ITIL guiding principles

ITIL guiding principles are recommendations that can guide an organization in all circumstances, regardless of changes in its goals, strategies, type of work, or management structure.

Definitions

According to the ITIL Foundation 4e by Axelos,

ITIL guiding principles. Recommendations that can guide an organization in all circumstances, regardless of changes in its goals, strategies, type of work, or management structure.

● What is a Guiding Principle?
o A guiding principle is a recommendation that guides an organization in all circumstances.
▪ The guiding principles can be used to guide organizations in their work as they adopt a service management approach and adapt ITIL guidance to their own specific needs and circumstances.
▪ They allow organizations to integrate the use of multiple methods into an overall approach to service management. They are universally applicable to nearly any initiative.
● Applying the Guiding Principles
o The guiding principles encourage and support organizations in continual improvement at all levels. They are universally applicable to nearly any initiative and to relationships with all stakeholder groups.
o For example, the first principle, focus on value, can (and should) be applied to all relevant stakeholders and respective definitions of value, not only to service consumers.
o Organizations should not use just one or two of the principles, but should consider the relevance of each of them and how they apply together. Not all principles will be critical in every situation, but they should all be reviewed on each occasion to determine how appropriate they are.
● The Seven Guiding Principles
o Focus on value
o Start where you are
o Progress iteratively with feedback
o Collaborate and promote visibility
o Think and work holistically
o Keep it simple and practical
o Optimize and automate
● Focus on Value
o Everything the organization does should link back, directly or indirectly, to value for itself, its customers and other stakeholders.

o Application
▪ Know how consumers use each service.
▪ Encourage a focus on value among all staff.
▪ Focus on value during operational activity as well during improvement initiatives.
▪ Include a focus on value in every step of any improvement initiative.
● Start Where You Are
o When engaged in any improvement initiative, do NOT start over without first considering what is already available to be leveraged.
▪ Decisions on how to proceed should be based on accurate information obtained through direct observation supported by appropriate and effective measurement.
▪ Measurement should be used to support the analysis of what has been observed rather than to replace it. Over-reliance on data analytics and reporting can introduce biases and risks in decision-making.
▪ The act of measuring can affect the results.
▪ "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure"
o Application
▪ Look at what exists as objectively as possible.
▪ Determine if successful practices or services can be replicated or expanded.
▪ Apply your risk management skills in the decision-making process.
▪ Recognize that sometimes nothing from the current state can be reused.
● Progress Iteratively with Feedback
o Working in a time-boxed, iterative manner with feedback loops embedded into the process allows for greater flexibility, faster responses to customer and business needs, the ability to discover and respond to failure earlier, and an overall improvement in quality.
o Organize work into smaller, manageable sections.
▪ Sequential or simultaneous
▪ Manageable and managed
▪ Tangible results
▪ Timely manner
▪ Can be built on to create future improvements
o A feedback loop is a situation where part of the output of an activity is used for new input.
▪ Example:
● Feedback survey in customer support provider
▪ The initiative and its component iterations, must be continually reevaluated to reflect changes in circumstances. Seek and use feedback before, throughout, and after each iteration.

▪ Feedback loops between participants helps them understand where work comes from, outputs go and how their actions affect the outcomes.
o Application
▪ Comprehend the whole but do something.
▪ The ecosystem is constantly changing, so feedback is essential.
▪ Fast does not mean incomplete.
● Collaborate and Promote Visibility
o 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.
o People and perspectives for successful collaboration can be found in all stakeholder groups
o Without transparency:
▪ There may be an impression that the work is not a priority
▪ Improvement work may take a lower priority over other tasks with daily urgency.
o Insufficient visibility of work leads to poor decision-making. It is important to:
▪ Understand the flow of work
▪ Identify bottlenecks and excess capacity
▪ Uncover waste.
o Application
▪ Collaboration does not mean consensus.
▪ Communicate in a way the audience can hear.
▪ Decisions can only be made on visible data.
● Think and Work Holistically
o A holistic approach to service management requires an understanding of how all the parts of an organization work together in an integrated way.
▪ Address all four dimensions
▪ Understand the full-service value chain
o Application
▪ Recognize the complexity of the systems.
▪ Collaboration is key to thinking and working holistically.
▪ Where possible, look for patterns of interactions between system elements.
▪ To make something simple, you have to understand its complexity, and then proceed to some simple representation
▪ Automation can facilitate working holistically.
● Keep it Simple and Practical
o Outcome-based thinking should be used to produce practical solutions which deliver valuable outcomes while using the minimum number of steps needed.
▪ Establish a holistic view of the organization's work.

▪ Start with an uncomplicated approach, add later.
▪ Do not try to produce a solution for every exception.
▪ Be mindful of competing objectives.
o Application
▪ 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.
● Optimize and Automate
o Optimization means to make something as effective and useful as makes sense. Before an activity can be effectively automated, it should be optimized to whatever degree is possible and reasonable.
o Automation is the use of technology to perform a step or series of steps correctly and consistently with limited or no human intervention. Automating frequent and repetitive tasks helps organizations scale up and allows human resources to be used for more complex decision-making.
▪ The simplest form of automation involves standardizing and streamlining manual tasks to allow decisions to be made 'automatically'.

o Application
▪ Simplify and/or optimize before automating.
▪ Define your metrics.
▪ Use the other guiding principles when applying this one.
● Progress iteratively with feedback
● Keep it simple and practical
● Focus on value
● Start where you are