lifecycle of all IT assets, which helps the organization maximize value, control costs, manage risks, support decision making about purchase, reuse, and retirement of assets, and meet regulatory and contractual requirements.

Purpose of 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. Target resolution times are agreed on, documented, and communicated for all involved parties. Incidents are prioritized, based on agreed classification, to ensure that incidents with the highest business impact are resolved first.

Information Security Management

The purpose of the Information Security Management practice is to protect the information needed by the organization to conduct its business in a reliable and secure way.

Monitoring and Event Management

The purpose of the Monitoring and Event Management practice is to systematically observe services and service components, and record and report selected changes of state identified as events.

Purpose of 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.

Relationship Management

The purpose of the Relationship Management practice is to establish and nurture the links between the organization and its stakeholders at strategic and tactical levels.

Release Management

The purpose of the Release Management practice is to make new and changed services and features available for use.

Service Configuration Management

The purpose of the Service Configuration Management practice is to ensure that accurate and reliable information about the configuration of services, and the configuration items (CI) that support them, is available when and where it is needed.

What is the purpose of the Service Desk practice?

The purpose of the Service Desk practice is to capture demand for incident resolution and service requests in the most efficient and streamlined manner possible.

Purpose of Service Desk

The purpose of the Service Desk practice is to capture demand for incident resolution and service requests. It is the point of communication for the service provider with all of its users. It's extremely important that service desks understand the business context of the solutions that they are supporting.

Purpose of Service Level Management

The purpose of the Service Level Management practice is to set clear business-based targets for service performance so that the delivery of a service can be properly assessed, monitored, and managed.

Purpose of 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, user-initiated service requests in an effective and user-friendly manner. The goal of this practice should be to complete the requests in as efficient and streamlined a manner as possible.

Supplier Management

The purpose of the Supplier Management practice is to ensure that the organization's suppliers and their performance are managed appropriately to support the provision of seamless, quality products and services.

Identify the parts of the ITIL framework and describe the high-level objectives for each.

The two main parts of the framework are the Service Value System and the Four Dimensions. The SVS provides a high level architecture of the necessary components for converting Demand to Value, and the Four Dimensions describe the scope of the key areas of consideration in how an organization executes its activities to produce value.

Identify a few examples of how the principles can work together.

There are an unlimited number of combinations, but one might be: by Thinking and Working Holistically, it enables you to keep your Focus on Value. Also, you must Start Where You Are before you Optimize and Automate.

Think about a situation you have been in where your team was hyperfocused on a single dimension, such as implementing a tool, or creating a process, or establishing a contractor relationship. What are the implications of not considering the impact on the other dimensions?

There are many examples. One might be that many organizations begin service management initiatives by choosing a tool. This runs the risk of not understanding 1) your own needs and desires, 2) how your suppliers and partners need to be integrated into the workflows, 3) how your processes and value streams need to be architected. As a result, many tooling efforts are far less effective than they might be.

How does Focus on Value help you "keep your eyes on the prize" of delivering results for your stakeholders?

There is a temptation in IT to focus on the underpinning technology, or technical factors, instead of beginning with the customer. The principle helps keep the focus on the outcome, not the output.

What does the Think and Work Holistically principle mean?

Think and Work Holistically means focusing not just on a part of a system, but on how the entire system or workstream produces value for a customer.

Direct Activity

This governance activity defines organizational strategies. This includes setting the direction and prioritization through organizational activity and future investment.

Monitor Activity

This governance activity defines organizational strategies. This includes setting the direction and prioritization through organizational activity and future investment.

Evaluate Activity

This governance activity is when the governing body evaluates the organization, including its strategy, portfolios, and relationships with other parties. They are reviewed on a regular basis as stakeholders needs and external circumstances evolve.

Principle: Progress Iteratively with Feedback

This guiding principle stresses the importance of dividing an improvement initiative into smaller manageable pieces. • Resist the temptation to do everything at once. • Break work into small, manageable chunks. • Major initiatives can be decomposed into smaller initiatives. As you progress, use feedback to drive further improvements and continually assess to maintain focus on value.

Principle: Collaborate and Promote Visibility

This guiding principle strives to achieve the best result in terms of effectiveness and efficiency by ensuring that all the right people are involved at the right stage of the improvement process.

How would you describe the value of the Optimize and Automate principle?

This principle enables you to maximize the value of technical and human resources.

Principle: Think and Work Holistically

This principle focuses on the fact that everything in IT service management is interrelated and interdependent.

How is authority delegated from your organization's governing body to your IT governing body?

This question here might stump you and it's an excellent point for discussion. How exactly does your organization get its authorities to act and deliver certain capabilities?

Time-Bound Meaning

Time-bound means the goal is not open-ended, but can be assigned a specific target duration. The timescale used needs to assess whether the improvement has achieved the desired results.

What are the outputs of one of your services? What outcomes do they enable for your service consumer?

To answer the question, pick one service. Connect the service to your desired business outcome.

What tools or "information radiators" do you use so that work is visible to all?

To enable better collaboration, you can use tools such as Kanban boards, online dashboards, burndown charts, and other tools that help make the work more visible to everyone.

What types of tools might help service desk staff perform their work more effectively?

Tools may include telephony systems, workflow systems, workforce management, knowledge bases, and many others.

Does traditional project management work this way? What are the implications?

Traditional approaches to project management deliver all of the value at the end. Customers did not receive anything until the very end so service providers had no way of knowing if they were on the right track.

Two types of releases

Traditional/Waterfall, Agile/DevOps

Utility

Utility is defined as the functionality offered by a product or service to meet a particular need.

__________ activities can use different combinations of ITIL practices, internal or third party resources, processes, and skills and competencies to achieve the desired outputs.

Value chain

Value

Value is defined as the perceived benefits, usefulness, and importance of something. Value is co-created by a service provider and a service consumer. Cost, Speed, Quality are the 3 elements of value provided to the customer.

__________ creation is the objective—each individual understands how they contribute to ___________ creation.

Value, Value

Warranty

Warrant is the assurance that a product or service will meet agreed requirements.

What might be the result of skipping one of the steps?

While it is not expected that all improvement projects will follow all of the steps, skipping steps increases the risk that you will not achieve the desired results.

__________ explain how the work is to be carried out.

Work Instructions

Collaborate and Promote Visibility

Working together across boundaries produces results that have greater buy-in, more relevance to objectives, and better likelihood of long-term success. Make sure that everyone is aware of improvement initiatives and the reasoning behind them.

Principle: Optimize and Automate

You can maximize the value of technical and human resources. Automation can help technology take up frequent, repetitive tasks that liberates human resources for higher-value work. Systems should be optimized before they are automated with the following considerations: • Financial limitations • Compliance requirements • Time constraints • Resource availability

Do you engage with different sets of stakeholders at different levels? What's the difference between engaging at an operational level, a tactical level, and a strategic level?

You engage with different stakeholders and use different service management practices to do so. For example, operational day-to-day collaboration with users may occur at the service desk and therefore involve the Service Desk practice.

What considerations do you use when trying to decide whether to build or buy?

You need to consider if the capacity is readily available, and whether it is strategic to your organization's competitiveness. If a third party has the economies of scale that make it more cost effective to buy rather than build, then you should buy.

Principle: Keep It Simple and Practical

You should strive to eliminate unnecessary processes and components that complicate matters without providing value. • Always using the minimum number of steps needed to accomplish an objective. • If a process, service, action, or metric provides no useful outcome, then eliminate it.

Metrics

a metric is defined as a measurement or calculation that is monitored or reported for management and improvement.

Time-Boxing

a time-box is the maximum period of time that is allocated to a specific activity, such as a conversation or meeting. • Greater flexibility. • Faster responses to customer and business needs. • The ability to discover and respond to failure earlier. • Overall improvement in quality.

Where Are We Now?

in this step, you need to determine where you are, you need to establish a baseline.

Some incidents with extreme impact may be called __________ specialized, separate procedures for handling them.

major incidents

Phased deployment

new or changed components are deployed partially to the production environment over a period of time.

Big bang deployment

new or changed components are deployed to all at the same time.

Continuous delivery

new or changed components are deployed when they are ready, which provides a continuous stream of feedback.

Pull deployment

new or changed software is made available in a controlled repository for users to download when they need it.

The __________ is composed of six activities that provide the operating model for service management that is triggered by demand and results in products and services that provide value.

service value chain (SVC)

System Thinking

systems thinking is the act of considering the whole and not just the subset of parts. You need to consider all four dimensions of the service management in order to improve the whole.

Each service request may include one or more of the following:

• A request for a service delivery action (for example, providing a report or replacing a toner cartridge). • A request for information (for example, how to create a document or what the hours of the office are). • A request for provision of a resource or service (for example, providing a phone or laptop to a user, or providing a virtual server for a development team). • A request for access to a resource or service (for example, providing access to a file or folder). • Feedback, compliments, and complaints (for example, complaints about a new interface or compliments to a support team).

What are six considerations when applying the "Keep It Simple and Practical" principle?

• Activities should create value. • Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. • Do fewer things, but do them better. • Respect the time of the people involved. • Easier to understand, more likely to adopt. • Simplicity is the best route to achieving quick wins.

What are the ten core service management practices?

• Change Control • Incident Management • IT Asset Management • Monitoring and Event Management • Problem Management • Release Management • Service Configuration Management • Service Desk • Service Level Management • Service Request Management

Emergency changes

• Changes that must be implemented as soon as possible. • Not typically included in a change schedule. • Assessment and authorization is expedited. • May be acceptable to defer some documentation and reduce the amount of testing. • May also require a separate change authority.

What are three considerations when applying the "Collaborate and Promote Visibility" principle?

• Collaboration does not mean consensus. You can engage stakeholders, but then you must act! • Communicate in a way that the audience can hear. This includes having the right stakeholder, the right message, and the right medium. • Decisions can only be made on visible data.

How do you apply "Progress Iteratively with Feedback?"

• Comprehend the whole, but do something. • The ecosystem is constantly changing, so feedback is essential. • Fast does not mean incomplete. • Strive for the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) , which is defined as a product with just enough features to satisfy early customers, and to provide feedback for future product development.

What are the four core general management practices?

• Continual Improvement • Information Security Management • Relationship Management • Supplier Management

ITIL Practices

• Continual Improvement • Service Level Management • Change Control • Incident Management • Service Request Management • Service Desk • Problem Management • Relationship Management • Information Security Management • Supplier Management • Service Configuration Management • IT Asset Management • Monitoring and Event Management • Release Management • Deployment Management

Supplier Management Activities

• Creating a single point of visibility and control to ensure consistency. • Maintaining a supplier strategy, policy, and contract management information. • Negotiating and agreeing on contracts and arrangements. • Managing relationships and contracts with internal and external suppliers. • Managing supplier performance.

Key Activities of Continual Improvement

• Encourage continual improvement across the organization. • Secure time and budget for continual improvement. • Identify and log improvement opportunities. • Assess and prioritize improvement opportunities. • Make business cases for improvement action. • Plan and implement improvements. • Measure and evaluate improvement results. • Coordinate improvement activities across the organization.

What does Service Level Management accomplish?

• Establishes a shared view of the services and target service levels with customers. • Ensures the organization meets the defined service levels through the collection, analysis, storage, and reporting of the relevant metrics for the identified services. • Performs service reviews to ensure the current set of services continues to meet the needs of the organization and its customers. • Captures and reports on service issues including performance against defined service levels.

Training and Competencies

• Excellent customer service skills • Empathy • Effective communication skills • Emotional intelligence • Incident analysis skills to diagnose and prioritize incidents to get them resolved • Understanding of business priority

What are the seven guiding principles?

• Focus on Value • Start Where You Are • Progress Iteratively (take small steps) with Feedback • Collaborate and Promote Visibility • Think and Work Holistically • Keep It Simple and Practical • Optimize and Automate—

What are the three types of ITIL practices?

• General management • Service management • Technical management

What are the benefits of ITIL?

• ITIL contains industry-proven best practices. • ITIL is updated to reflect newly emerging practices, such as Agile, Lean, and DevOps. • ITIL reflects business needs that require organizations to balance agility and stability, create new revenue streams and sources of competitive advantage, and support new digital business models.

ITIL SVS Components

• ITIL service value chain (SVC) • ITIL practices • ITIL guiding principles • Governance • Continual improvement

Incident Management Activities

• Identification and Logging • Categorization • Prioritization • Diagnosis • Escalation • Resolution • Closure

Release components could include what items?

• Infrastructure and application components • Documentation • Training (for users or IT staff) • Updated processes or tools • Any other needed components

Supporting Tools

• Intelligent telephony systems, incorporating computer-telephony integration, interactive voice response, and automatic call distribution • Workflow systems for routing and escalation • Workforce management and resource planning systems • Knowledge base • Call recording and quality control • Remote access tools • Dashboard and monitoring tools • Configuration management systems • Virtual service desks might require more sophisticated access, routing, and escalation tools.

Continual Improvement Methods and Techniques

• Lean methods focus on waste reduction. • Agile methods focus on iterative improvement and retrospectives. • DevOps methods focus on working holistically and successful implementation. • Balanced Scorecard technique focuses on aligning improvements with the organization's overall strategy. • SWOT Analysis technique evaluates improvements from the perspective of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Based on a desired end state, you can identify and analyze those conditions that may affect the success of the improvement.

Principle: Start Where You Are

• Look at what exists as objectively as possible, using the customer, or the desired outcome, as the starting point. • When examples of successful practices or services are found in the current state, determine if and how these can be replicated or expanded upon to achieve the desired state. • Apply your risk management skills. • Recognize that sometimes nothing from the current state can be reused.

Standard Changes

• Low-risk, pre-authorized, routine changes. • Well-understood and fully documented. • Implemented without needing additional authorization. • Risk assessment repeated only if there is a modification to the way it is carried out.

Three Types of Communications

• Operational • Tactical • Strategic

Steps of Optimization

• Optimization Vision • Current State • Desired Future State • Stakeholder Engagement • Execution • Monitoring Feedback

Access to resources

• Ownership is not transferred to the consumer. • Access is granted or licensed to the consumer under agreed terms and conditions. • The consumer can only access the resources during the agreed consumption period and according to other agreed service terms.

Service actions

• Performed by the service provider to address a consumer's needs. • Performed according to agreement with the consumer.

What are the six service value chain activities?

• Plan • Improve • Engage • Design and Transition • Obtain and Build • Deliver and Support

What are the six SVC activities?

• Plan • Improve • Engage • Design and Transition • Obtain/Build • Deliver and Support

Service requests are a normal part of service delivery and not an incident. Other characteristics include:

• Pre-defined and pre-agreed. • Clear, standard procedure for initiation, approval, fulfillment, and management. • Steps to fulfill the request should be well-known and proven. • Set expectation times for fulfillment. • Provide clear communication of the status of the request to users.

Phases of Problem Management

• Problem identification • Problem control • Error control

What are four considerations when applying the "Think and Work Holistically" principle?

• Recognize the complexity of the systems. • Collaboration is key. • Look for patterns in the needs of and interactions between system elements. • Automation can facilitate working holistically.

SLA Requirements

• SLAs must relate to a defined "service" in the service catalog, which is defined as structured information about all the services and service offerings for a service provider, relevant for a specific target audience. • SLAs must relate to defined outcomes such as customer satisfaction and key business outcomes. • SLAs must be an agreement between the service provider and the service consumer that involves all stakeholders, including partners, sponsors, users, and customers. • SLAs must be simply written and easy to understand and use for all parties.

Handling Service Requests Guidelines:

• Service requests and their fulfillment should be standardized and automated to the greatest degree possible. • Policies should be established regarding what service requests will be fulfilled with limited or even no additional approvals so that fulfillment can be streamlined. • Set realistic expectations of users regarding fulfillment times. • Opportunities for improvement should be identified and implemented to produce faster fulfillment times and take additional advantage of automation. • Policies and workflows should be included for the documenting and redirecting of any requests that are submitted as service requests, but which should actually be managed as incidents or changes.

What are three considerations when applying the "Optimize and Automate" principle?

• Simplify and/or optimize before automating. • Define your metrics. • Use the following guiding principles when applying this one.

What does S.M.A.R.T. stand for?

• Specific • Measurable • Achievable • Relevant • Time-Bound

Goods

• Supplied to the consumer. • Ownership is transferred to the consumer. • Consumer takes responsibility for future use.

Six Types of Incident Diagnosis and Resolution

• User self-help • Service desk • Support team • Suppliers or partners • Temporary team • Disaster Recovery Plans

Normal changes

• Using a standard process, these changes are scheduled, assessed, and authorized. • Change models determine the roles for assessment and authorization. • Initiation of a normal change is triggered by the creation of a change request. • Organizations that have an automated pipeline for continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) often automate most steps of the change control process.

The value stream dimension focuses on the activities required to enable value creation through products and services, specifically:

• What activities need to happen. • How the activities are organized. • How value creation will be ensured for stakeholders.

Customer Engagement Questions

• What does your work involve? • How does technology help you? • What are your key business times, areas, people, and activities? • What differentiates a good day from a bad day for you? • Which of these activities is most important to you? • What are your goals, objectives, and measurements for this year? • What is the best measure of your success? • How do you base your opinion and evaluation of a service or IT/technology? • How can we help you more?

The Value Streams and Processes dimension encourages you to consider the following questions when it comes to the design, delivery, and improvement of your service.

• What is the generic delivery model for the service, and how does the service work? • What are the value streams involved in delivering the agreed outputs of the service? • Who, or what, performs the required service actions?

What are the seven steps of Continual Improvement Model

• 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?