Created: 29 June 2022

What to Expect From ITIL 4 Training Courses

ITIL 4 can help you learn how to better integrate various IT services or products. Here's what you can expect to learn from effective ITIL 4 training.

Keyword(s): ITIL 4

IT service management is booming, poised to be worth at least $35 billion by 2025. While this is great news for companies offering these crucial services, it also presents new challenges.

As the market grows, ITSM providers will need to give themselves every advantage to stand out from their competition. And with the industry's standards and practices changing all the time, it's never been more important to stay ahead of the curve.

That's where ITIL 4 comes in. It's the latest standard framework from ITIL, designed to bring ITSM professionals everywhere up to speed on industry best practices. An ITIL 4 foundation course could give your teams the edge they need in an increasingly competitive market.

If you're not sure what to expect from ITIL 4, or if you're not convinced it could help your business grow, read on! We'll tell you everything you need to know about ITIL 4 certification.

What is ITIL?

ITIL stands for 'Information Technology Infrastructure Library.' The term originates from the 1980s, when the British government documented, printed and distributed best practices in IT service management. Nowadays, ITIL is its own organization, and it has very little to do with any library!

Instead, it exists to make sure that IT services stay aligned with business objectives. As business objectives can experience real changes over time, ITIL is an ongoing project. It's administered and kept up to date by an organization called AXELOS.

ITIL released its third iteration, ITIL 3, in 2007. ITIL 4, the latest standard of ITIL, was rolled out over a decade later in February 2019. It's been the gold standard in the industry ever since.

What is ITIL 4 Training?

ITIL 4 training offers members of your team the chance to become ITIL certified. An ITIL certification means that you are educated in the best practices of service management. It shows the world that you understand the processes and methods that form the core of modern IT services.

There are obviously amazing benefits to ITIL 4 for businesses. Having an ITIL certified team member (or more than one) shows your commitment to improving the quality of your IT services. It also proves that your business is willing to keep up with the changing standards of the industry.

ITIL 4 courses are designed for IT managers and directors, system administrators, and operations managers. But, if your business is truly committed to providing the best possible IT services, you can offer ITIL 4 training to anyone working in IT.

What to Expect from ITIL 4 Training

When trying to plan your business's training needs, it's always smart to know what to expect from any given course. If you're considering ITIL 4 Foundation training, here's a taste of what you and your team can learn.

Guiding Principles

ITIL 4 makes the Guiding Principles a core element of the framework. First introduced in one of the earliest versions of ITIL, they are now front and centre in ITIL 4 training. The seven principles are as follows:

1. Focus on value
2. Start where you are
3. Progress iteratively with feedback
4. Collaborate and promote visibility
5. Think and work holistically
6. Keep it simple and practical
7. Optimize and automate

These principles sum up the basic message of ITIL 4. They are meant to promote good decision-making from day to day – but also ongoing improvement over time.

Four Dimensions of Service Management

ITIL 4 focuses on the holistic nature of service management. It's important for any business to be able to balance competing needs and priorities, and ITSM is no exception. The four dimensions of service management are as follows:

• Organization and people
• Information and technology
• Partners and suppliers
• Value streams and processes

ITSM professionals should strive to keep all four dimensions in mind when offering a product or service. The goal is to maintain balance between these four components of the service management process. Each dimension's capabilities, needs and functionality should be taken into account to ensure that your company delivers the best possible service.

Value Co-Creation

Previous versions of ITIL focused on the responsibilities of the service provider. In those versions, it was the service provider's task to create value. Suppliers, partners and other organizations had very little to do with the value creation process.

All that has changed in ITIL 4. The focus is now on value co-creation – a collaborative process shared between the service provider and other organizations. The new framework recognizes that value is created through active collaboration, not in isolation.

As every business works with outside stakeholders to some extent, this is a particularly useful development in the ITIL framework.

Service Value System

The service value system, or SVS, is a new element of ITIL 4. It is intended to give businesses and stakeholders a clear path to the co-creation of value. It's also designed to be flexible enough to accommodate other frameworks for ITSM professionals, so that all parties can work together no matter their training background.

The six key activities in the SVS are:

• Plan
• Improve
• Engage
• Design and transition
• Obtain/build
• Deliver and support

Holistic Integration

All the new elements included in ITIL 4 have been designed with a holistic approach in mind. That means it can support ideas and concepts from other frameworks, including Lean IT and DevOps, without compromising its own approach to service management.

ITIL is built to maximize value creation for your business. ITIL 4, in particular, recognizes that value can come from anywhere. It leaves plenty of scope for businesses to respond to their specific circumstances with concepts drawn from elsewhere in the ITSM world.

That flexibility sets it apart from previous versions of ITIL, as well as from much of its competition. Your business will be uniquely equipped for the challenges of the future with ITIL 4 training under its belt.

Your New Training Partner

If you weren't convinced by ITIL 4, we hope we've changed your mind. What's more, we're ready to help you bring this innovative new framework to your business.

Advised Skills has helped over 15,000 graduates to realize their potential through online learning services. We have a 98.99% exam pass rate, which speaks to the quality of our tuition across the board. Plus, we offer all our services all over the world – so wherever you are, we can help.

Contact us today, and let's talk about how we can help your teams to develop and thrive.