Why is ITIL 4 Foundation worth studying for IT professionals and what benefits can they derive from it? In the technology industry, where services are at the core of most operations ranging from cybersecurity to machine learning, IT service management (ITSM) is a fundamental skill set. Thus, having a grasp of ITSM concepts and principles can provide a strong foundation for delivering value and achieving success.

IT job postings often include ITSM and ITIL as either a preferred or mandatory requirement, enabling professionals to be equipped with the necessary concepts and language to communicate effectively with peers and clients.

ITIL 4 Foundation can be likened to a hotel buffet, where you are presented with an overview of what’s available, and depending on your preferences, you can choose what to delve deeper into. It provides a fundamental understanding of ITSM, setting a solid foundation of skills and knowledge that can be leveraged to drive change within an organization. However, it’s important to note that this is just the beginning of the learning journey, and there’s more to explore beyond the Foundation level.

Upskilling to ITIL 4 Managing Professional and Strategic Leader levels

Technology professionals face numerous challenges in today’s world, such as the widespread adoption of cloud strategies, the increasing impact of AI across industries, the emergence of quantum computing, and the mainstream adoption of agile development. These developments can place significant pressure on professionals to remain flexible and willing to challenge conventional practices continually. Additionally, the expectations of customers and businesses have shifted, further compounding these demands.

The advanced ITIL 4 courses and certifications that lead to the Managing Professional or Strategic Leader designations are structured around themes like “Create, Deliver and Support” and “Direct, Plan and Improve”.

Organizing the advanced level ITIL 4 courses around themes is crucial as it equips learners to tackle both known and unknown challenges, without imposing rigid work methods. By teaching general strategies and approaches, practitioners are empowered to adapt their practices to suit their organization’s specific needs.

Understanding the customer journey with ITIL 4

ITIL 4’s advanced modules provide exclusive skills, knowledge, and competencies, including the concept of the customer journey.

In today’s landscape, where IT organizations are no longer limited to serving internal business customers but also external ones, IT and digital services have become critical components of business operations. As a result, technology professionals must comprehend the customer profile and engage with them directly through the IT or digital services they offer.

The ITIL 4 Specialist: Drive Stakeholder Value module prioritizes stakeholder value and customer journey, aiming to deliver exceptional services that leave a lasting impression on customers.

The ITIL 4 Leader: Digital and IT Strategy module provides practitioners with insights into the distinction between digital and IT strategies and equips them with the skills to engage in meaningful conversations about organizational transformation. The material covered in this course is guaranteed to broaden perspectives and provide valuable knowledge, particularly for professionals involved in designing, implementing, and enhancing digital strategies.

ITIL 4: Complementing other methods

When evaluating the IT services provided to an organization, it is essential to consider value streams, which encompass the complete lifecycle of a service, starting from its ideation to its deployment and usage as something valuable to both the business and the customer.

Numerous methodologies and frameworks, such as Scrum, DevOps, and ITIL, address various components of the value stream, and there may be some overlap between them. Rather than attempting to replace one with the other, the objective is to selectively incorporate advantageous elements from each methodology and framework in a mindful manner to enhance the value stream.

Modern technology professionals acknowledge the convergence of various work methodologies and the importance of collaboration, not only within the technology department but across the enterprise. Nevertheless, in my experience of training individuals, they are often uncertain about how and where to initiate this collaboration.

The ITIL 4 Managing Professional and Strategic Leader courses comprise essential knowledge that enables and empowers service management professionals to adapt and evolve. With a significant number of professionals possessing this knowledge, it becomes possible to drive organizational change on a larger scale.

Planning a learning path from ITIL Foundation

There are two approaches that practitioners can take when planning to pursue the higher-level modules of ITIL 4:

To begin with, if one aims to acquire contemporary IT service management expertise through ITIL 4, it is essential to incorporate a diverse range of courses. These courses have a coherent structure that enables professionals to comprehend the broader framework, but some modules may be more relevant to certain job roles. In the end, completing all the modules would aid in the comprehensive development of the IT professional.

Another approach to studying higher levels of ITIL 4 is to identify the pain points within your organization and determine the necessary skills and knowledge needed to address them from a business perspective. By doing so, you can improve your professional capabilities and help your organization. However, deciding which courses to take can be a challenging decision. That’s why it’s recommended to reach out to an Accredited Training Organization (ATO) for advice. A reputable ATO will aim to empower individuals by guiding them in understanding what is available and what would be beneficial for their specific needs.

Conclusion

Advancing your ITIL 4 knowledge beyond the foundation level is essential for enhancing your career opportunities and improving business success. IT professionals today face a constantly evolving landscape of technological advancements and changing business needs, which requires them to be adaptive and knowledgeable. The higher-level modules of ITIL 4 provide practitioners with advanced skills, knowledge, and competencies, including the concept of customer journey and stakeholder value, digital and IT strategy, and value stream mapping. These modules can help overcome organizational pain points and lead to wider organizational change. Whether you take a holistic approach to study all modules or focus on specific pain points within your organization, there are various resources available to help guide you through the process. With a critical mass of ITIL 4 certified professionals in an organization, the benefits are clear – not only for individual career growth but also for business success.

 

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It’s fantastic to consider forming a group of individuals dedicated to seeking out ways to enhance processes, products, or services through gradual improvements.

While having a good idea is great, it can be challenging to transform it into a successful reality. In this opinion, project management is crucial in developing a solution for an organization, but it’s equally important to prepare the organization itself for the solution through organizational change management (OCM). Neglecting either one of these components would likely result in an unsuccessful outcome. Therefore, my focus over the last decade has been primarily on OCM as it plays a crucial role in project success.

Unmanageable improvement cultures

Repeatedly, they’ve witnessed how organizations struggle to adopt a culture of continuous improvement. Instead, they tend to sporadically implement improvement practices, often focused on individuals who are seen as heroes, perpetuating a hero culture.

This refers to a scenario where a company relies on a particular individual or team, similar to Special Forces, to solve urgent problems regularly. However, such dependency on these heroes can create a culture that leads to burnout, as people get overwhelmed with responsibilities. In order to address this issue, there needs to be a shift in the company culture.

As part of the cultural shift, it’s essential to acknowledge and appreciate the contributions of individuals. However, it’s equally important for everyone in the organization to understand that this approach of heroism is no longer effective in driving improvements. Instead, there needs to be a structured approach that enables the organization to continuously make progress, rather than just reacting to changes.

Since this transformation involves changing the behavior of the organization itself, adopting a culture of continuous improvement would require organizational change management (OCM) to be successfully implemented.

Maintaining and improving approaches and methods throughout the organization

Rather than aiming to create a masterpiece every single time, it’s crucial to establish a consistent methodology that the entire company can follow.

While it’s crucial to strive for continuous improvement, you don’t want to overwhelm your team with an excessive amount of work that they can’t handle. When working with the end-to-end ITIL service value system (SVS) and value streams, it’s essential to avoid creating a massive blockage of processes. Additionally, it’s important to steer clear of a hyper-local view of improvement, ensuring that progress is made across the entire organization.

Assessing improvements’ effectiveness

So, how exactly can you attain a comprehensive perspective of outcomes, outputs, efficiencies, risks, and costs throughout the entire process?

In the context of ITIL 4 and its guiding principles, achieving a comprehensive perspective involves adopting an end-to-end view and a holistic approach, along with promoting collaboration and visibility across the organization through transparency.

These two elements are important for leveraging the ITIL 4 guiding principles. By adopting an end-to-end view and focusing on collaboration, it’s possible to identify bottlenecks and excess capacity and assess where there may be disruptions to the value streams that we aim to enhance. Without considering the entire process, it’s possible to sub-optimize a value stream by merely fixing one step, without understanding the impact that change may have on other steps upstream or downstream in the process.

Generating and incorporating feedback on improvements, implementations, and results

Their aim is to ensure that continuous improvement has a comprehensive, positive impact on the entire organization, both end-to-end and laterally. Our goal is to achieve the best possible outcome for co-creating value with our consumers and to do that, we need to carefully examine where we’re providing assistance, where we’re wasting time, and where our efforts may be causing harm.

Encouraging stakeholders to express their needs, wants, and concerns and to take risks

It’s essential that continuous improvement becomes the standard way of doing business, rather than a temporary solution to a specific problem before returning to old practices.

To achieve this, they need to foster a culture that welcomes risk-taking and encourages people to make suggestions, with the confidence that valuable ideas will be implemented. They should also promote rapid feedback loops and respond to feedback promptly.

The important factor is to encourage learning from failures instead of perpetuating a culture of blame. This requires effective organizational change management, and it must be initiated from the highest levels of leadership. The goal is to establish a continuous improvement mindset throughout the organization, not just a set of practices.

Many people associate continual improvement with small, gradual changes and consider organizational change management (OCM) to be more concerned with significant, groundbreaking transformations. However, there is a significant amount of overlap between the two. Moreover, the OCM activities undertaken during a large-scale implementation, such as working with stakeholder groups to identify potential areas of resistance, can provide valuable insights that can be leveraged to develop new continual improvement projects.

Once OCM and continual improvement are established effectively, they will operate collaboratively like Batman and Robin. Both are integral components of ITIL 4 methodology and essential for the prosperous deployment of any new solution.

 

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Starting a new business can bring a lot of excitement, but managing services may not be a top priority. On the other hand, if you’re an established small or medium-sized business, you may believe that comprehensive IT service management is only applicable to large corporations

Don’t get caught in these mistakes.

Establishing effective service management practices increases your likelihood of having a thriving business in the long run. By putting in place a structure to guide service delivery at the outset, you can cultivate a culture that:

• Providing excellent service to customers
• Delivering business value to shareholders

Reputation depends on service management

A business’s success or failure depends on its reputation. The foundation for this reputation is based on how the company interacts with and handles customer interactions.

Many startups fall short of reaching their full potential, not due to poor product quality or insufficient funding, but rather an inadequate customer service. Service management offers a structure that helps to meet and exceed customer expectations, thereby building a strong customer base.

However, many organizations, regardless of their size, often argue that “customer service is not our primary focus.” If that’s the case, what measures do you need to implement in order to deliver exceptional service to your customers? Both small businesses and startups understand the immense value of each and every customer.

The ITIL framework for service management

ITIL is the most widely adopted framework for service management, and it is currently in its fourth version with a clear emphasis on delivering business value. Startups should consider incorporating a plan to implement the parts of the framework that are most relevant to their needs into their business planning phase, even before they begin serving customers.

Implementing service management practices after a production error leads to the delivery of thousands of defective products to your customers is too late. Most startups encounter mistakes and setbacks along the way, and how you handle these incidents will determine whether you join the few successful startups or become just another failure in a competitive market that demands excellence.

For small and medium-sized businesses, the situation might be different. Despite overcoming challenges, you may not be entirely satisfied with the level of service delivery and customer experience.

Fortunately, you can leverage your existing knowledge and experience to use ITIL as a tool for transforming service management at any time.

ITIL 4 practices for SMBs and Startups

The ITIL 4 framework can be overwhelming when viewed for the first time, so where is the best place to begin?

Adopt a “less is more” approach

ITIL’s advice is to take a “less is more” approach when implementing the framework. Assess your business model and products, and determine the areas in the supply chain where you are most likely to encounter difficulties. Then, carefully review the framework and select the practices that are most likely to mitigate or resolve the potential challenges you may face.

Start with customer-facing practices

Focusing on customer-facing practices is likely to provide the most significant benefits. Consider starting with the practices that make up this aspect of the framework, such as incident management and service request management.

To establish these practices, it’s crucial to communicate with your customers and provide them with a clear point of contact for obtaining the assistance and information they need. The most effective way to do this is to set up a service desk function.

Enable change and agility

In the startup world, two auxiliary practices that are likely to bring substantial benefits are:

• Change enablement
• Problem management

Combining these with incident management and request management will result in:

• The necessary interaction with your customers.
• The flexibility required to swiftly identify issues and initiate the necessary modifications to resolve them.

ITIL and service management, in general, can be the deciding factor between success and failure for a company by establishing a clear, well-defined process with designated responsibilities. This ensures that the appropriate individuals will focus on resolving customer problems and maintaining their satisfaction, freeing up others to concentrate on growing the business.

Don’t go overboard

When determining the level of service management you need to implement in your start-up or small company, it’s important to remember the phrase “rigor without rigmarole.” This means having a structured process in place without getting bogged down by excessive bureaucracy.

The key is to strike the perfect balance with service management in your start-up or small company. You want to implement enough processes to guide how your operational and product teams manage launched products, but not too much that it slows down their ability to adapt or grow to meet market demands.

Bring in an expert

It is advisable to bring in some service management expertise, even temporarily, if your team does not have it. Properly executing this aspect of the service value chain will significantly impact your success in the long run.

Service management tools

Is it necessary to invest in a service management toolset for successful implementation? While some might argue that a toolset is not essential for effective service management, a purist would suggest that good service management practices can be achieved without one.

However, in actuality, it will be a smoother journey if you begin with a scalable IT service management (ITSM) tool that can grow with your business. The appropriate tool will enable you to automate numerous procedures, reducing room for error and guaranteeing that customer concerns and requests are not lost during the hectic period after new product or service releases.

Investing in a toolset based on ITIL can provide the advantage of previous experiences and lessons learned. Such tools have been refined and improved through the use of numerous service management professionals, offering a wealth of knowledge that can allow you to quickly establish effective service management systems.

The time is now

Developing your service management skills is never too late. You’re in the proper place if you’re completely new to it. Even if you have overlooked this crucial business function, you can simply set up a working front entrance that faces customers.

 

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Managing risk is crucial in jointly generating value in an IT Service Management (ITSM) setting. During service and product delivery, risks can arise in various areas, such as operational, legal, and financial.

In addition to reducing service and product delivery issues, government and regulatory entities may also examine an organization’s risk management policies and responses. Adopting and regulating risk in an ITSM setting is good for business and may also be mandated by regulations.

Risk management practices in ITIL 4

In the ITIL 4 framework, risk management is considered a general management practice with the dual purpose of ensuring that the organization:

1. Understands its risk profile
2. Knows how to effectively handle its risks

Two types of risks

It is important to comprehend the two types of risks.

Your risk profile is managed in order to take advantage of opportunities and improve them, while also reducing, minimizing, or eliminating any potential threats. While many companies concentrate mainly on addressing threats, they overlook the fact that ITIL 4 also concentrates on IT and businesses working together to create value, not just on delivering IT services.

Given this emphasis, I would contend that realizing opportunities in ITIL 4 risk management is just as crucial as preparing for and reacting to actualized dangers.

Critical risk management sub-practices

The ITIL 4 Risk Management procedure consists of four sub-procedures.

Risk management support

The risk management support sub-procedure outlines your risk management framework. This is where the fundamental questions regarding your approach to managing risk are addressed, including:

• How do you identify risks, both positive and negative?
• What risk levels is an organization prepared to allow?
• Who is responsible (in charge of) the different Risk Management duties?

This sub-procedure outlines the structure in which risk will be managed, not the methods for managing specific risks.

Business impact & risk analysis

This sub-procedure calculates the impact on the business that would result from actualized risks, and also helps determine the chance or likelihood of risk occurrence.

It’s crucial to assess both the likelihood of a risk occurring and the significance of each risk. Probabilities can be classified simply as low, medium, or high likelihood. Identifying the probability of each risk occurring helps prioritize which risks need response plans and the sequence in which each plan should be created.

Like the Project Management Institute (PMI) guidelines, the primary outcome of the Business Impact and Risk Analysis sub-procedure is the Risk Register, also known as the Risk Log. This document contains a list of recognized risks and the actions to be taken in the event of risk realization.

Assessment of required risk mitigation

In this sub-procedure, two crucial items are determined:

• The tactics for responding to risk (known as countermeasures)
• The Risk Owner for each specific risk

The Risk Owner is accountable for identifying any necessary countermeasures and for keeping any countermeasures up-to-date.

In determining countermeasures, we can follow PMI’s approach and define countermeasures that can be taken for positive risks (opportunities) and those that can be taken for negative risks (threats), as shown here:

COUNTERMEASURES FOR RISK OPPORTUNITIES & THREATS
Countermeasure	Strategy	Risk type
Share	Sharing the benefit/responsibility/threat of a risk with another party	Opportunity/Threat
Exploit	Acting to ensure that an opportunity occurs	Opportunity
Enhance	Increasing the size or capacity of the IT service or product being offered	Opportunity
Escalate	Entrusting the risk to someone outside the project, program, or portfolio who can better realize the opportunity	Opportunity
Avoid	Avoiding the risk by avoiding the activity that activates the risk	Threat
Transfer	Reassigning the risk exposure to a third party, such as an insurance company	Threat
Mitigate	Implementing controls and contingencies to reduce the probability or the impact of the risk	Threat
Acceptance	For risks that are not covered by other countermeasures, an organization may accept a risk (do nothing) because it is too cumbersome or expensive to control	Threat

Risk monitoring

This is where the action is taken when a risk has materialized, and the progress of implemented risk countermeasures is monitored. It’s important to ensure that the response to the risk is commensurate with its impact and to make any necessary adjustments or modifications to the response.

Monitoring may entail modifying countermeasure actions if the actual impact of the risk is greater or less than anticipated. It is also necessary to monitor or report on the efficiency of the planned countermeasure in addressing the risk. Revisiting the other three sub-procedures may also be necessary during risk monitoring, such as:

• Modifying your risk framework
• Revisiting business impacts and risk analysis processes
• Reassessing your risk mitigation countermeasure planning

Risk management & other ITIL practices

Risk management is not a solitary or one-time process, it operates within a larger context.

Risk management is an ongoing process that should be regularly assessed or reassessed whenever there is a change within the ITIL 4 Service Value system, especially with regard to changes in opportunities or demand, the Service Value Chain, and other sub-procedures under the General Management, Service Management, and Technology Management practices. The risk management sub-procedures should also be revisited when a new risk is identified during an incident management occurrence.

Since ITIL 4 is a comprehensive framework that emphasizes co-creating business value, not just IT service delivery, the risk management practices can and should be applied to all aspects of ITSM, not just IT service provision.

 

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Almost every entity, be it a government agency, hospital, or food chain, exists to serve its clients. However, how they provide these services varies based on factors such as their operating conditions, the needs of customers and stakeholders, available resources, and cultural influences.

In the digital era, technology-focused service delivery is becoming the go-to model for organizations of all sizes. According to UNCTAD, in 2020, the export of digitally delivered services grew to almost 64% of total service exports, largely due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The ITIL® framework, which has been around for the past 30 years, remains a valuable tool that organizations can use to guide the delivery of technology-related services. In this article, we will explore how organizations can utilize the ITIL 4 framework to enhance their service delivery efforts, resulting in benefits for both the organization and its customers.

What is Service Delivery?

Service delivery is a subset of service management and is defined by the Cambridge Dictionary as the process of providing a service to customers. It is typically considered the final stage in which a service is made available to customers who request it after being developed and made operational.

The success of service delivery is often evaluated from the customer’s point of view, specifically whether they are pleased with the service they received and the efforts put forth by the provider in delivering it.

• It’s clear that a service that performs poorly, such as with frequent login failures, slow responses, or a poorly designed user interface, will not meet expectations.
• Even if the service is of good quality, if the provider is inadequate in delivering it, such as with delays, poor customer service, or incorrect billing, the customer’s perception will remain negative.

Achieving successful service delivery requires an understanding of the necessary skills and the required quantity of each resource. The ITIL 4 CDS publication states that all four dimensions of service management (organization and people, information and technology, partners and suppliers, and value streams and processes) must be taken into account holistically to determine the appropriate resource needs in terms of both quantity and quality.

Individuals involved in service delivery, particularly those who interact directly with customers, such as the service desk, must be equipped with the necessary tools and information to effectively meet customer requirements and meet established service goals. They must also be motivated and led properly, within a culture that prioritizes services and customers.

• Automation should be implemented for repetitive manual tasks to optimize them and achieve faster delivery times and improved quality.
• When working with third-party vendors or partners, contracts and agreements must establish an approach that prioritizes customer satisfaction.
• Value streams and processes should be consistently evaluated and optimized to prevent them from hindering efforts to effectively meet customer needs.

The ITIL 4 Service Value Chain

ITIL 4 introduces the concept of the service value chain, which is the central component of the service value system.

The service value chain is an operating model that outlines a series of interrelated activities necessary to respond to customer demand and realize value through the creation and management of products and services. This specific combination of activities and accompanying practices creates a value stream that begins with a request and culminates in value delivered through the provision of products and services.

For instance, a value stream relating to access to a SharePoint folder might start with the Engage activity, where the user requests access through the Service Desk via email or by submitting a request through an ITSM tool. The Service Desk Agent then fulfills the access request through the Deliver and Support activity.

The Deliver and Support activity is the key component of service delivery in the Service Value Chain. Its purpose is to ensure that services are delivered and supported by agreed specifications and stakeholder expectations.

The Deliver and Support activity receives inputs from other activities within the Service Value Chain, including:

• New and changed products and services provided by Design and Transition
• Service components provided by Obtain/Build
• Improvement initiatives provided by Improve
• Improvement status reports from Improve
• User support tasks provided by Engage
• Knowledge and information about new and changed service components and services from Design and Transition, and Obtaining/Build
• Knowledge and information about third-party service components from Engage

The key outcomes of the Deliver and Support activity are:

• Services delivered to customers and users
• Information on the completion of user support tasks for Engage
• Product and service performance information for engaging and Improve
• Improvement opportunities to Improve
• Contract and agreement requirements for Engage
• Change requests for Obtain/Build
• Service performance information for Design and Transition

ITIL 4 Service Delivery Practices

According to ITIL 4, there are 34 management practices that serve as organizational resources for achieving goals. These practices support the different stages of the value stream, but they need to be organized and combined with each other to create value. Although all of the practices are useful, not all of them will be necessary for core service delivery activities.

When it comes to the Deliver and Support activity in the Service Value Chain, certain practices are more critical for successful service delivery, as highlighted in the heatmap from the ITIL 4 Foundation publication.

• Service Request Management: The core of service delivery lies in the practice of managing predefined, user-generated service requests efficiently and in a way that is user-friendly, in order to ensure the agreed quality of the service.
• Service Desk: The practice of recording requests for incident resolution and service needs is crucial. The service desk should be the primary point of contact between the service provider and its users and must effectively capture demand to ensure effective service delivery.
• Change Enablement: The practice of ensuring the highest number of successful changes to services and products by evaluating potential risks, giving approval for changes to occur, and managing the change schedule. In terms of service delivery, standard changes play a significant role as some customer requests may be satisfied by implementing changes.

 

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The fourth version of ITIL® is a significant departure from its previous iterations, as it has been redesigned as a best practices framework for organizations undergoing digital transformation.

ITIL 4 is a best-practice approach to IT service management. It is widely used and its latest version can be integrated with organizations that are already using Lean, DevOps, and Agile methodologies to achieve service excellence in software development projects.

One of the most noticeable changes from ITIL v3 is the inclusion of practices that cover the following intersecting processes:

1. Service Strategy
2. Service Design
3. Service Transition
4. Service Operation
5. Continual Service Operation

ITIL 4 replaces the linear ITIL lifecycle with the Service Value Chain (SVC) and Value Streams. The latest version of the framework includes six core elements in the SVC:

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

What’s the ITIL lifecycle?

ITIL 4 includes extensive information on the Service Value Chain, including:

• Core components
• The activities that contribute to each element
• Outcomes
• The resulting value propositions

To summarize, the following are the collective purposes of these value chain elements in relation to the ITIL lifecycle:

Plan

In the Plan element, various practices are coordinated across the value chain to create a flexible operating model that involves all stakeholders in the ITSM organization.

The planning phase must encompass all strategic, tactical, and operational aspects of framework execution. The outcomes and value should be defined from a business perspective and should allow for evolution as new requirements and stakeholders are introduced.

The planning activity primarily covers these practices:

• General Management
•  Service Management

Improve

The Improve phase focuses on co-creating value on an ongoing basis. The activities associated with this element of the Service Value Chain are planned in advance and continue throughout the ITIL lifecycle.

The Improve stage takes a comprehensive approach and nothing is considered out of scope. Every stakeholder and member of the ITSM organization is responsible for contributing to ongoing improvement.

The Improve activity contributes to these practices:

• General Management
• Service Management
• Value Streams

Engage

After the planning is complete and provisions for ongoing improvement have been put in place, it’s time to involve the stakeholders.

Interactions with stakeholders within and outside the organization, including employees, leadership, partners, and customers, are included. A range of collaboration tools can be used, including both digital and physical tools, written and oral communication, self-service portals, and in-person meetings. Emerging technologies such as AI-powered chatbots and knowledge management solutions can help to reduce the manual workload for stakeholders in the ITIL Service Desk domain.

This SVC element contributes to:

• General Management
• Service Management
• Value Streams

Design & Translation

The final product should meet all stakeholder requirements in terms of costs, time, and quality. (It’s important to note that the specific requirements captured, agreed upon, and validated during the planning stage should be fully understood by all members of the organization.)

During the design and translation stage, appropriate governance measures should be in place to track and align project performance to established specifications and goals. The risk tolerance of the organization should be taken into account, as the performance of the project may need to be adjusted as part of the ongoing improvement strategy.

This SVC element primarily contributes to these practices:

• General Management
• Service Management
• Technical Management
• Value Streams

Obtain/Build

The Obtain/Build phase refers to the practical implementation of planning, engagement, and design efforts.

The organization should ensure that the necessary components are procured and delivered as required by the members building the products. It’s important to make sure that all components are delivered as specified and expected. These components are then provided to members working on product design, delivery, or support. Performance information can help to improve the procurement process and can expedite:

• Time to market
• Procurement of high-quality product components and services

The SVC stage contributes to these practices:

• General Management
• Service Management
• Technical Management

Deliver & Support

The final element of the Service Value Chain ensures that the end product meets the specified requirements and the expectations of all stakeholders in practice.

This phase focuses on the needs of the users, and the corresponding ITIL 4 best practice guidelines aim to understand the actual performance of delivered products and services. The Service Desk plays a key role in providing support to a large user base and works with internal IT to manage problems, incidents, changes, and support requests.

These SVC practices generally contribute to:

• General Management
• Service Management
• Value Streams

ITIL works with DevOps

Finally, the Service Value Chain approach to the ITIL lifecycle takes into account the main challenges and complexities of modern software development methodologies such as DevOps.

ITIL provides a customizable best practice framework that acknowledges the constantly changing nature of software development. When traditional, long-term waterfall projects fail to deliver and the organization needs to focus on a minimum viable product (MVP), organizations can follow actionable SVC guidelines instead of adhering to a linear and inflexible ITSM framework.

 

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Managing risk is an essential aspect of creating value through IT service management (ITSM). Risks can arise in various areas during the delivery of services and products, including operational, legal, and financial risks.

In addition to reducing problems in service and product delivery, risk management policies and responses may also be reviewed by government and regulatory agencies. Managing and controlling risk in an ITSM environment is not only good business practice but it may also be required by regulations.

This article discusses risk management within the context of an ITIL 4 framework. If you are using an ITIL v3 framework, you can refer to our companion article on IT risk management for ITIL v3 and ITSM environments.

Risk management practices in ITIL 4

According to the ITIL 4 framework, risk management is a general management practice with the following dual purpose: to ensure that the organization:

1. Understands its risk profile
2. Knows how to effectively handle its risks

Two types of risks

It’s important to understand the two types of risks:

You can manage your risk profile by taking advantage of opportunities while also reducing or eliminating threats. While many organizations primarily focus on responding to threats, it’s important to remember that ITIL 4 also emphasizes the role of IT in creating business value, not just delivering IT services.

With this emphasis on creating business value, it is equally important in ITIL 4 risk management to pursue opportunities as it is to plan for and respond to realized threats.

Critical risk management sub-practices

The ITIL 4 Risk Management practice is divided into four sub-practices.

Risk management support

The risk management support sub-practice establishes your risk management framework by addressing basic questions about how you handle risk, such as:

• How do you identify risks, both positive and negative?
• What risk levels is an organization prepared to allow?
• Who is responsible (in charge of) the different Risk Management duties?

It’s important to note that this sub-practice defines the overall framework for managing risk, rather than addressing specific risks individually.

Business impact & risk analysis

This sub-practice estimates the impact on the business that would result if a risk were to materialize and helps to assess the likelihood or probability of the risk occurring.

It’s important to evaluate both the probability that a risk will occur and the significance of each risk. Probabilities can be broadly classified as low, medium, or high. Assessing the probability of each risk helps to prioritize which risks require response plans and the order in which the plans should be developed.

Like the guidelines set by the Project Management Institute (PMI), the primary output of the Business Impact and Risk Analysis sub-practice is the Risk Register, sometimes called the Risk Log. The Risk Register lists identified risks and the responses that will be carried out if a risk materializes.

Assessment of required risk mitigation

In this sub-practice, you determine two important items:

• The risk response strategies (or countermeasures) for responding to a risk
• The Risk Owner for each specific risk

The Risk Owner is responsible for identifying any necessary countermeasures and maintaining them.

ITIL can follow the PMI’s guidance by identifying countermeasures for both positive risks (opportunities) and negative risks (threats) as shown below:

COUNTERMEASURES FOR RISK OPPORTUNITIES & THREATS
Countermeasure	Strategy	Risk type
Share	Sharing the benefit/responsibility/threat of a risk with another party	Opportunity/Threat
Exploit	Acting to ensure that an opportunity occurs	Opportunity
Enhance	Increasing the size or capacity of the IT service or product being offered	Opportunity
Escalate	Entrusting the risk to someone outside the project, program, or portfolio who can better realize the opportunity	Opportunity
Avoid	Avoiding the risk by avoiding the activity that activates the risk	Threat
Transfer	Reassigning the risk exposure to a third party, such as an insurance company	Threat
Mitigate	Implementing controls and contingencies to reduce the probability or the impact of the risk	Threat
Acceptance	For risks that are not covered by other countermeasures, an organization may accept a risk (do nothing) because it is too cumbersome or expensive to control	Threat

Risk monitoring

This is the stage where you take action when a risk has been realized and track the progress of implemented countermeasures. It’s important to ensure that the risk response is appropriate in light of the risk impact and to adjust or modify the response as needed.

Monitoring may involve modifying countermeasures if the actual risk impact is more or less severe than anticipated. You should also track how well the planned countermeasure is addressing the risk. Risk monitoring may also require revisiting the other three sub-practices:

• Modifying your risk framework
• Revisiting business impacts and risk analysis processes
• Reassessing your risk mitigation countermeasure planning

Risk management & other ITIL practices

Risk management is not a standalone process that is completed once and then forgotten.

Risk management is a continuous process that should be reviewed or reevaluated whenever there are changes within the ITIL 4 Service Value system, particularly changes in opportunity or demand, the Service Value Chain, and other sub-practices under the General Management, Service Management, and Technology Management practices. Risk management sub-practices should also be revisited when a new risk is identified during an incident management event.

Since ITIL 4 is a comprehensive framework that emphasizes co-creating business value, risk management practices should be applied to all aspects of ITSM, not just IT service delivery.

 

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