ITIL 4 Foundation Exam: Key Concepts, Practices, and Study Tips

Bloom's Taxonomy Levels

A framework for categorizing educational goals, including levels such as BL1 (Memorize definitions) and BL2 (Understand the concept).

ITIL 4 Foundation Objective

To provide an understanding of ITIL, its terms, and practices, but not to make one an ITIL expert.

Service Management

A set of specialized organizational capabilities for enabling value for customers in the form of services.

Value

The perceived benefits, usefulness, and importance of something, which is subjective and co-created between provider and consumer.

Stakeholders

Individuals or groups impacted by the service.

Organization

A person or group with its own functions, responsibilities, authorities, and relationships to achieve objectives.

Service Provider

The organization or person providing the service, such as an IT department or AWS.

Consumers

Individuals or groups receiving the service.

Customer

Defines the requirements for a service and takes responsibility for the outcome of service consumption.

User

A person who utilizes the service.

Sponsor

The person who approves the budget for the service.

Service

A means of enabling value co-creation by facilitating outcomes that customers want to achieve.

Product

A configuration of an organization's resources designated to offer value for a consumer.

Service Offering

A formal description of one or more services designed to address the needs of a targeted consumer group.

Service Relationship

Created between two or more organizations to co-create value, where roles of provider and consumer are not mutually exclusive.

Output

A tangible or intangible deliverable of an activity, such as a certificate of completion or training manual.

Outcome

A result for a stakeholder enabled by one or more outputs, such as a higher salary from certification.

Cost

The amount of money spent on a specific activity, which can be removed from or imposed on the customer.

Risk

A possible event that may cause harm or loss or make it more difficult to achieve objectives, which can be negative or positive.

Utility

The functionality offered by a product or service to meet a need, summarizing what the service does.

Warranty

Assurance that a product or service will meet the agreed requirements.

Organizations and People

Concerns the way an organization is structured, its culture, and the management style. Includes the skills and competencies of individuals and teams.

Information and Technology

Includes the information and knowledge necessary for managing services, as well as the technologies that support them.

Partners and Suppliers

Encompasses an organization's relationships with other entities involved in the design, development, deployment, delivery, and support of services.

Value Streams and Processes

Focuses on how the many parts of the organization work in a unified and coordinated way to enable value co-creation.

Value Stream

A series of steps an organization undertakes to create and deliver products and services (like a flowchart). Aims to maximize value-added activities and remove waste.

Process

A set of interrelated or interacting activities that transform inputs into outputs (e.g., brushing teeth). Processes should be efficient (cheap and fast) and effective (good quality).

External Factors (PESTLE Model)

Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Legal, and Environmental factors that can drastically affect all four dimensions and impose constraints.

ITIL Service Value System (SVS)

Describes how all components and activities of an organization work together to facilitate value creation. Its input is demand, and its output is value.

Guiding Principles

Universal and enduring recommendations that guide an organization's work, regardless of changes in mission, goals, or management structure.

Focus on value

All actions must link directly or indirectly to value for stakeholders (e.g., revenue, loyalty, cost reduction, growth).

Start where you are

Do not discard existing resources without first considering what can be leveraged or improved upon.

Progress iteratively with feedback

Organize work into smaller, manageable sections and seek feedback continuously throughout each iteration.

Collaborate and promote visibility

Include all relevant stakeholders (customers, team members, partners) to ensure buy-in and increase success. Avoid silos.

Think and work holistically

Understand how all parts of the organization work together as one integrated system to produce adequate products and services.

Keep it simple and practical

Eliminate non-value-adding steps, processes, or actions. Start with an uncomplicated approach.

Optimize and automate

Maximize the value of work carried out by humans and technology. Optimize an activity as much as possible before automating it.

Governance

The means by which an organization is directed and controlled. Involves a governing body (e.g., board of directors, CEO) that is accountable for compliance.

Service Value Chain (SVC)

A set of interconnected activities that an organization performs to design, build, deliver, and continuously improve services.

Plan

Ensures a shared understanding of the vision, current status, and improvement direction across all four dimensions and products/services.

Improve

Ensures continual improvement of products, services, and practices across all aspects of the SVS.

Engage

Provides a good understanding of stakeholder needs and fosters transparent, continuous engagement for good relationships.

Design and Transition

Ensures products and services continuously meet stakeholder expectations for quality, cost, and time-to-market.

Obtain and Build

Ensures service components are available when and where needed and meet agreed specifications (deciding whether to build internally or obtain externally).

Deliver and Support

Ensures services are delivered and supported according to agreed expectations (e.g., Service Level Agreements).

SVC Rules

External exchanges are performed through Engage. New resources are gained through Obtain and Build. Planning occurs via Plan. Improvement is initiated through Improve. Demand, products/services, and value are not part of the Service Value Chain itself, but are inputs/outputs.

ITIL Practices

Sets of organizational resources for performing work or accomplishing an objective.

Continual Improvement (Practice)

Align organizational practices and services with changing business needs through ongoing improvement.

Continual Improvement Model

A model consisting of 7 steps: What is the vision? (Define high-level goals). Where are we now? (Perform a baseline assessment, current state). Where do we want to be? (Define specific, measurable target, desired state). How do we get there? (Develop an improvement plan, experiment with approaches). Take action! (Execute the improvement plan). Did we get there? (Evaluate metrics and key performance indicators). How do we keep the momentum going? (Embed improvement, don't stop).

Continual Improvement Register (CIR)

A database or structured document to log and track improvement opportunities.

Information Security Management

Protect the organization's information assets, focusing on the CIA Triad: Confidentiality, Integrity, Availability.

Confidentiality

Ensuring data is accessible only to authorized users.

Integrity

Ensuring data is accurate and has not been subjected to unauthorized modification.

Availability

Ensuring data and services are accessible when needed.

Relationship Management

Establish, foster, and improve links between the organization and its stakeholders.

Supplier Management

Ensure suppliers and their performances are managed appropriately to support service provision and quality.

Change Enablement (Change Management)

Maximizes the number of successful service and product changes by properly assessing risks and authorizing changes.

Change

The addition, modification, or removal of anything that could have a direct or indirect effect on a service.

Change Authority

The person or group who approves changes.

Types of Changes

Includes Standard Change, Normal Change, and Emergency Change.

Standard Change

Low-risk, pre-authorized, well-understood, fully documented, implemented without additional authorization.

Normal Change

Needs to be scheduled, assessed, and authorized.

Emergency Change

Must be implemented as soon as possible, often expedited, and usually not included in the change schedule.

Incident Management

Minimizes the negative impact of incidents by restoring service as quickly as possible.

Incident

An unplanned interruption to a service or a reduction in the quality of a service.

IT Asset Management

Plans and manages the full lifecycle of all financially valuable components that contribute to the delivery of IT products or services (e.g., hardware, software, network gear, cloud services, data, even buildings). Requires an inventory register.

Monitoring and Event Management

Systematically observes services and CIs, and records and reports selected changes of state identified as events.

Event

Any change of state that has significance for the management of a service or configuration item (CI).

Configuration Item (CI)

Any component that needs to be managed to deliver an IT service (e.g., hardware, software, networks, buildings, people, suppliers, documentation).

Event Classifications

Categories of events that indicate the significance of changes in state.

Informational

Does not require action (e.g., "backup complete").

Warning

Allows action to be taken before negative impact (e.g., "hard drive 90% full").

Exception

Requires action, even if business impact hasn't been experienced yet (e.g., "backup failed").

Problem Management

Reduces the likelihood and impact of incidents by recognizing the actual and potential causes of incidents, and managing workarounds and known errors.

Problem

A cause or potential cause of one or more incidents. Requires investigation and analysis to find the root cause.

Known Error

A problem that has been analyzed but has not yet been resolved.

Workaround

A solution that reduces or eliminates the impact of an incident or problem for which a full solution is not yet available.

Error Control

Manages known errors, including identifying permanent solutions which may lead to change requests.

Release Management

Makes new and changed services and features available for use by users. A release is a version of a service or CI, or a collection of CIs.

Service Configuration Management

Ensures accurate and reliable information about the configuration of services and the CIs that support them is available. This often involves a central system or database to document CI configurations.

Service Desk (Help Desk)

The single point of contact for the service provider for all users. Captures demand for incident resolution and service requests, providing a clear path for reporting issues, asking questions, or making requests. Requires staff with strong customer service skills, backed by technical expertise.

Service Level Management

Sets clear business targets for service performance, delivers services at agreed levels, and properly assesses, monitors, and manages performance.

Service Level

One or more metrics that define expected or achieved service quality (e.g., uptime in an SLA). Requires a shared view with the customer and regular reviews.

Service Request Management

Supports the agreed level of quality by handling all predefined, user-initiated service requests in an efficient, effective, and user-friendly manner. Requests can be for service delivery, information, resource provision, access, or feedback. Automation is often used, and fulfillment times should be clearly communicated.

Deployment Management

Moves new or changed hardware, software, documentation, processes, or any component to a live environment (or other environments for testing).

Deployment Approaches

Methods for deploying new or changed components.

Big Bang

Deploying new or changed components to all targets simultaneously.

Phased Approach

Deploying components to a part of the production environment over time.

Continuous Delivery

Components are continuously integrated, tested, and deployed as needed (common in DevOps).

Pull Deployment

New or changed software is made available in a controlled repository, and users download it to client devices as needed.

Final Study Advice

Review Exam Objectives, Memorize Definitions, Prioritize Practices, Practice Exams.

Memorize Definitions

Pay close attention to terms marked for BL1 (Bloom's Level 1) and memorize their exact definitions, as they are likely to appear in 'missing word' questions.

Practice Exams

The presenter strongly recommends doing many mock exams. TIA Exams offers six full-length mock exams that are designed to be very similar to the actual test.

Exam Preparation and Objectives

The course aims to provide everything needed to pass the ITIL 4 Foundation exam in the shortest time.

ITIL 4 Foundation Exam Syllabus

A document from Axelos outlining all exam topics necessary for the ITIL 4 Foundation exam.

Bloom's Level 1 (BL1)

A level of learning that requires memorization of definitions.

Bloom's Level 2 (BL2)

A level of learning that requires a good understanding rather than memorization.

ITIL exam

An online, closed-book test taken at home, consisting of 40 questions with a 1-hour time limit.

Passing score for ITIL exam

A score of 65% correctness, which is 26 out of 40 questions.

Exam fee for ITIL exam

Approximately $700+ US dollars, varying by year and country, with discounted vouchers available.