ITIL® V3 Foundation Complete Certification Guidebook: ITIL v3, #1

By Sarah Taylor

ITIL® V3 Foundation Complete Certification Guidebook

Study Guide to Pass In First Attempt

The Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL®) has become the standard framework for the IT service industry. In this the author explains what ITIL is and how it can help align IT services with the needs of your organization. The book is comprised of eight modules, drawn from ITIL objectives that follow the phases of the service life cycle. Author explains the key principles, models, and concepts behind the ITIL model of service management, and then dives deep into the life-cycle processes, from business-relationship management to problem management and by using some using real-word examples.

Welcome to the ITIL Foundation Exam Guide, as many of you guys out there may have heard, that the ITIL infrastructure library has become the prominent framework in our IT service industry around IT service management. 

We have broken out this book into several modules and each one of those modules will be broken down into smaller information sub-sections.

One of the primary focuses of ITIL is really around the service and the life cycle that those services go through. So, we'll make sure that you have a good understanding of what those life cycle phases are, as well as the processes that are part of those phases.

Talk about the relevance of IT service management to your organization. What we'd like to do here is bring up some specific examples, some history that I may have around ITIL to help you understand some of the basic concepts so that you cannot just, so that you don't just learn the model, you understand how to apply the model across your organization. And then finally, this is also a preparation for the Foundation exam. We'll talk a little bit more about what the exam consists of here.

So, what I'd like for you to do is prepare yourself for the exam and I really want you to understand what this ITIL stuff is all about. Number one, like I mentioned before, the service life cycle. 

You'll hear me talk about things like service strategy, service design, service transition, service operation, and continual service improvement. Now, that may be foreign to you today, but as soon as you walk through several of these, those will start to make a lot of sense to you.

We will talk about those life cycle phases. We'll talk about capabilities and resources organizations should have to help drive services and drive them through their life cycles. We'll talk a little bit about quality, quality of processes, and quality of services and so on. So those are the topics that we're going to cover in this Book.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sarah Taylor
• Release date: May 14, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386822745

Sarah Taylor

Sarah Taylor has a BA in History and an MSLS. She enjoys reading and writing about history, playing piano, and going on park walks with her dog. You may find her at https://beautifuldreamerdotcom.wordpress.com and Goodreads at https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/21550493.Sarah_Taylor.

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Introduction

The Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL®) has become the standard framework for the IT service industry. In this the author explains what ITIL is and how it can help align IT services with the needs of your organization. The book is comprised of eight modules, drawn from ITIL objectives that follow the phases of the service life cycle. Author explains the key principles, models, and concepts behind the ITIL model of service management, and then dives deep into the life-cycle processes, from business-relationship management to problem management and by using some using real-word examples.

Welcome to the ITIL Foundation Exam Guide, as many of you guys out there may have heard, that the ITIL infrastructure library has become the prominent framework in our IT service industry around IT service management. We have broken out this book into several modules and each one of those modules will be broken down into smaller information sub-sections.

One of the primary focuses of ITIL is really around the service and the life cycle that those services go through. So, we'll make sure that you have a good understanding of what those life cycle phases are, as well as the processes that are part of those phases.

Talk about the relevance of IT service management to your organization. What we'd like to do here is bring up some specific examples, some history that I may have around ITIL to help you understand some of the basic concepts so that you cannot just, so that you don't just learn the model, you understand how to apply the model across your organization. And then finally, this is also a preparation for the Foundation exam. We'll talk a little bit more about what the exam consists of here.

So, what I'd like for you to do is prepare yourself for the exam and I really want you to understand what this ITIL stuff is all about. Number one, like I mentioned before, the service life cycle. You'll hear me talk about things like service strategy, service design, service transition, service operation, and continual service improvement. Now, that may be foreign to you today, but as soon as you walk through several of these, those will start to make a lot of sense to you.

We will talk about those life cycle phases. We'll talk about capabilities and resources organizations should have to help drive services and drive them through their life cycles. We'll talk a little bit about quality, quality of processes, and quality of services and so on. So those are the topics that we're going to cover in this Book.

Certification exams

So now you know a little bit about ITIL, the IT Infrastructure Library and what I want you to know is a little about the certification exam. You may have already taken the certification exam. You may be Foundation level certified. You might be watching some of the videos to give you a refresher on some of the core concepts we have in the model. But either way just to kind of give you a little bit of background on the actual exam, some things to understand. It’s a multiple choice exam. It's 40 questions, multiple choice which you could do on a paper base or you can do it online.

You basically read the question. A,B,C,and D and you answer the question and you move on to the next one. So out of that 40, you must get 26 out of 40 in order to pass. It's a pass fail.26 is 65 percent. If you do the class or you do the exam online, once you submit that exam you get the results immediately. If you do a paper base sometimes it takes a little bit of time to get the results back on that exam. You have one hour to take that exam and it is an unassisted exam meaning that the proctor of the exam session cannot help you.

It is not an open book exam. So you're basically recalling the knowledge and recalling the concepts that you've learned throughout the Foundation level that you have. You have 60 minutes to complete the paper. So candidates with a passing score, i.e. 65 percent or 26 correct now receive the Foundation pin and you receive a certificate. That certificate you receive usually comes in the mail after a little bit of time.

You can also manage your certificate online. But you do need that certificate to show that you've passed the Foundation exam in order for you to take an intermediate level. And so that's what we're talking about because now you can take any one of the advanced level or intermediate courses that ITIL has to offer.

In order to practice, in order to manage in the world of Service Management, you have multiple processes, you have multiple phases of the life cycle, you really need to have a good foundation and levels of training to help you understand some of the core concepts and some of the advanced concepts within the ITIL framework or the ITIL model. So what we have up here is essentially, your journey towards what might be called an ITIL Expert.

What is ITIL?

So what is ITIL, the IT Infrastructure Library? What we're getting ready to talk about, Is the worldwide representation of best practice for quality IT service management. IT service management. So what is IT service management or ITSM? Concisely, defined how to manage the various responsibilities of all parties in a value chain. Within that value chain, what we're talking about is the sequence of processes that creates a product or service that is of value to the customer.

So our customers are actually consuming these services that the IT organization actually produces. So when you take a look at this widely recognized framework, you have to remember that ITIL's not a standard, there are other things we'll talk about called standards later. ITIL basically is a framework that allows you, from a suggestive standpoint, to take the pieces that are applicable and the most beneficial to you in order to deploy and support your service management activities. Now how do we come up with this ITIL stuff? Well there's some sources, things around standards out there.

We'll talk about things like ISO 20,000, those types of standards. Industry practices that exist. Good practices that are used in organizations today to help you deliver good services. Academic research, of course, and then, of course, there's training, education, and internal experience. So these are all things from a sources that generate these good practices for service management. Enablers, of course, enablers are those ingredients that we have to have in order to provide good services. We have to have employees. Customers clearly have a major, major stake in the delivery of the services.

The suppliers, because in many cases the services that we are supporting and we're delivering require suppliers, in some cases folks call those vendors too. Advisers, and of course, technologies. So a lot of things come in place, a lot of ingredients here that really looks at how we filter out in the drivers for these things around the ITIL side. Substitutes, we have regulators, and we have customers that are involved here. So basically what we're looking at is coming up with knowledge fit for business objectives, contexts, and purposes.

So those are some basic background items around what this ITIL is and how we created, or how the framework itself was created. So let's talk about the framework, and kind of the history of how we came up with this ITIL stuff. When we look at this, the ITIL framework is this set of books. And it really kind of started out back in the late 80s, early 90s with what was called ITIL version one. Now version one literally was a set of 50 books.

This was in response to try to at least come out with some practices on how we manage the infrastructure. So these 50 books was the IT Infrastructure Library. So they were really helping us operate, manage IT effectively and efficiently. So there were some, of course, with any good practice, we need to do updates. So what we started looking at 2000, 2002 time frame, we started to see what was called ITIL version two.

ITIL version two, again, very process focused. It was condensed down from the previous 50 books that we had in version one. You've probably heard of what was called ITIL version three, well, ITIL 2007 is the official term for this, and this was a major departure from the version two. And I like this because it took the life cycle phase approach, again, very process focused, but it started to really take a look at the service and the phases of a life cycle that a service goes through.

Those phases like service strategy, all the way through service operation, of course, we have continual service improvement. But that was really, really a powerful update to the ITIL model. Of course, the most recent is what we call the ITIL 2011, which is what we're talking about here in this book. A process based framework is the foundation for what's called ISO 20,000.Now ISO 20,000 is a standard. ITIL's not a standard, ISO 20,000 is a standard. Organizations become certified on ISO 20,000, it's the standard.

Now ITIL organizations don't become certified. Individuals actually become certified in ITIL. So basically ISO 20,000 was based originally off of what was called BS 15,000, British Standard 15,000, which was also closely aligned with ITIL version two. Of course, the ISO has been updated, most recently in 2011, to be more consistent, again, with ITIL 2011. Professional organizations that exist, ITSMF, the IT Service Management Forum, I consider this the global user group.

There are many local interest groups. There's a USA group of ITSMF, very good organization if you're looking at knowledge, if you're looking at networking in the service management space. And then Prism, which is the professional designation in the ITIL world that you may want to consider taking a look at. It's around service management. It's a globally recognized credentialing scheme around service management.

Components and phases of a service life cycle

The core components to the ITIL or to the life cycle owning service management. You see right here is what we call the ITIL Core. We call those by phase names. We call those Service Strategy. I'll talk a little bit more about each of these in a little bit. As we see here upon the Service Strategy side, these are phases of a life cycle that a service go through. The second one we will go through is what we call Service Design. The third one we go through is what we call Service Transition or what we might call, I'll call ST.

We have Service Operation or SO. We have CSI, Continual Service Improvement. It's important to note here. Even though I drew them in a linear fashion, it's very important for you to know that each one of these phases does have an interaction with each other. For example, CSI doesn't just fall at the end of the spectrum. It is a parent through all phases of the life cycle. I'm going to tell you a little bit about what each one of these phases. We'll cover more in depth throughout this course. The Service Strategy. Its focus is on developing the capacity to achieve and maintain a strategic advantage to refine and create policies, guidelines, and processes that cross all of the ITIL service life cycle.

You see on the schematic here. Service Strategy across the entire life cycle. Service Design, which is the second one, takes the Service Strategy, and creates the design that will eventually operationalize those business objectives. The focus is on the design for new changed and updated services. We're putting in a new service in. We're retiring a service. We’re changing something about it. Service Transition provides the guidelines for development and improvement of capabilities for transitioning new and changed services into the life service operation.

Those activities do actually put that in or retire that or make those changes. Service Operation manages the day-to-day operation of a service and provides guidelines on the effective and efficient delivery and support. Then finally, CSI provides critical guidelines in creating and maintaining value for customers through better design transition and operation of services. As a former CIO for a large data center operation, we always, we're looking at our list of services with our portfolio.

Services went through this life cycle process or life cycle phases. For example, we're launching in a new service. Let's call it Voice in Data Service. We have to go through Service Strategy. What is it that this thing really is going to accomplish for us from a value perspective that we go into Service Design through this new service? What is this going to look like? What’s the solution? The tools, the architectures, the processes required. The metrics and measurements we'll use to manage this and to keep track with its health.

Then we go into Service Transition. We're approving these changes, deploying those, and releases, capturing the knowledge. Those types of things for transitioning that new service into the life environment or life operation. Then Service Operation. We actually run and we support the service at that point. CSI again. We use that from a Continual Service Improvement perspective throughout this entire set of life cycle phases to help us continually improve, monitor our metrics, measurements, KPIs.

Those things do actually help us understand where these things set are. We have mile markers so we could know from improvement perspective. Of course, the ITIL official site, ITIL dash official site, dot, com, is where you go for the most recent and up to date information on a components of the service life cycle. Now, we've talked about what these phases are. A lot of times folks really get the misconception that this is a waterfall approach. Just like the SDLC or something like that. Now, you notice here that each one of these phases has outputs and has feedback that comes from other phases.

Service Strategy for example. You notice Service Strategy has output in the Service Design. We’ll talk about what those pieces are in a little bit. But notice that every phase of the life cycle from that point forward all provides feedback back in to the Service Strategy phase. Service Design has outputs and has feedback that comes in to that, as well as Service Transition, Service Operation. Notice CSI or Continual Service Improvement. From a life cycle standpoint touches every one of those phases, as well as the service, in the services, including the processes we use to support the life cycle of that.

You can have... If I asked you a question, it can become a trick question. If I asked you which phase of the service life cycle is your organization in today? It's a trick question, right? You're really in all of them. If you think about it, let's take email service, right? Email service is currently in service operation. It's a life service we might be supporting. It might also some portions of that, some pieces of this might be in transition. We might be deploying changes to the email platform. We might be in Service Strategy or Service Design looking at new changes, the value of new changes, updates, upgrades to the email platform.

You can be in a lot of those phases. Again, you're looking at this from the viewpoint of a specific service. Those are the key life cycle phases. Well, here's what we're talking about in the life cycle process. Service Strategy. You could go to Service Design, Transition, Service Operation and CSI.

Those are the five core life cycle phases. We will break those down in later chapters.

Main concepts of the service lifecycle

What are some of the main concepts of the Service Lifecycle in the ITIL framework? I need glasses, almost, to look at this, and you probably do to, but let's kind of look at each one of these things just at a very high level. This first one we have is what we call Service Strategy. Remember we taught Service Strategy as being one of the initial phases of the Service Lifecycle. There are some processes in Service Strategy that we'll cover throughout this course, Processes like Strategy Management, Financial Management for IT services, Demand Management, Service Portfolio Management, and Business Relationship Management.

Part of the foundation level, of course. Actually, in the exam, you will only actually be examined against Financial Management, Portfolio Management, and Business Relationship Management, those three. Those are the processes that make up Service Strategy. Some key concepts, of course, we'll talk about that throughout the course, things like Utility and Warranty. It's really all based on that value proposition that we talked about earlier. So, governance and decision-making, what we want to do, who we want to do it for, what value does that provide to our customers within the Service Strategy side.

Next, we have what's called Service Design. Service Design, building the service integrity. I kind of as the blueprinting phase, when we're designing from a strategic standpoint what we want to accomplish, now we're going to the design, so there's aspects like what's the service solution, what tools are required, architectures, processes, metrics and measurements, and so on. A lot of processes in service design, things like Design Coordination, Service Catalog Management.

We have things like Service Level Management, a hot topic you hear of a lot, Capacity and Availability Management, Continuity, Information Security, and Supplier Management, those are all key processes within Service Design. Some aspects we'll talk about in a later one of our chapters, and some of the key concepts we talk about a little later on, too. Now, Design, we kind of put this whole piece together, and we wrapped this up and put it in something called a Service Design Package, and we moved that into Service Transition, Which is the next phase, right here.

Service Transition, preparing for and doing the actual changes, things that we talked about a little bit earlier, Change Management, you hear about that a lot. Service Asset and Configuration Management, SACM, or some folks just call it Config, Knowledge Management, Transition Planning and Support, Release and Deployment Management, the actual bill, test, and delivery, Service Validation Testing, and Change Evaluation. Scope of the Foundation Level course, from an exam perspective, you'll be looking at Change Management, SACM, or Service Asset and Configuration, Knowledge Management, Transition Planning and Support, Release and Deployment Management, some key concepts we'll talk about in the Change Management, or— excuse me, in the Service Transition portion of the course.

Then we have Service Operation. The change is handed off over to the Service Operation side, and in Service Operation, again, we're running and supporting that service. Some processes we have there are Event Management, Incident Management, Problem Management, Request Fulfillment, Access Management, those are the key processes. We also see the introduction of something called Functions, these units of organization, as a part of the Service Operation, which we're supporting that live service as it is