Contrary to popular belief, ITIL 4 isn’t a new concept. Yes, the guidelines might have received some punch, but the underlying guiding principles remain the same. If you master these principles in practice, going for an ITIL 4 foundation course would be the icing on your career. Not just to you, but even the organization can avail of your benefits. If you choose to impart these guidelines across other sections of the workforce, then you will notice that the company is creating much better value for its customers that will ultimately affect your own employees and users.
However, with lots of new architecture, and updated guidelines, the ITIL 4 rollout might seem intimidating to some. This is mostly created due to a lack of sound understanding of what ITIL 4 is. Although obtaining an ITIL 4 foundation certification will do away with most of these worries, the challenge is to convince enough IT professionals to adapt to industry 4.0.
Given below are the basic five guiding principles of ITIL that permeate across all versions. It’s a great place to start, and the first step towards stepping up your career growth. So without much further ado, let’s take a look –
1. The limelight should always be on focus
Every company, including the ones in the IT sector, should be working towards making the lives of their customers and users easier. Yes, the value of all stakeholders should be considered. That’s what ITIL 4 keeps talking about across every module. The basic principle of focusing on inclusion and satisfaction. This is not just financial in nature and also encourages everyone in the company to think of the end user’s experience. This can only be done correctly if the focus from the customer never varies. ITIL 4’s rigorous training drills this into the student’s psyche.
2. Don’t start from the very beginning
Contrary to what the second guideline might mean, the reality is very different. It tells the student to take stock of a situation before making a decision. If something fails, it does not necessarily mean that you have to start from the very beginning. Collect data, assess the situation, and aim to start a fix from where you are. This will not just force your organization to be less wasteful, but it will also keep people on board by preserving the value of what you have already got. It also guides you not always to trust only metrics. Sometimes it’s more useful to be on the ground taking stock of the situation than rely on reports.
3. Keep your goals short and sweet
Most organizations today fail because they were not logically optimistic about improvements. Setting goals that are achievable by your team is much better than just to chase a number and set unrealistic expectations year-over-year. It has been seen that long term improvement projects seldom ever work, and even if they did, the returns don’t quite match up to the huge investments already made. An ITIL 4 foundation certification will show you how organizing work and improvements into smaller chunks that are manageable is so much better for not just you, but the organization as a whole.
4. Collaboration is key to promoting visibility
Most people prefer working in silos nowadays as they say it boosts productivity. They are partly correct as it does boost personal productivity. However, an organization is not a siloed party. It is made by the collaboration between workers across departments if needed. This way, you not only create more value for yourself on a career level, but more benefits can, in turn, be created for customers, investors, and partners. This, of course, brings us to the next question of how to achieve a hundred percent collaboration across the organization. The critical thing here is visibility. If everyone in the company knows what’s happening, it’s much easier to collaborate and get things done. This doesn’t stop at the internal level. Even visibility with partners and customers is encouraged through an excellent ITIL 4 foundation course.
5. Keep optimizing and automating
Effective utilization of resources is paramount to success according to the ITIL 4 way. One way of achieving this would be to automate whatever you can. Use people only when it’s necessary. This also means that you will need to carefully assess those areas of the business that can be automated. This way, you will be able to eliminate those steps which are hampering maximum productivity. However, this does not mean that you will automate every single thing. Before you go down this route, it’s imperative that you try and optimize what you have. Without optimization, the automation of processes can be wasteful and work against the very principles of ITIL 4.
There you have it! The top 5 guidelines that every IT professional should about before going for an ITIL 4 foundation course. If you genuinely can embrace these guidelines into your day to day processes, then profitability and productivity should get a significant boost across your organization.
