A Guide to ITIL 4 in 2022

A Guide to ITIL 4 in 2022

Categories: IT Service Management|Published On: March 24, 2022|5.1 min read|
About the Author

Syazana Khan

A communications specialist and technology wordsmith with over 2 years experience in the IT and professional development training arena.

ITIL 4 in 2022

The power of professional ITIL 4 certifications.

Achieving recognized certifications in best practice consolidates your knowledge and validates it to potential employers.

 

Digital Transformations

Technology is bringing about unprecedented change, changing the way we work and go about our daily lives. A new service culture has emerged to cope with the frenetic pace of change. Organizations and professionals must embrace this new service culture in order to survive, thrive, and remain competitive.

The disruption from digital transformation poses a challenge to how IT is organized and managed. What’s more important is that technology is continuously and increasingly integrating into the very fabric of businesses and is directly affecting the customer and business experience. IT is no longer merely a support technology but has quickly become an enabler of innovation. It enhances competitive advantage, boosts productivity, and reduces costs.

Four significant themes and challenges that are shaping future IT operating models are:

  • Digital business – IT is a strategic asset that can enable new business models, boost customer satisfaction, and automate business processes. Organizations are transforming the way they engage with customers, employees, and other parties by creating a connected digital ecosystem. Budgets are shifting from IT departments to other departments, so IT managers have less control over how technology is selected, implemented, and managed. IT departments must collaborate to co-create digital offerings that optimize value streams and customer journeys.
  • Technology ecosystem – New technologies provide opportunities and risks. These include migrating legacy applications to the cloud and leveraging opportunities such as big data, artificial intelligence, and the Internet of Things. New technologies must be managed efficiently and effectively.
  • Increasing demand – IT must deliver faster and improve product quality while reducing costs and risks and complying with regulations.
  • Transform IT delivery – New delivery paradigms, such as DevOps, Agile, and CI/CD, are emerging. A key theme is automating activities, including building, testing, deployment, and monitoring activities. New deployment methods, such as infrastructure as code, are adopted across multiple vendors in the ecosystem

ITIL has always been an extensive framework, with two books for V2 and five for V3. The rapid revolutions that continue to transform the IT sector have made it necessary for the structure of the framework to evolve. Consequently, ITIL 4 is modular, with a Foundation book providing the key concepts of the framework, and supplementary publications expanding on these concepts and reflecting the evolution of technology and its impact on organizations. Through this new approach, ITIL 4 is helping individuals and organizations continually improve.

ITIL 4 and the Digital Era

ITIL 4 is an adaptable framework for managing services within the digital era. Through our best practice modules, ITIL 4 helps to optimize digital technologies to co-create value with consumers, drive business strategy, and embrace digital transformation.

ITIL 4, the latest evolution of ITIL, builds on the core guidance of previous versions to provide comprehensive, practical, and proven guidance. It supports traditional service management activities, for example, incident management and continual improvement, but can also be aligned to transformative technologies, such as Cloud, Automation, and AI.

It also works seamlessly with DevOps, Lean, Agile, and Axelos’ products such as PRINCE2® and AgileSHIFT®. It is the basis for the international standard ISO20000 and the workflows in many service management software platforms.

Each ITIL 4 module is accompanied by a comprehensive core guidance publication and a globally recognized professional certification, from which millions of professionals worldwide have benefitted.

ITIL

ITIL is a globally recognized, world-leading framework for IT service management (ITSM)—and increasingly for overall service management that delivers business value.

For the last 30 years, ITIL has continued to provide comprehensive, practical, and proven guidance for establishing an IT service management system, encouraging consistency and continual improvement for businesses using and delivering IT-enabled services.

For years, ITIL was shorthand for Information Technology Infrastructure Library, but that full name was eventually retired and replaced with simply ITIL. ITIL does underpin ISO20000, but there are some key differences.

ITIL has been adopted by many organizations, with millions of certified ITIL practitioners worldwide

ITIL 4

Now in its fourth iteration, released in winter 2019, ITIL 4 provides the guidance you need to address new service management challenges and utilize the potential of modern technology in an era of cloud, Agile, DevOps, and transformation.

The key components of the ITIL 4 framework are the ITIL service value system (SVS) and the four dimensions model.

ITIL is currently in its fourth iteration, which saw its release in the winter of 2019, intended to provides guidance that you might need to address new service management challenges and utilizing.

The ITIL Service Value System

The ITIL service value system provides a flexible operating model for the creation, delivery, and continual improvement of services. The core components of the ITIL SVS are:

  • The ITIL service value chain
  • The ITIL practices
  • The ITIL guiding principles
  • Governance
  • Continual improvement

Who is ITIL aimed at?

Large, medium and small organizations all over the world use ITIL to help them improve the value of their services. ITIL helps organizations in all industries and sectors to:

  • Solve business issues
  • Improve IT capability
  • Implement new capabilities that directly provide business value

 

What will you gain from ITIL 4?

Organizational benefits of adopting ITIL 4 include:

  • Faster and more flexible service delivery practices to support digital transformation
  • Better strategic alignment between IT and the business
  • Smoother integration between evolving software delivery practices and the enterprise customer support framework
  • Improved service delivery and customer satisfaction
  • Reduced costs through improved use of resources
  • Greater visibility of IT costs and assets
  • Better management of business risk and service disruption or failure

How ITIL 4 can help you:

  • Understand how IT impacts strategy and how professionals can utilize the four dimensions of service management in a wider business context
  • Use the guiding principles to navigate change, streamline work and introduce flexible and collaborative working practices
  • Break down silos by encouraging a holistic, systems-thinking approach to value co-creation
  • Build trusted relationships with stakeholders and develop effective and timely communications
  • Work with complex, adaptive systems and flexible processes that can adapt to changing environments
  • Learn the common language of IT-enabled service delivery, to boost your digital career progression and set you apart from your peers.

ITIL 4 Certifications

Searching for additional training and certifications?

Explore our newest blog post on the “Top IT Skills in 2023.” We’ve compiled a list of the seven most crucial IT skills that can open up numerous opportunities for professional growth in the rapidly evolving technology industry.

If you’re new to IT and prefer a beginner-friendly guide, don’t miss our blog post on the “Top IT Certifications for Beginners.” This comprehensive guide will help you kickstart your journey into the world of IT certifications.

Take full advantage of these informative blogs to enhance your IT career. Happy learning!

About the Author

Syazana Khan

A communications specialist and technology wordsmith with over 2 years experience in the IT and professional development training arena.