Hoofdstuk 1 - Introduction
ITIL is a best-practice publication for IT service management that provides guidance on the
processes, functions, and capabilities needed to support quality IT services. It is based on the five
stages of the service lifecycle and includes a core publication for each stage, as well as
complementary publications for specific industries, organizations, and technologies.
1.1 Overview
ITIL service strategy provides guidance for the service strategy stage of the ITIL service lifecycle. It
should be used together with the other ITIL publications.
1.1.1 Purpose and objectives of service strategy
The service strategy stage defines an organization's perspective, position, plans, and patterns to
meet business outcomes. Objectives include understanding strategy, identifying services and
customers, defining value creation and delivery, identifying service opportunities, defining a service
provision model, understanding organizational capability, documenting service asset usage, and
defining organizational strategy processes. This publication covers important practices for executing
a service strategy in a service provider organization.
1.1.2 Scope
ITIL Service Strategy provides guidance on service management principles and processes for internal
and external IT service providers, covering delivering services to meet customer outcomes and
managing those services, regardless of whether they are offered for profit or not.
1.1.3 Usage
ITIL Service Strategy offers proven best practices for standardized and controlled service
management. It's recommended to use this publication in conjunction with other core ITIL
publications to fully understand the overall lifecycle of services and IT service management.
1.1.4 Value to business
Adopting recommended practices in this publication can help organizations link service provider
activities to critical outcomes, understand customer needs, respond to changes in the business
environment, create a portfolio of quantified services, facilitate communication, and organize to
provide services efficiently.
1.1.5 Target audience
ITIL Service Strategy is a publication that provides insight into how service providers operate and is
intended for executives, managers, customers, and business leaders. It's also useful for owners of
strategic processes and service management professionals working in any part of the service
lifecycle.
1.2 Context
This publication explains the ITIL service lifecycle and its five core publications, which provide
guidance for an integrated approach and are necessary for compliance with the ISO/IEC 20000
standard specification. The core provides structure, stability, and strength to service management
capabilities with durable principles, methods, and tools that protect investments and provide a basis
for measurement, learning, and improvement.
,1.2.1 Service Strategy
ITIL Service Strategy provides guidance on viewing service management as a strategic asset, with
principles useful in developing policies and processes across the ITIL service lifecycle. Topics covered
include market development, service assets, and strategy implementation. Organizations should use
ITIL Service Strategy to set objectives, serve customers, and prioritize opportunities, ensuring they
are well-positioned for distinctive performance and alignment with business strategies.
1.2.2 Service design
ITIL Service Design is a stage that converts a service strategy into a plan to achieve business
objectives. It provides guidance on designing and developing services and service management
practices, including principles and methods for turning strategic objectives into portfolios of services
and assets. The scope of ITIL Service Design includes changes and improvements to maintain value,
continuity, service levels, and conformance to standards and regulations. It also covers topics such as
design coordination, service catalogue management, service level management, availability
management, capability management, IT service continuity management, information security
management and supplier management.
1.2.3 Service transition
ITIL Service Transition helps organizations develop and improve capabilities for new and changed
services, while managing risk and maintaining knowledge for decision support. It includes best
practices for transition planning and support, change management, service asset and configuration
management, release and deployment management, service validation and testing, change
evaluation, and knowledge management. It also introduces a service knowledge management
system to support organizational learning and improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the service
lifecycle.
1.2.4 Service operation
ITIL Service Operation is a best practice guide for managing services in supported environments,
providing guidance on effectiveness and efficiency in delivering and supporting services. The guide
covers detailed process guidelines, methods, and tools for two control perspectives, reactive and
proactive, and helps managers and practitioners make better decisions in areas such as managing
service availability and demand, optimizing capacity, scheduling operations, and avoiding or
resolving incidents and problems. It also covers other topics such as event management, incident,
request, problem, and access management processes, as well as service desk, IT operations
management, and application management functions, and describes new models and architectures
to support service operations.
1.2.5 Continual service improvements
ITIL Continual Service Improvement offers guidance for improving service quality, operational
efficiency, and business continuity through optimizing strategy, design, transition, and operation of
services. The framework provides best practices for incremental and large-scale improvements,
ensuring alignment of the service portfolio with business needs, and utilizing a closed loop feedback
system based on the PDCA cycle. It also includes guidance on service measurements, demonstrating
value with metrics, and developing baselines and maturity assessments.
1.3 ITIL in relation to other publications in the best management
practice portfolio
ITIL is part of a series of best-practice publications called Best Management Practice (BMP), which
helps organizations and individuals manage projects, programs, and services effectively and
consistently. BMP publications include Management of Portfolios, Management of Risk,
,Management of Value, Managing Successful Programmes, Managing Successful Projects with
PRINCE2, and Portfolio, Programme and Project Office (P3O).
1.4 Why is ITIL so successful?
ITIL is a vendor-neutral and non-prescriptive approach to service management that enables
organizations to deliver value to customers, integrate service strategy with business strategy,
measure and optimize IT services, manage investment and risk, adopt a standard approach to
service management, improve customer interaction and relationships, and optimize costs.
, Hoofdstuk 2 Service management as a practice
2.1 Services and service management
2.1.1 Services
Services deliver value to customers by facilitating outcomes without the ownership of specific costs
and risks. ITIL Service Strategy can help a service provider adapt its services to meet the changing
customer environment. Services can be classified as core, enabling, or enhancing, with core services
delivering the basic outcomes desired by customers. A service package is a collection of two or more
services that have been combined to offer a solution to a specific type of customer need or to
achieve specific business outcomes.
2.1.2 Service management
Service management is a set of capabilities that provides value to customers in the form of services.
It requires professional, responsive, and value-driven management to ensure utility-like reliability.
The capabilities of a service provider are shaped by the challenges faced, such as the intangible
nature of service processes, tight coupling of demand with customer assets, high levels of contact
for producers and consumers, and the perishable nature of service output and capacity. Service
management is supported by a professional practice, body of knowledge, and community of
individuals and organizations.
2.1.3 IT service management
IT can refer to systems, applications, infrastructure, or an organization with its own capabilities and
resources. IT service management (ITSM) requires balancing these perspectives to communicate
value and understand the context of the business's IT organization. Effective ITSM management
enables high performance and value creation through service level agreements (SLAs) that
document agreements between IT service providers and customers.
2.1.4 Service providers
There are three types of IT service providers: Type I is internal and embedded in a business unit,
Type II is a shared services unit, and Type III is external. ITSM concepts are often described in the
context of only one type, but most organizations have a combination. ITIL Service Strategy provides
guidance on how IT organizations interact with both internal and external users.
2.1.5 Stakeholders in service management
Stakeholders are interested in an organization's activities, targets, resources, and deliverables.
Examples include customers, users, partners, employees, and suppliers. In a service provider
organization, stakeholders include internal and external customers, users, and suppliers. Internal
customers work for the same business as the IT service provider, while external customers work for
a different business.
2.1.6 Utility and warranty
The value of a service is determined by how well it meets a customer's expectations, rather than its
cost or intrinsic attributes. Services derive their value from what they enable someone to do, and
must be perceived as more valuable than their cost to contribute value to an organization. A
service's value is created by combining utility and warranty, and both must be designed and
delivered together to deliver value. An outcome-based definition of a service helps ensure that all
aspects of service management are planned and executed from the perspective of what is valuable
to the customer.