ITIL® 4 Foundation: Introduction
This is a guide on ITIL 4 Foundation.
What is ITIL
Well, the first question we want to answer on our journey here is what is ITIL? Well, ITIL is the world's most widely used service management framework. Or more specifically, ITSM, Information Technology Service Management framework. Now ITIL actually is no longer an acronym that stands for Information Technology Infrastructure Library. That's really what ITIL was all the way up through version 3, but now, in ITIL 4 it's just ITIL, I-T-I-L. Because it's so much more than an infrastructure library.
It's a community, an industry led initiative involving a global team of industry experts, including 150 content writers, reviewers, and contributors from the wider IT industry. They've also created the ITIL Development Group, which now has over 2,000 members. And it's helped steer the development of ITIL 4 and will continue to do so moving forward. The first release of ITIL 4 will be the foundation level along with the foundation level exam, which is why you're here, with the additional levels due for release in late 2019.
[Video description begins] ITIL 4 [Video description ends]
As you well know information technology is at the core of every business in today's world. The version 4 update of ITIL will allow them to reflect the fast pace and complex environment that we exist in. As well as new ways of working and emerging practices. These practices are essential not only for IT service management professionals, but also for the wider range of professionals working in the digital transformation world. The purpose of ITIL is to offer organizations comprehensive guidance for the management of information technology in the modern service economy. ITIL 4 will evolve to provide an end-to-end IT digital operating model covering the full delivery and sustaining other tech-enabled products and services. Guiding organizations and how information technology interfaces with and even leads the wider business strategy. That in a nutshell is ITIL.
The ITIL® Certification Scheme
In this lesson, let’s do a web safari up to this website it’s axelos.com/certifications/
Well, there's no hard and fast rule, however, a great way to go would be the Direct, Plan and Improve certification because notice that’s part of two qualifications or requirements for the next level ITIL Managing Professional, which happens to be the certification that I hold and ITIL Strategic Leader.
So if you go ahead and study for that, get some training, and take the exam, when you pass that, you have one of your requirements for either one of those certifications. If you go to the right and decide to go to the Strategic Leader path, you would take the Digital and IT Strategy certification exam.
For IT Managing Professional, you would go next with High-velocity IT, Drive Stakeholder Value, and Create, Deliver and Support. If you decide to go on to be ITIL Master, you’ll have to be ITIL Managing Professional (MP) and Strategic Leader (SL) and also, you have to achieve an ITIL MP CDS certificate and any five practice based certifications and we see those under the ITIL Practice Manager or PM.
And there’s three categories: Monitor, Support and Fulfill; Plan, Implement and Control; Collaborate, Assure and Improve. Then we see to the left here for more specialized ITIL4 certification. For example, Acquiring and Managing Cloud Services, Business Relationship Management, Sustainability in Digital and IT, and IT Asset Management or ITAM as it’s referred to.
But as far as all of you are concerned, once you pass the ITIL Foundation, a good recommendation is to go next to the Direct, Plan and Improve path. And again, this is the ITIL4 Certification Scheme as of the third quarter or October of 2023. Realize things can change in the future, so always make sure you come up to axelos.com/certifications and review the ITIL4 Certification Scheme or path to ITIL master.
The ITIL® Foundation Exam
I want to talk now about the ITIL 4 Foundation Exam.
[Video description begins] The ITIL® 4 Foundation Exam [Video description ends]
You have 60 minutes to complete the exam. 75 minutes, if you're not taking it in your native or working language. The exam has 40 questions, each worth 1 point. There are four types of questions and we'll look at these here in a moment. Standard, missing word, list, and what is not. The passing score is 65% or 26 points out of 40.
[Video description begins] Question Type Samples [Video description ends]
Let's look at a sample of each question type. So here is the standard question or standard OTQ, which is a source of best practice, and then pick the best answer out of four, A, B, C or D.
[Video description begins] The options are Q, P, R, and S. [Video description ends]
Next we have an example list OTQ, which statement about service asset and configuration management is correct? They'll give you four options. It does Q, it does P, it does R, it does S, and then you choose the best answer. One and two, two and three, three and four, or one and four. The next question type is missing word. They'll ask you to identify the missing word or words in the following sentence. A blank defines requirements for services and takes responsibility for outcomes from service consumption. Choose one of the answers to fill in the missing word.
[Video description begins] The options are Role Q, Role P, Role R, and Role S. [Video description ends]
The fourth question type is the negative standard OTQ. For example, which is not a defined area of value, and then you would choose the correct answer from the four options.
[Video description begins] The options are Q, P, R, and S. [Video description ends]
Keep in mind, negative questions are only used as an exception, where part of the learning outcome is to know that something is not done or should not occur. Also realize this is the only question type with a negative. The list style questions that we looked at earlier are never negative.
[Video description begins] Bloom's Level Taxonomy [Video description ends]
ITIL questions are based on Bloom's level taxonomy, Bloom's level 1, which represents approximately 77.5% of the questions simply involves to remember. Remembering is the lowest level of learning in the cognitive domain in Bloom's taxonomy, and typically doesn't bring about a change in behavior. It just simply involves memorization and recall of data or information with no evidence of understanding. Bloom's level 2, which is about 22.5% of the questions, involves to understand. The Apply level 3, Analyze level 4, Evaluate level 5, and Create Bloom level 6. These are tested in the ITIL Managing Professional, ITIL MP, and Strategic Leader, ITIL SL.
The ITIL® 4 Path
One, understand the key service concepts, which has five questions representing 12.5% of the exam. Second, understand how the ITIL guiding principles can help an organization adopt and adapt service management. There are six questions here representing 15% of the exam. Third understand the four dimensions of service management, two questions 5%. Fourth, understand the purpose and components of the ITIL service value system. This learning outcome has one question representing 2.5% of the exam. Fifth, understand the activities of the service value chain and how they interconnect. This outcome has two questions representing 5% of the exam. Sixth, know the purpose and key terms of 15 ITIL practices. This will have seven questions representing 17.5% of the exam. And the largest learning outcome domain is domain seven, understand 7 ITIL practices with 17 questions representing 42.5 or almost half of the entire ITIL foundation exam. Now this ITIL 4 Foundation training was actually produced and recorded in the summer of 2019 and in November of
[Video description begins] The Purpose of ITIL [Video description ends]
2019 AXELOS announced some changes to the ITIL 4 Foundation syllabus. In other words they removed some things from the testing objectives. For example you only need to describe the purpose of each value chain activity. In other words you no longer need to describe the inputs and outputs of each activity. Now throughout this training I do talk about the different inputs and outputs of value chain activities but realize they won't be tested on the exam. Don't forget however this training is not only an exam prep for the ITIL 4 foundation but we're building a foundation for your future journey into higher-level ITIL 4 modules. For example the Managing Professional You have to explain the ITIL practices excluding how they fit in the service value chain or the SVC. In other words the relationship between these practices and how they fit within the service value chain will be explored in greater detail in the future publication. Also the following practices have been removed from the ITIL 4 foundation assessment Availability Management, as a matter of fact the term availability has been removed from exemptible scope You will also not be tested on Capacity and Performance Management and Service Continuity Management I'll make sure to remind you several times throughout this training about these different areas that have been changed in the syllabus as of November 2019 to make sure you don't worry about those aspects on the exam. To wrap up this course, remember the purpose of ITIL 4 is to provide organizations with comprehensive guidance for the management of IT-enabled service in the digital economy. ITIL 4 provides organizations with a comprehensive framework for IT service management, ITSM. It is designed to ensure that an effective, efficient, flexible, coordinated, and integrated system for governance and management of IT services is established and continually improving in the organization. These two statements represent the first real testable elements of the ITIL 4 foundation exam. Make sure that you understand these two statements.
IT Service Management in the Modern World
It's the latest evolution of the most wildly adopted guidance for ITSM, IT Service Management. And its audience is going to range from IT and business students taking their first steps in service management all the way to seasoned professionals who are familiar with earlier versions of ITIL. For example, ITIL version 3 and other sources of industry best practices. We have to understand that ITIL 4 has been substantially modified to address IT service management in the modern world.
As a matter of fact, in the ITIL 4 Foundation manual, you'll follow the exploits of a fictional company called Axel Car Hire on its ITIL journey. Now, none of the specifics of Axle Car Hire including its employees, Henry, Su, Radica, and Marco will be on the exam. But it was important for ITIL to expand the architecture and expand the framework to be more relevant to the modern world.
[Video description begins] IT Service Management in the Modern World [Video description ends]
According to the World Trade Organization, the WTO, services comprise the largest and most dynamic component of the economies of both developed and developing countries. Services are the main ways that organizations create value for themselves and for their customers. Almost all services today are IT-enabled. So there's tremendous benefit for organizations in creating ITSM capability, managing ITSM capability, improving ITSM capability, and expanding ITSM capability. Creating or generating ideas and capability goes beyond just leveraging new technologies, the new architectures and frameworks. It involves using organizations and people. It involves information and technology, taking advantage of the knowledge and expertise of stakeholders such as partners and suppliers.
Finding new value streams and improving processes. Managing ITSM capability will involve the service value chain, where demand is input into activities like engage, plan, improve, obtain or build, design and transition, and deliver and support products and services. The result being value. We improve ITSM capability by following the steps of the continual improvement model asking relevant questions like, what is the vision? Where are we now? Where do we want to be? How do we get there? What actions would we take? Did we get there and how do we keep the momentum going? And then we expand ITSM by taking advantage of the mini-management practices of ITSM.
General management practices like continual improvement, information security management, project management, risk management, and supplier management. There's also a service management practices like availability management, change control, incident management, problem management, and release management. It also involves the service desk and service continuity management. And then technical management practices like Deployment Management and Infrastructure and Platform Management. Technology is advancing faster today than ever before. We have developments like cloud computing with Infrastructure as a Service IaaS, Platform as a Service, PaaS, and Software as a Service, SaaS, and more. We have blockchain technology and hashgraph technology.
We have memory only storage that's rapidly replacing disk storage, machine learning, and artificial intelligence, and IoT, Internet of Things. These offer fresh opportunities for value creation. And it's led to IT becoming an important business driver and source of competitive advantage. As a result, this positions IT service management as a key strategic capability. To ensure that organizations remain relevant and successful, they'll embark on major transformational programs to exploit these new opportunities. These opportunities are an evolution in the way that organizations function.
Enabling them to flourish in the phase of significant and ongoing change. Service Management is changing to address and support this organizational shift and ensure opportunities from new technologies, new ways of working, and new ways to maximize productivity. So in a nutshell, service management is evolving and so is ITIL, the most widely adopted guidance on IT Service Management in the world. Now, as we move through this training, you want to understand that the key components of the ITIL 4 framework are the ITIL service value system, SVS, and what's called the four dimensions model. We'll dive into that in later courses.
[Video description begins] Core Components of the ITIL Service System (SVS) [Video description ends]
However, the core components of the ITIL SVS are the ITIL service value chain, the ITIL practices, the ITIL guiding principles, IT governance, and continual improvement. Each component of the ITIL SVS is supported by continual improvement. And ITIL provides organizations with a simple and practical improvement model to maintain their resilience and agility in a constantly changing environment.