ITIL 4 Foundations Chapter 5 Terms

throughput

A measure of the amount of work performed by a product, service, or other system over a given period of time.

transaction

A unit of work consisting of an exchange between two or more participants or systems.

service configuration management practice

The practice of ensuring that accurate and reliable information about the configuration of services, and the configuration items that support them, is available when and where needed.

project management practice

The practice of ensuring that all an organization's projects are successfully delivered.

portfolio management practice

The practice of ensuring that an organization has the right mix of programmes, projects, products, and services to execute its strategy within its funding and resource constraints.

workforce and talent management practice

The practice of ensuring that an organization has the right people with the appropriate skills and knowledge and in the correct roles to support its business objectives.

risk management practice

The practice of ensuring that an organization understands and effectively handles risks.

supplier management practice

The practice of ensuring that an organization's suppliers and their performance levels are managed appropriately to support the provision of seamless quality products and services.

software development and management practice

The practice of ensuring that applications meet stakeholder needs in terms of functionality, reliability, maintainability, compliance, and auditability.

organizational change management practice

The practice of ensuring that changes in an organization are smoothly and successfully implemented and that lasting benefits are achieved by managing the human aspects of the changes.

service validation and testing practice

The practice of ensuring that new or changed products and services meet defined requirements.

change control practice

The practice of ensuring that risks are properly assessed, authorizing changes to proceed and managing a change schedule in order to maximize the number of successful service and product changes.

service continuity management practice

The practice of ensuring that service availability and performance are maintained at a sufficient level in case of a disaster.

capacity and performance management practice

The practice of ensuring that services achieve agreed and expected performance levels, satisfying current and future demand in a cost-effective way.

availability management practice

The practice of ensuring that services deliver agreed levels of availability to meet the needs of customers and users.

relationship management practice

The practice of establishing and nurturing links between an organization and its stakeholders at strategic and tactical levels.

strategy management practice

The practice of formulating the goals of an organization and adopting the courses of action and allocation of resources necessary for achieving those goals.

knowledge management practice

The practice of maintaining and improving the effective, efficient, and convenient use of information and knowledge across an organization.

release management practice

The practice of making new and changed services and features available for use.

infrastructure and platform management practice

The practice of overseeing the infrastructure and platforms used by an organization. This enables the monitoring of technology solutions available, including solutions from third parties.

deployment management practice

The practice of moving new or changed hardware, software, documentation, processes, or any other service component to live environments.

IT asset management practice

The practice of planning and managing the full lifecycle of all IT assets.

information security management practice

The practice of protecting an organization by understanding and managing risks to the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of information.

service catalogue management practice

The practice of providing a single source of consistent information on all services and service offerings, and ensuring that it is available to the relevant audience.

architecture management practice

The practice of providing an understanding of all the different elements that make up an organization and how those elements relate to one another.

problem management practice

The practice of reducing the likelihood and impact of incidents by identifying actual and potential causes of incidents, and managing workarounds and known errors.

service level management practice

The practice of setting clear business-based targets for service performance so that the delivery of a service can be properly assessed, monitored, and managed against these targets.

service financial management practice

The practice of supporting an organization's strategies and plans for service management by ensuring that the organization's financial resources and investments are being used effectively.

service request management practice

The practice of supporting the agreed quality of a service by handling all pre-defined, user-initiated service requests in an effective and user-friendly manner.

monitoring and event management practice

The practice of systematically observing services and service components, and recording and reporting selected changes of state identified as events.

organizational velocity

The speed, effectiveness, and efficiency with which an organization operates. Organizational velocity influences time to market, quality, safety, costs, and risks.

technical debt

The total rework backlog accumulated by choosing workarounds instead of system solutions that would take longer.

big data

The use of very large volumes of structured and unstructured data from a variety of sources to gain new insights.

change schedule

A calendar that shows planned and historical changes.

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.

systems thinking

A holistic approach to analysis that focuses on the way that a system's constituent parts work, interrelate, and interact over time, and within the context of other systems.

business case

A justification for expenditure of organizational resources, providing information about costs, benefits, options, risks, and issues.

business impact analysis (BIA)

A key activity in the practice of service continuity management that identifies vital business functions and their dependencies.

acceptance criteria

A list of minimum requirements that a service or service component must meet for it to be acceptable to key stakeholders.

standard change

A low-risk, pre-authorized change that is well understood and fully documented, and which can be implemented without needing additional authorization.

maturity

A measure of the reliability, efficiency and effectiveness of an organization, practice, or process.

mean time between failures (MTBF)

A metric of how frequently a service or other configuration item fails.

change authority

A person or group responsible for authorizing a change.

known error

A problem that has been analysed but has not been resolved.

dashboard

A real-time graphical representation of data.

configuration record

A record containing the details of a configuration item (CI). Each configuration record documents the lifecycle of a single CI. Configuration records are stored in a configuration management database.

change model

A repeatable approach to the management of a particular type of change.

post-implementation review (PIR)

A review after the implementation of a change, to evaluate success and identify opportunities for improvement.

service owner

A role that is accountable for the delivery of a specific service.

confidentiality

A security objective that ensures information is not made available or disclosed to unauthorized entities.

integrity

A security objective that ensures information is only modified by authorized personnel and activities.

identity

A unique name that is used to identify and grant system access rights to a user, person, or role.

request catalogue

A view of the service catalogue, providing details on service requests for existing and new services, which is made available for the user.

cost centre

A business unit or project to which costs are assigned.

record

A document stating results achieved and providing evidence of activities performed.

waterfall method

A development approach that is linear and sequential with distinct objectives for each phase of development.

emergency change

A change that must be introduced as soon as possible.

test environment

A controlled environment established to test products, services, and other configuration items.

asset register

A database or list of assets, capturing key attributes such as ownership and financial value.

configuration management database (CMDB)

A database used to store configuration records throughout their lifecycle. The CMDB also maintains the relationships between configuration records.

disaster recovery plans

A set of clearly defined plans related to how an organization will recover from a disaster as well as return to a pre-disaster condition, considering the four dimensions of service management.

configuration management system (CMS)

A set of tools, data, and information that is used to support service configuration management.

disaster

A sudden unplanned event that causes great damage or serious loss to an organization. A disaster results in an organization failing to provide critical business functions for some predetermined minimum period of time.

support team

A team with the responsibility to maintain normal operations, address users' requests, and resolve incidents and problems related to specified products, services, or other configuration items.

use case

A technique using realistic practical scenarios to define functional requirements and to design tests.

risk assessment

An activity to identify, analyse, and evaluate risks.

development environment

An environment used to create or modify IT services or applications.

major incident

An incident with significant business impact, requiring an immediate coordinated resolution.

continuous integration / continuous delivery

An integrated set of practices and tools used to merge developers' code, build and test the resulting software, and package it so that it is ready for deployment.

configuration item (CI)

Any component that needs to be managed in order to deliver an IT service.

IT asset

Any financially valuable component that can contribute to the delivery of an IT product or service.

utility requirements

Functional requirements which have been defined by the customer and are unique to a specific product.

error control

Problem management activities used to manage known errors.

service catalogue

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

retire

The act of permanently withdrawing a product, service, or other configuration item from use.

escalation

The act of sharing awareness or transferring ownership of an issue or work item.

resolution

The action of solving an incident or problem.

capacity planning

The activity of creating a plan that manages resources to meet demand for services.

modelling

The activity of creating, maintaining, and utilizing models.

recovery

The activity of returning a configuration item to normal operation after a failure.

charging

The activity that assigns a price for services.

operational technology

The hardware and software solutions that detect or cause changes in physical processes through direct monitoring and/or control of physical devices such as valves, pumps, etc.

recovery time objective (RTO)

The maximum acceptable period of time following a service disruption that can elapse before the lack of business functionality severely impacts the organization.

recovery point objective (RPO)

The point to which information used by an activity must be restored to enable the activity to operate on resumption.

information security policy

The policy that governs an organization's approach to information security management.

business analysis practice

The practice of analysing a business or some element of a business, defining its needs and recommending solutions to address these needs and/or solve a business problem, and create value for stakeholders.

service desk practice

The practice of capturing demand for incident resolution and service requests.

service design practice

The practice of designing products and services that are fit for purpose, fit for use, and that can be delivered by the organization and its ecosystem.

warranty requirements

Typically non-functional requirements captured as inputs from key stakeholders and other practices.

mean time to restore service (MTRS)

mean time to restore service (MTRS)