After working in the industry for more than 20 years, I generally have a holistic view of IT and how it interacts with a business, adding value and working in tandem with stakeholders.

I’d seen this reflected in ITIL® v3 Practitioner, which championed greater IT and business engagement and created cultural change to deliver value.

Later, before the launch of ITIL 4®, I took part in AXELOS workshops at the service desk and IT support show on how to move ITIL v3 onwards, with specific discussions of cloud and automation.

So, when I made the transition to ITIL 4 Managing Professional a year ago I could see it was up to date. Learning what was included in the guidance – particularly the service value system, service value chain and guiding principles – validated what I’d already been talking about in our company.

ITIL 4 for IT and the organization as a whole

In my role day-to-day as Head of Service Management, being certified in ITIL 4 Managing Professional reinforces that we’re doing the right things for the right reasons – which also means explaining to the business why we’re doing it.

That involves attending regular leadership and team meetings, talking about IT changes and translating ITIL 4 for non-IT people; generating enthusiasm about how they could apply it too.

I think the guidance creates understanding of ITIL 4 concepts from a non-IT perspective and there’s no reason it can’t apply it to other areas of the business.

For example, the partners and suppliers section in the four dimensions of service management affects the whole business; indeed, it takes me back to the ideas and methodologies I studied in my business and management degree such as the 4Ps (people, product, place, promotion) and understanding the drivers for behaviour and action.

Selling service management enterprise wide

I’m very motivated to sell the benefits of what we’re doing in service management to the wider organization as using the ITIL principles of service management drives significant benefit for our business. This in itself is motivation enough for me to continue the evolution and upward improvements that the framework brings.

A recent session with members of the UK executive team led to a greater understanding of different business areas and how service management can help.

That knowledge has fed into service transition and how we categorize our services: from identifying business needs, services, benefits, getting engagement from business owners and working together collaboratively.

Collaboration is everything in my service management world and being transparent on what is going on by attending roadshows and delivering speeches. This includes finding out how we can help people and understanding the impact a good or indifferent service can have on our customers, client and colleagues alike – and how services can meet their needs and deliver value. It’s like different cogs in the business that need to turn together to work.

ITIL 4's most useful advanced concepts

High velocity IT is the world we live in now and it’s only going to become faster paced.

That’s why I think the way ITIL 4’s advanced modules handle Lean, Agile, DevOps, Cloud, AI, automation and value stream thinking are the most useful to me.

With the shift to Agile and DevOps approaches, ITIL 4 is much better suited to today’s faster delivery of change, combined with automation, cloud, software-as-a-service (SaaS) – and each fitting into value stream thinking. In other words, what value are you trying to add and how does everything fit together?

So, while I expect my team to have ITIL 4 Foundation as a minimum, I want them to develop themselves further.

Likewise, although I’ve achieved Managing Professional, I’ve not finished yet.

News by Sophie Hussey – Head of Service Management, Lowell