ITIL® v4 Foundation

The 7 guiding
principles
A. Degeest 1
 7 Guiding principles

• Guiding principles
• Recommendation that GUIDES an organization’s
decisions and actions in all circumstances regardless
of changes in its goals, strategies, type of work, or
management structure
• Universal and enduring
= Common approach to Service Management
 Organization’s CULTURE and behaviour from
strategic decision-making to day-to-day operations

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 7 Guiding principles

• Inside the ITIL Service Value System (SVS)

Guiding Principles
Governance
Opportunity
/Demand
Service Value Chain Value
Practices

Continual Improvement

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 Principle interaction

• The ITIL guiding principles INTERACT with and

depend upon each other
• Organizations should consider the relevance of EACH
OF THEM and how they apply TOGETHER

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 7 principles
1. Focus on value

2. Start where you are

3. Progress iteratively with feedback

4. Collaborate and promote visibility

5. Think and work holistically

6. Keep it simple and practical

7. Optimize and automate

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1. Focus on VALUE

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 1. Focus on VALUE

• Key message
• All activities conducted by the organization
should link back, directly or indirectly, to VALUE
for itself, its customers, and other stakeholders

 “Value should be taken into account by

everybody!”

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 1. Focus on value

• STEP 1 : WHO is the service consumer ?

• When focusing on value, the first step is to know is “who
is being served, who the service consumer is and who the
key stakeholders are”

SERVICE CONSUMERS

CUSTOMERS USERS SPONSORS

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 1. Focus on value
• STEP 2 : The consumer’s perspectives of value
• The service provider must understand what is
truly of value to the service consumer?
• The service provider needs to know
• Why the consumer uses the services
• What the services help them to do
• How the services help them achieve their goals
• The role of cost/financial consequences for the service
consumer
• The risks involved for the service consumer

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 1. Focus on value
• STEP 2 : The consumer’s perspectives of value
• Value can come in many forms
• Revenue
• Customer loyalty
• Increased productivity
• Reduced negative impact
• Reduced costs
• The ability to pursue new markets
• A better competitive position
• Growth opportunity

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 1. Focus on value
• Customer Experience (CX)
• An important element of value is the experience
that service consumers have when they interact
with the service and the service provider
 CX: customer experience & UX: user experience

• CX : entirety of the interactions a customer has

with an organization and its products
 The staff must know their customers and
understand CX

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 1. Focus on value

• 3 Advices to apply this principle

1. KNOW HOW service consumers USE each service
2. Encourage a FOCUS ON VALUE among all staff
3. Focus on value
• During normal operational activity

• AND during improvement initiatives : in every step of

any improvement initiative

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2. Start where
you are
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 2. Start where you are

• Do not start over without first considering

WHAT IS ALREADY AVAILABLE
= Don’t start from scratch
• <> To build something completely new
• rarely necessary or wise
• can be extremely wasteful, in terms of time & loss of
existing services, processed, people, and tools that could
have significant value in the improvement effort

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 2. Start where you are

• ASSESS where you are

• Measurements & Observations of services and
methods already in place to understand
• Their current state
• What can be re-used from them

• Accurate information  decisions on how to

proceed

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 2. Start where you are

• MEASUREMENT
• Important to this principle
• Should support but not replace what is observed
 data analytics and reporting can introduce
biases and risks in decision-making
• MEASURES : KPI “Key Performance Indicators”

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 2. Start where you are

• Advices to apply this principle

1. Look at what exists as objectively as possible
• Already successful practices or services in the current
state  How these can be replicated or expanded
upon to achieve the desired state

2. Apply your risk management skills

3. BUT sometimes nothing from the current state

can be re-used

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 3. Progress
iteratively with
feedback
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 3. Progress iteratively with feedback

• ITERATION
• Organizing work into smaller & manageable
sections that can be executed & completed in a
timely manner
 Focus on each effort will be sharper and easier to
maintain
• Resist the temptation to do everything at once :
DO SOMETHING
• Even huge initiatives must be accomplished
iteratively
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 3. Progress iteratively with feedback
• FEEDBACK
• Feedback before, throughout, and after each iteration will
ensure that actions are focused and appropriate

• Well-constructed feedback mechanisms facilitate

understanding of:
• End user and customer perception of the value created
• The efficiency and effectiveness of value chain activities
• The effectiveness of service governance as well as management controls
• The interfaces between the organization and its partner and supplier network
• The demand for products and services

• Feedback  Identification of improvement opportunities,

risks and issues
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 3. Progress iteratively with feedback

• Iteration + feedback together

• Working in an iterative manner with feedback
loops embedded into the process allows for
• Greater flexibility
• Faster response to customer and business needs
• The ability to discover and respond to failure earlier
• An overall improvement in quality

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 3. Progress iteratively with feedback

• Advices to apply this principle

1. Comprehend the whole, but do something

2. The ecosystem is constantly changing so

feedback is essential

3. Fast does not mean incomplete : Any iteration

should be produced in line with the concept of
the minimum viable product

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4. Collaborate and
promote visibility

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 4. Collaborate and promote visibility

• DON’T PROTECT information & SHARE your knowledge

• VISIBILITY : Better information is available for decision-
making

 When initiatives involve the right people in the correct

roles, efforts benefit from better buy-in, more relevance and
increased likelihood of long-term success

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 4. Collaborate and promote visibility

• Whom to collaborate with

• Identifying and managing all the stakeholder groups that
an organization deals with is important : the people and
perspectives necessary for successful collaboration can be
sourced within these stakeholder groups

• Stakeholder : anyone who has a stake in the activities of

the organization, including the organization itself, its
customers and/or users, and many others.

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 4. Collaborate and promote visibility

• Whom to collaborate with : Stakeholders

1. Customers defining their requirements

2. Developers collaborating with other internal teams

3. Suppliers collaborating with the organization to define

its requirements

4. Relationship Managers collaborating with service

consumers to understand their needs and priorities

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 4. Collaborate and promote visibility
• Communication for improvement
• The contribution to improvement of each stakeholder
group at each level should be understood

• Important to define the most effective methods to engage

with the stakeholder

• Example : the contribution to improvement from

customers of a public cloud service may be through a
survey or checklist of options for different functionalities

• Some contributors may need to be involved at a very

detailed level, while others can simply be involved as
reviewers or approvers
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4. Collaborate and promote visibility
• Increasing urgency through visibility
• PROMOTE VISIBILITY & COMMUNICATION : When
stakeholders have poor visibility of the workload and
progression of work, there is a risk of creating the
impression that the work is not a priority

• Insufficient visibility of work leads to poor decision-

making  The organization needs to perform critical
analysis activities:
• Understand the flow of work in progress
• Identifying bottlenecks, as well as excess capacity
• Uncovering waste 28
 4. Collaborate and promote visibility

• Advices to apply this principle

1. Collaboration does not mean consensus
2. Communicate in a way the audience can hear
• Select the right method and message for each
audience is critical for success

3. Decisions can only be made on visible data

• Making decisions in the absence of data is risky

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5. Think and work
holistically

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 5. Think and work holistically

• NO service, practice, process, department, or

supplier STANDS ALONE
• The outputs that the organization delivers to itself,
its customers, and other stakeholders will suffer
unless it works in an INTEGRATED WAY to handle its
activities as a whole, rather that as separate parts
• All the organization’s activities should be focused
on the delivery of value

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 5. Think and work holistically

• Coordination & Integration of the 4 dimensions

Organizations & Information &

People Technology

1 Products & services 2

VALUE
3 4
Value streams &
Partners & suppliers
processes

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 5. Think and work holistically

• Advices to apply this principle

1. RECOGNIZE THE COMPLEXITY of the systems

2. COLLABORATION is key to thinking and working

holistically

3. AUTOMATION can facilitate working holistically

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6. Keep it simple
and practical

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 6. Keep it simple and practical

• MAXIMIZE outcomes & MINIMIZE costs

 If a process, service, action, or metric fails to provide
value or produce a useful outcome : ELIMINATE IT

• Use the MINIMUM number of steps to accomplish an

objective

• OUTCOME-based thinking : production of practical

solutions that deliver valuable outcomes

• This obvious principle is frequently ignored

 complex methods of work that rarely maximize outcomes
or minimize cost

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 6. Keep it simple and practical

• Judging what to keep

• When analysing a practice, process, service,
metric, or other improvement target, always ask
whether it contributes to VALUE CREATION
• To keep service management simple and
practical = understanding exactly how something
contributes to value creation
• When designing, managing, or operating
practices, be mindful of CONFLICTING objectives

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 6. Keep it simple and practical

• Conflicting objectives
• When designing, managing or operating
practices, be mindful of conflicting objectives
 The organization should agree on a balance
between its competing objectives

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 6. Keep it simple and practical

• Advices to apply this principle

• Ensure 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

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 7. Optimize
and automate
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 7. Optimize and automate

• Objective of this principle

• Organizations must maximize the value of the
work carried out by their human and technical
resources

 Technology can help organizations to scale up

and take on frequent and repetitive tasks,
allowing human resources to be used for more
complex decision-making

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 7. Optimize and automate
• Optimization in 6 steps
1. Understand and agree the context in which the
proposed optimization exists : the vision & objectives
2. Assess the current state of the proposed optimization
3. Agree what the future state and priorities of the
organization should be, focusing on simplification and
value
4. Ensure the optimization has the appropriate level of
stakeholder engagement and commitment
5. Execute the improvements in an iterative way
6. Continually monitor the impact of optimization
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 7. Optimize and automate

• Automation
• Standard & repeating tasks : What you do
300x/day : AUTOMATE !
 Opportunities for automation can be found
across the entire organization
 Can help save the organization costs, reduce
human error, and improve employee experience

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 7. Optimize and automate

• Advices to apply this principle

1. Simplify and/or optimize before automating
2. Define your metrics : KPI
3. Use the other guiding principles when applying
this one
• Progress iteratively with feedback
• Keep it simple an practical
• Focus on value
• Start where you are
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