Creating a common IT language – ITIL 4 Managing Professional Transition

This builds on concepts from ITIL 4 Foundation and the four Managing Professional modules, such as “Create, Deliver & Support" and “High-Velocity IT” enabling existing ITIL Experts and those with 17 ITIL v3 credits to transition to an equivalent understanding of ITIL 4.

However, the certification’s content isn’t just about service management – it’s a lot broader than that.

It brings together modern and different ways of working, leaning upon methods and frameworks outside of service management. And that involves a lot of soft skills that ITIL has not previously addressed. It takes a deeper look at how – for example – team culture, work management techniques, customer and service relationships and user experience play a huge part in how to practice service management today.

Coming from ITIL v3 it’s refreshing to see how ITIL 4 encapsulates what is happening in the industry at large and introduces the “how” from a behavioural and cultural perspective too. These are massive enablers for doing the “what”.

A toolkit for digital environments

ITIL 4 Managing Professional, I believe, gives you the guidebook for doing service management well in a digital environment.

At Co-op Digital, we deliver software and focus on delivering value quickly and often. ITIL 4 managing professional provides guidance and best practice for how we deliver “High velocity IT” without slowing down the rate of change, keeping services reliable and secure and continuously iterating to meet our users’ demands.

This complements what I’m already doing and Managing Professional brings together a toolkit and glossary for doing this well. This is vital as digital transformation and its impact on organizations and technology can be overwhelming; so seeing different thoughts and ideas brought together as best practice is really useful.

And it offers a fresh view on delivering service management which is fit for the digital age: this is about moving away from the service lifecycle and its more siloed approach to completing one phase before starting the next. Instead, ITIL 4 provides a framework that allows us to do things simultaneously and in collaboration. For example, incident restoration informs many other activities across service delivery and doesn’t just work in isolation.

With the speed of digital developments, you still need to understand the impact of your work on other areas in the organization. So, enabling flexibility and having a holistic and non-siloed view of activities is important.

Our work at Co-op Digital includes creating products and services using agile and DevOps concepts. When operating these services, we have adapted how we use ITIL and Managing Professional bridges the gap successfully between the different frameworks by acknowledging how they can work together.

IT and the business? I YT is the business!

ou don’t need to work in IT or work in service management to understand the ideas in ITIL 4. And, to be clear, it’s not about the business and IT as separate things; it’s about the business having a strategy and collaborating with IT to co-create value and ensure this meets the demands of the organization and its customers.

If an organization chooses to do one thing only from ITIL 4, it would be following the guiding principles. These – such as “keep it simple and practical” – make a fundamental difference to your approach and, along with the Service Value System and Service Value Chain, are there to help us keep value at the forefront when building and managing services.

These concepts are more fit for purpose in organizations today and really highlight the “adopt and adapt” approach of ITIL, compelling you to use the guidance in a way that’s right for your organization and people.

Reinforcing service management’s value

The value of service management is not always well understood in a digitally-driven operation.

Now, with the pace of change, and the demand to provide new services more quickly, safely and securely through digital technology, ITIL 4 creates a common language and highlights the importance of service management in a digital organization. And the relevance of this goes beyond service managers; encompassing professionals working across IT to create a holistic function with multiple value streams.

In a digital world – without the specialist skills, mindset and attitude in service management – the world can fall down around you. If anything, service management is more important now than ever.

Read Sundeep's previous blog post for AXELOS, ITIL 4: a clear definition of value.