🔗 ITIL Value System — One-Page Cheat Sheet
Opportunity/Demand → the Value System's components working together → Value for the customer, the organization, and other stakeholders.
V5 dropped the word "Service" from the name (was "Service Value System" in ITIL 4) — the scope is now explicitly products and services together, not services alone. This is the single highest-weighted category on the exam (40%).
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The 5 Components — frequently tested!
| Component | What it is |
|---|
| Guiding Principles |
Recommendations that guide an organization's decisions and actions in any circumstance, regardless of changes in strategy, goals, or leadership. |
| Governance |
The means by which an organization is directed and controlled — evaluating performance, setting direction, and monitoring compliance. |
| Value Chain / Lifecycle |
The set of interconnected activities an organization performs to create, deliver, and support products and services — see the Product & Service Lifecycle topic for the 8 activities. |
| Practices |
Sets of organizational resources (people, process, technology) for performing work. V5 does not name or test individual practices at Foundation level — see the note below. |
| Continual Improvement |
A recurring activity performed at all levels of the organization to ensure performance continually meets stakeholder expectations. |
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The 7 Guiding Principles
1
Focus on value — everything the organization does should map back to value for stakeholders
2
Start where you are — don't discard existing services, processes, or tools without first assessing what's already there and reusable
3
Progress iteratively with feedback — resist the urge to do everything at once; small iterative steps with feedback loops between each
4
Collaborate and promote visibility — work across boundaries, make work and decisions visible to build trust
5
Think and work holistically — no service/practice/process stands alone; results come from managing the whole, not the parts
6
Keep it simple and practical — use the minimum number of steps to accomplish an objective; eliminate anything that provides no value
7
Optimize and automate — maximize the value of human effort; automate only after simplifying/optimizing, never automate a broken process
All 7 apply together to some degree in every situation — the exam often asks "which principle applies here?" from a short scenario, so know the one-line intent of each, not just the name.
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Governance
Governance sits above the organization's management activities — it directs, doesn't do.
Evaluate
Assess the organization, its strategy, and performance
Direct
Assign responsibility and set direction through decisions/policy
Monitor
Track performance of the organization, its practices, and its products/services against direction and policy
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Practices — reorganized, not removed
All 34 ITIL 4 management practices keep their names unchanged in V5 — nothing was dropped.
What changed is the grouping: ITIL 4's three categories (General, Service, Technical Management Practices) collapse into two in V5 — Product and Service Management Practices (22, up from 17 in ITIL 4) and General Management Practices (12, down from 14). The old Technical category (Deployment Management, Infrastructure and Platform Management, Software Development and Management) folds entirely into the Product and Service group — there is no Technical category in V5.
Expect the Official Practice Guides themselves to be revised for the new product+service focus, even though the practice names don't change.
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Continual Improvement
A loop, not a one-off project — it runs at every level: strategic, program/portfolio, team, and individual. Skip it and organizations drift back to baseline and lose momentum.
| Step | Question |
|---|
| 1 | What is the vision? — align the improvement with strategic objectives |
| 2 | Where are we now? — baseline the current state with real data |
| 3 | Where do we want to be? — set SMART targets |
| 4 | How do we get there? — build the action plan |
| 5 | Take action — execute iteratively, monitor progress |
| 6 | Are we getting there? — measure against baseline and targets |
| 7 | How do we keep the improvements relevant? — anchor gains in culture so they don't regress |
Pairs directly with the Progress iteratively with feedback Guiding Principle — improvement work should itself be done in small, feedback-driven steps.
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V5 vs. ITIL 4 — the changes the exam expects you to know
"Service Value System" (ITIL 4) → "Value System" (V5) — dropped to reflect a combined product + service scope. ITIL itself is no longer an acronym for "IT Infrastructure Library" in V5.
"Service Value Chain" (6 activities, ITIL 4) → components now called the "ITIL Value Chain", inside the new ITIL Product & Service Lifecycle Model (8 activities: Discover, Design, Acquire, Build, Transition, Operate, Deliver, Support) — see the Product & Service Lifecycle topic.
The 7 Guiding Principles are unchanged by name (verified directly against V5 source material) — don't let outdated rumors of a different count throw you.
All 34 named Practices are retained, just regrouped from 3 categories (General/Service/Technical) into 2 (Product & Service Management, General Management) — see the Practices section above.
The Four Dimensions keep their 4 names but are retitled "Four Dimensions of Product & Service Management" and gain AI-specific content — see that topic.
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Quick Memory Hooks
5 components: Principles, Governance, Chain/Lifecycle, Practices, Improvement — "People Get Confused, Please Improve."
Governance = EDM — Evaluate, Direct, Monitor (direction from above, not doing the work).
"Service" is gone from the name, not the idea — V5 widened scope to products + services; the underlying goal (value co-creation) hasn't changed.
📖 Key Terms & Definitions — One-Page Cheat Sheet
The exam's single biggest category (30%) is precise vocabulary, not concepts — get these exact definitions right and a huge chunk of marks follow.
Confusing Output with Outcome, or Customer with User, is the classic way to lose easy marks here.
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Product vs. Service — frequently tested!
| Term | Definition |
|---|
| Product | A configuration of an organization's resources (people, technology, etc.) designed to offer value to a consumer. |
| Service | A means of enabling value co-creation by facilitating outcomes customers want to achieve, without the customer having to manage specific costs and risks. |
| Digital Product | A combination of an organization's resources, based on digital technology, designed to offer value to consumers. |
| Digital Service | A service that depends entirely or largely on digital products. |
Relationship: the digital product is the engine (e.g. a bank's mobile app + APIs); the digital service is the trip it enables (e.g. paying a bill securely at 11pm). If the product fails, the service is disrupted and value evaporates.
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Output vs. Outcome, and the Value Equation — the single most-tested distinction
| Term | Definition |
|---|
| Output | A tangible or intangible deliverable of an activity. Example: a new HR system, installed and running. |
| Outcome | A result for a stakeholder enabled by one or more outputs. Example: time-to-hire cut from 30 days to 10. |
| Value | The perceived benefits, usefulness, and importance of something. |
| Cost | The amount of money spent on an activity, resource, product, or service. |
| Risk | A possible event that could cause harm or loss, or make it harder to achieve objectives. |
You can deliver the output (system is live) without achieving the outcome (nobody uses it). The exam rewards spotting this gap in scenario questions.
Value equation: Value = (Outcomes Achieved + Costs Removed + Risks Removed) − (Costs Imposed + Risks Imposed) — costs/risks can be removed (not buying a server) or imposed (paying a subscription).
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Service Offering
A formal description of one or more services, designed for a target consumer group — think of it like a restaurant menu.
GoodsOwnership of a resource transferred to the consumer (e.g. a phone bundled with a mobile plan)
Service actionsActivities the provider performs for the consumer (e.g. resetting a password)
Access to resourcesThe right to use resources the provider owns (e.g. a cloud platform) — the dominant component in modern SaaS/cloud offerings
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Roles — the Service Consumer Triad
Inside the consuming organization, "customer" isn't one person — it splits into three roles whose priorities conflict:
SponsorAuthorizes the budget — cares about cost/ROI (e.g. the CFO wanting the cheapest plan)
CustomerDefines requirements, accountable for outcomes (e.g. the CIO specifying 5GB data + roaming)
UserUses the service day-to-day — cares about ease of use/UX (e.g. employees wanting a phone that gets signal)
Also know: Organization (a person/group with functions and authority to achieve objectives), Service Provider, Service Consumer, and Digital Product Vendor (creates/improves the underlying digital product — sometimes the same company as the provider, e.g. Salesforce; sometimes not, e.g. a partner implementing SAP).
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Service Relationships
The relationship model: Service provision (what the provider does) + Service consumption (what the consumer does) + Service relationship management (joint activity to sustain value co-creation — includes the provider educating the consumer on how to consume the service well).
| Relationship type | Focus | Characteristics |
|---|
| Basic | Efficiency & support | Off-the-shelf/commodity, standardized, transactional |
| Cooperative | Improvement & effectiveness | Provider as "trusted advisor," configures to customer needs |
| Collaborative | Innovation & growth | Shared objectives/risk, teams blend, highly customized (partnership) |
The Service Journey (7 stages): Explore → Engage → Offer → Agree → Onboard → Co-create (value is actually generated here) → Reflect (continual improvement).
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Service Quality — expanded from 2 categories to 4 in V5
Service Quality (the overall "is this good?" perception) is measured through Service Levels (objective metrics, e.g. "99.9% availability"), formalized in an SLA. ITIL 4 broke quality into 2 categories (Utility, Warranty); V5 uses 4:
1Utility — what the service does (fit for purpose)
2Warranty — how it performs: availability, capacity, continuity, security (fit for use)
3Experience — how the user feels, functional + emotional (new in V5)
4Sustainability — environmental, social, and economic impact (new in V5)
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Quick Memory Hooks
Output ≠ Outcome: output is "we shipped it," outcome is "it actually helped."
Sponsor pays, Customer specifies, User uses.
Utility = fit for purpose (does it work) · Warranty = fit for use (does it keep working) · V5 adds Experience (how it feels) and Sustainability (what it costs the planet/society).
🧩 Four Dimensions of Product & Service Management — One-Page Cheat Sheet
Four perspectives that must all be balanced for value to actually reach the customer — over-investing in one while ignoring the others is a classic exam scenario.
Same 4 dimension names as ITIL 4; V5 retitles the set "...of Product and Service Management" and adds AI-specific content inside two of them.
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The 4 Dimensions
1. Organizations & PeopleCulture, leadership, org structure, competencies. Psychological safety enables continual improvement. Conway's Law: systems mirror the communication structure of the org that built them — want an integrated product, build integrated teams. New in V5: an "Organizations, people and AI" section.
2. Information & TechnologyThe Data → Information → Knowledge hierarchy (raw facts → facts with context → context applied with experience). Adds the new ITIL AI Capability Model ("6C" — see the ITIL and AI topic) plus AI data-governance/ethics considerations.
3. Partners & SuppliersNo organization is self-sufficient. Covers sourcing strategy (buy vs. build — driven by strategic focus, cost, expertise) and keeping the value chain running without supplier-side interruptions.
4. Value Streams & ProcessesWhat activities the organization performs and how they're organized to create value efficiently — adapt the workflow to the complexity of the situation rather than forcing one rigid model onto everything.
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External Factors — PESTLE
All four dimensions sit inside, and are constantly influenced by, external factors — remembered as PESTLE: Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Legal, Environmental.
Example: a new data-protection law (Legal) or a downturn (Economic) can force changes across all four dimensions at once — a classic way the exam links PESTLE to a scenario.
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Quick Memory Hooks
The car analogy: a powerful engine (Technology) is useless with bald tires (People untrained), a locked steering wheel (rigid Processes), and no fuel (Partners not delivering) — all four dimensions must move together.
PESTLE = the weather system the four dimensions all sit inside; they don't control it, they react to it.
🔄 Product & Service Lifecycle — One-Page Cheat Sheet
8 activities, often drawn as a "diamond," covering a product/service from first idea to retirement — iterative, not a fixed sequence: teams move between activities as the work demands.
The biggest single structural change from ITIL 4 — replaces the old 6-activity Service Value Chain diagram as the framework's headline lifecycle model.
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The 8 Activities — frequently tested!
| Activity | Purpose | Example enabling practices |
|---|
| Discover | Keep product roadmaps & service offerings aligned with consumer needs and strategy | Business Analysis, Portfolio Management, Relationship Management |
| Design | Create prototypes and specifications — functionality, UX, operating model | Architecture Management, Service Level Management, Service Design |
| Acquire | Secure and allocate the resources needed (buy, hire, build) | Supplier Management, IT Asset Management, Service Financial Management |
| Build | Develop, integrate, and test — turn designs into working solutions | Software Development and Management, Infrastructure and Platform Management, Service Validation and Testing |
| Transition | Move new/changed products into operation safely | Change Enablement, Release Management, Deployment Management |
| Operate | Keep systems running and monitored for performance | Monitoring and Event Management, Infrastructure and Platform Management |
| Deliver | Make the service available — manage access, requests, feedback | Service Request Management, Service Level Management, Service Desk |
| Support | Resolve incidents/problems, restore normal operation fast | Incident Management, Problem Management, Service Desk, Service Continuity Management |
Duality: the early activities (Discover, Design, Acquire, Build) lean Product; the later ones (Deliver, Support) lean Service; Transition and Operate bridge the two.
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Unresolved naming point — sources disagree, worth flagging
Good secondary sources genuinely conflict on one structural detail: whether the ITIL 4 Service Value Chain (6 activities — Plan, Improve, Engage, Design & Transition, Obtain/Build, Deliver & Support) is retired and replaced by this 8-activity Lifecycle model, or whether it's retained underneath it as a separate "engine" model whose 6 activities combine to enable the 8 lifecycle activities and the 34 practices.
Both readings appear in reputable-looking training material. This page won't guess — if your exam prep depends on the exact activity count for "the Value Chain," check your own official course book/publication directly rather than trusting either version here.
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Quick Memory Hooks
D-D-A-B-T-O-D-S — Discover, Design, Acquire, Build, Transition, Operate, Deliver, Support. Try: "Did Dave Always Build Things Over Dinner, Seriously?"
Product-leaning early, Service-leaning late — the diamond shape mirrors that shift.
🌊 Value Streams: Identification, Mapping & Management — One-Page Cheat Sheet
A value stream is a series of steps an organization takes to create and deliver a product or service to a consumer — the specific, real-world combination of lifecycle activities and practices used for one scenario.
Analogy: the process is the written recipe; the value stream is what actually happens in a packed restaurant kitchen getting that dish to the table.
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Types of Value Streams
CoreDelivers products/services directly to an external consumer — generates revenue (e.g. order → delivery)
EnablingDelivers value to an internal customer supporting the core stream — "behind the scenes" (e.g. onboarding a new hire)
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Value Stream Mapping (VSM)
A Lean technique to visualize, analyze, and improve a workflow — make the invisible (waste) visible.
1Identify the stream to map
2Map the as-is — real steps, processing time, wait time
3Analyze — find bottlenecks and non-value-adding waste
4Map the to-be — the ideal future state
5Plan and implement the transition
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Mapping vs. Management — frequently tested!
| Value Stream Mapping | Value Stream Management |
|---|
| One-time or periodic technique | Ongoing practice / mindset |
| A "snapshot" of current + future state | The day-to-day "movie" — keeps work flowing |
| Diagnoses problems, designs improvements | Continuous optimization, removes impediments |
| Output: a map + action plan | Output: faster value delivery, higher quality |
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Quick Memory Hooks
Recipe vs. kitchen chaos — process = the recipe (idealized), value stream = the real kitchen (messy reality).
Mapping is a photo, Management is a movie. Core = external/revenue, Enabling = internal/support.
🤖 ITIL and AI — One-Page Cheat Sheet
V5 was built "AI-native" from the ground up rather than bolting AI on as an afterthought — this small (2.5%) category is mostly about one specific model.
Don't confuse this Foundation-level content with ITIL AI Governance — a separate publication and certification, not part of core Foundation testing.
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The ITIL AI Capability Model — the "6C" model
Sits inside the Information & Technology dimension (see Four Dimensions topic). Six capabilities:
1Creation — generating new content, code, or designs
2Curation — organizing, filtering, and maintaining information/data quality
3Clarification — making meaning and intent explicit from ambiguous input
4Cognition — reasoning, analysis, and decision-support
5Communication — presenting output in a usable, human-facing way
6Coordination — orchestrating multiple AI/human actors toward a shared outcome
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What else to know
AI adoption raises data governance and ethics questions — clear policy is needed to manage the risk, not just the capability.
The Organizations & People dimension also gained an "Organizations, people and AI" section — the human/cultural side of AI adoption, not just the technology.
A dedicated ITIL AI Governance publication and certification exist alongside the core Foundation content — relevant context, but it's a separate qualification, not Foundation exam material.
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Quick Memory Hooks
6C: Create, Curate, Clarify, Cognate(-reason), Communicate, Coordinate — think of it as the AI doing a job end-to-end: make something, tidy it, explain it, think about it, say it, and work with others on it.
🧭 ITIL and Other Frameworks — One-Page Cheat Sheet
ITIL was never designed to compete with Agile, DevOps, Lean, or PRINCE2 — it's designed to integrate with them. Smallest category (2.5%), usually one scenario question about which framework does what.
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ITIL + DevOps
Complementary — they solve different parts of the same problem.
ITIL provides the "what": governance, the Value System, control requirements (e.g. Change Enablement requires changes to be controlled).
DevOps provides the "how": the technical/cultural practices that meet those requirements fast — e.g. a CI/CD pipeline with automated testing instead of a slow change committee.
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ITIL + PRINCE2
PRINCE2 = project management — temporary initiatives to build/change a product; clear start, middle, end.
ITIL = service management — ongoing: operate, maintain, and improve value continuously.
The handoff: PRINCE2 delivers the product/change (e.g. a new CRM implemented) → ITIL takes over running that CRM as a live service day-to-day.
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Shared Principles Across Frameworks
ITIL, PRINCE2, Agile, Lean, and DevOps all converge on the same underlying values: focus on customer value, collaboration across teams, iterative progress with feedback, and continual improvement — the same language as ITIL's own Guiding Principles and Continual Improvement component.
This is why they compose rather than compete: none of them claims the whole problem space.
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Quick Memory Hooks
PRINCE2 builds it, ITIL runs it. ITIL sets the rule, DevOps moves fast within it.
None of these frameworks are rivals — they're specialists on the same team.