ITIL 4 Foundation Glossary Flashcards
A list of minimum requirements that a service or service component must meet for it to be acceptable to key stakeholders.
Acceptance criteria
An umbrella term for a collection of frameworks and techniques that together enable teams and individuals to work in a way that is typified by collaboration, prioritization, iterative and incremental delivery, and timeboxing. There are several specific methods (or frameworks) that are classed as Agile, such as Scrum, Lean, and Kanban.
Agile
The practice of providing an understanding of all the different elements that make up an organization and how those elements relate to one another.
Architecture management practice
A database or list of assets capturing key attributes such as ownership and financial value.
Asset register
The ability of an IT service or other configuration item to perform its agreed function when required.
Availability
The practice of ensuring that services deliver agreed levels of availability to meet the needs of customers and users.
Availability management practice
A report or metric that serves as a starting point against which progress or change can be assessed.
Baseline
A way of working that has been proven to be successful by multiple organizations.
Best practice
The use of very large volumes of structured and unstructured data from a variety of sources to gain new insights.
Big data
The practice of analysing a business or some element of a business, defining its needs and recommending solutions to address these needs and/or solve a business problem, and create value for stakeholders.
Business analysis practice
A justification for expenditure of organizational resources, providing information about costs, benefits, options, risks, and issues.
Business case
A key activity in the practice of service continuity management that identifies vital business functions and their dependencies.
Business Impact Analysis (BIA)
A role responsible for maintaining good relationships with one or more customers
Business Relationship Manager (BRM)
An interaction (e.g. a telephone call) with the service desk, which could result in an incident or a service request being logged.
Call
An organization or business unit that handles large numbers of incoming and outgoing calls and other interactions.
Call/contact centre
The ability of an organization, person, process, application, configuration item, or IT service to carry out an activity.
Capability
The practice of ensuring that services achieve agreed and expected performance levels, satisfying current and future demand in a cost-effective way.
Capacity and performance management practice
The activity of creating a plan that manages resources to meet demand for services
Capacity planning
The addition, modification, or removal of anything that could have a direct or indirect effect on services
Change
A person or group responsible for authorizing a change.
Change authority
The practice of ensuring that risks are properly assessed, authorizing changes to proceed and managing a change schedule in order to maximize the number of successful service and product changes.
Change control practice
A repeatable approach to the management of a particular type of change
Change model
A calendar that shows planned and historical changes
Change schedule
The activity that assigns a price for services.
Charging
A model for enabling on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources that can be rapidly provided with minimal management effort or provider interaction.
Cloud computing
The act of ensuring that a standard or set of guidelines is followed, or that proper, consistent accounting or other practices are being employed.
Compliance
A security objective that ensures information is not made available or disclosed to unauthorized entities.
Confidentiality
An arrangement of configuration items (CIs) or other resources that work together to deliver a product or service. Can also be used to describe the parameter settings for one or more CIs.
Configuration
Any component that needs to be managed in order to deliver an IT service.
Configuration Item (CI)
A database used to store configuration records throughout their lifecycle. The CMDB also maintains the relationships between configuration records.
Configuration Management Database (CMDB)
A record containing the details of a configuration item (CI). Each configuration record documents the lifecycle of a single CI. Configuration records are stored in a configuration management database.
Configuration record
The practice of aligning an organization’s practices and services with changing business needs through the ongoing identification and improvement of all elements involved in the effective management of products and services.
Continual improvement practice
An integrated set of practices and tools used to deploy software changes into the production environment. These software changes have already passed predefined automated tests.
Continuous deployment
An integrated set of practices and tools used to merge developers’ code, build and test the resulting software, and package it so that it is ready for deployment.
Continuous integration/continuous delivery
The means of managing a risk, ensuring that a business objective is achieved, or that a process is followed.
Control
The amount of money spent on a specific activity or resource.
Cost
A business unit or project to which costs are assigned.
Cost centre
A necessary precondition for the achievement of intended results.
Critical success factor (CSF)
A set of values that is shared by a group of people, including expectations about how people should behave, ideas, beliefs, and practices.
Culture
A role that defines the requirements for a service and takes responsibility for the outcomes of service consumption.
Customer
The sum of functional and emotional interactions with a service and service provider as perceived by a service consumer.
Customer experience (CX)
A real-time graphical representation of data.
Dashboard
The value chain activity that ensures services are delivered and supported according to agreed specifications and stakeholders’ expectations.
Deliver and support
Input to the service value system based on opportunities and needs from internal and external stakeholders.
Demand
The movement of any service component into any environment.
Deployment
The practice of moving new or changed hardware, software, documentation, processes, or any other service component to live environments.
Deployment management practice
The value chain activity that ensures products and services continually meet stakeholder expectations for quality, costs, and time to market.
Design and transition
A practical and human-cantered approach used by product and service designers to solve complex problem sand find practical and creative solutions that meet the needs of an organization and its customers.
Design thinking
An environment used to create or modify IT services or applications.
Development environment
An organizational culture that aims to improve the flow of value to customers. DevOps focuses on culture, automation, Lean, measurement, and sharing (CALMS).
DevOps
The evolution of traditional business models to meet the needs of highly empowered customers, with technology playing an enabling role.
Digital transformation
A sudden unplanned event that causes great damage or serious loss to an organization. A disaster results in an organization failing to provide critical business functions for some predetermined minimum period.
Disaster
A set of clearly defined plans related to how an organization will recover from a disaster as well as return to apre-disaster condition, considering the four dimensions of service management.
Disaster recovery plans
Something that influences strategy, objectives, or requirements.
Driver
A measure of whether the objectives of a practice, service or activity have been achieved
Effectiveness
A measure of whether the right amount of resources have been used by a practice, service, or activity
Efficiency
A change that must be introduced as soon as possible
Emergency change
The value chain activity that provides a good understanding of stakeholder needs, transparency, continual engagement, and good relationships with all stakeholders.
Engage
A subset of the IT infrastructure that is used for a particular purpose, for example a live environment or test environment. Can also mean the external conditions that influence or affect something.
Environment
A flaw or vulnerability that may cause incidents
Error
Problem management activities used to manage known errors.
Error control
The act of sharing awareness or transferring ownership of an issue or work item.
Escalation
Any change of state that has significance for the management of a service or other configuration item.
Event
A customer who works for an organization other than the service provider
External customer
A loss of ability to operate to specification, or to deliver the required output or outcome
Failure
A technique whereby the outputs of one part of a system are used as inputs to the same part of the system.
Feedback loop
The four perspectives that are critical to the effective and efficient facilitation of value for customers another stakeholders in the form of products and services.
Four dimensions of service management
Tangible resources that are transferred or available for transfer from a service provider to a service consumer, together with ownership and associated rights and responsibilities.
Goods
The means by which an organization is directed and controlled.
Governance
A unique name that is used to identify and grant system access rights to a user, person, or role.
Identity
The value chain activity that ensures continual improvement of products, services, and practices across all value chain activities and the four dimensions of service management.
Improve
An unplanned interruption to a service or reduction in the quality of a service.
Incident
The practice of minimizing the negative impact of incidents by restoring normal service operation as quickly as possible.
Incident management
One of the four dimensions of service management. It includes the information and knowledge used to deliver services, and the information and technologies used to manage all aspects of the service value system.
Information and technology
The practice of protecting an organization by understanding and managing risks to the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of information.
information security management practice
The policy that governs an organization’s approach to information security management.
Information security policy
The practice of overseeing the infrastructure and platforms used by an organization. This enables the monitoring of technology solutions available, including solutions from third parties.
Infrastructure and platform management practice
A security objective that ensures information is only modified by authorized personnel and activities.
Integrity
A customer who works for the same organization as the service provider
Internal customer
The interconnection of devices via the internet that were not traditionally thought of as IT assets, but now include embedded computing capability and network connectivity.
Internet of Things
Any financially valuable component that can contribute to the delivery of an IT product or service.
IT asset
The practice of planning and managing the full lifecycle of all IT assets
IT asset management practice
All the hardware, software, networks, and facilities that are required to develop, test, deliver, monitor, manage, and support IT services.
IT infrastructure
A service based on the use of information technology.
IT service
Best-practice guidance for IT service management.
ITIL
Recommendations that can guide an organization in all circumstances, regardless of changes in its goals, strategies, type of work, or management structure.
ITIL guiding principles
An operating model for service providers that covers all the key activities required to effectively manage products and services.
ITIL service value chain
A method for visualizing work, identifying potential blockages and resource conflicts, and managing work in progress.
Kanban
An important metric used to evaluate the success in meeting an objective.
Key performance indicator (KPI)
The practice of maintaining and improving the effective, efficient, and convenient use of information and knowledge across an organization.
Knowledge management practice
A problem that has been analysed but has not been resolved.
Known error
An approach that focuses on improving workflows by maximizing value through the elimination of waste.
Lean
The full set of stages, transitions, and associated statuses in the life of a service, product, practice, or other entity.
Lifecycle
Refers to a service or other configuration item operating in the live environment.
Live
A controlled environment used in the delivery of IT services to service consumers
Live environment
The ease with which a service or other entity can be repaired or modified.
Maintainability
An incident with significant business impact, requiring an immediate coordinated resolution.
Major incident
Interrelated or interacting elements that establish policy and objectives and enable the achievement of those objectives.
Management system
A measure of the reliability, efficiency and effectiveness of an organization, practice, or process
Maturity
A metric of how frequently a service or other configuration item fails.
Mean time between failures (MTBF)
A metric of how quickly a service is restored after a failure.
Mean time to restore service (MTRS)
The practice of supporting good decision-making and continual improvement by decreasing levels of uncertainty.
Measurement and reporting
A measurement or calculation that is monitored or reported for management and improvement.
Metric
A short but complete description of the overall purpose and intentions of an organization.
Mission
A representation of a system, practice, process, service, or other entity that is used to understand and predict its behaviour and relationships.
Model
The activity of creating, maintaining, and utilizing models.
Modelling
Repeated observation of a system, practice, process, service, or other entity to detect events and to ensure that the current status is known.
Monitoring
The practice of systematically observing services and service components and recording and reporting selected changes of state identified as events.
Monitoring and event management practice
The value chain activity that ensures service components are available when and where they are needed, and that they meet agreed specifications.
Obtain or build
The routine running and management of an activity, product, service, or other configuration item.
Operation
The hardware and software solutions that detect or cause changes in physical processes through direct monitoring or control of physical devices such as valves, pumps, etc.
Operational technology
A person or a group of people that has its own functions with responsibilities, authorities, and relationships to achieve its objectives.
Organization
The practice of ensuring that changes in an organization are smoothly and successfully implemented and that lasting benefits are achieved by managing the human aspects of the changes.
Organizational change management practice
The ability of an organization to anticipate, prepare for, respond to, and adapt to unplanned external influences.
Organizational resilience
The speed, effectiveness, and efficiency with which an organization operates. It influences time to market, quality, safety, costs, and risks.
Organizational velocity
One of the four dimensions of service management. It ensures that the way an organization is structured and managed, as well as its roles, responsibilities, and systems of authority and communication, is well defined and supports its overall strategy and operating model.
Organizations and people
A result for a stakeholder enabled by one or more outputs.
Outcome
A tangible or intangible deliverable of an activity.
Output
The process of having external suppliers provide products and services that were previously provided internally.
Outsourcing
One of the four dimensions of service management. It encompasses the relationships an organization has with other organizations that are involved in the design, development, deployment, delivery, support, and/or continual improvement of services.
Partners and suppliers
A relationship between two organizations that involves working closely together to achieve common goals and objectives.
Partnership
A measure of what is achieved or delivered by a system, person, team, practice, or service
Performance
A test implementation of a service with a limited scope in a live environment.
Pilot
The value chain activity that ensures a shared understanding of the vision, current status, and improvement direction for all four dimensions and all products and services across an organization.
Plan
Formally documented management expectations and intentions used to direct decisions and activities.
Policy
The practice of ensuring that an organization has the right mix of programs, projects, products, and services to execute its strategy within its funding and resource constraints.
Portfolio management practice
A review after the implementation of a change, to evaluate success and identify opportunities for improvement.
Post-implementation review (PIR)
A set of organizational resources designed for performing work or accomplishing an objective.
Practice
The practice of reducing the likelihood and impact of incidents by identifying actual and potential causes of incidents and managing workarounds and known errors.
Problem management practice
A documented way to carry out an activity or a process
Procedure
A set of interrelated or interacting activities that transform inputs into outputs. It takes one or more defined inputs and turns them into defined outputs. It defines the sequence of actions and their dependencies.
Process
A configuration of an organization’s resources designed to offer value for a consumer
Product
A set of related projects and activities, and an organization structure created to direct and oversee them.
program
A temporary structure that is created for the purpose of delivering one or more outputs (or products) according to an agreed business case.
Project
The practice of ensuring that all an organization’s projects are successfully delivered.
Project management practice
An improvement that is expected to provide a return on investment in a short period of time with relatively small cost and effort.
Quick win
A document stating results achieved and providing evidence of activities performed
Record
The activity of returning a configuration item to normal operation after a failure.
Recovery
The point to which information used by an activity must be restored to enable the activity to operate on resumption.
Recovery point objective (RPO)
The maximum acceptable period of time following a service disruption that can elapse before the lack of business functionality severely impacts the organization.
Recovery time objective (RTO)
The practice of establishing and nurturing links between an organization and its stakeholders at strategic and tactical levels.
Relationship management practice
A set of tools, data, and information that is used to support service configuration management.
Configuration Management System (CMS)
A version of a service or other configuration item, or a collection of configuration items, that is made available for use.
Release
The practice of making new and changed services and features available for use.
Release management practice
The ability of a product, service, or other configuration item to perform its intended function for a specified period of time or number of cycles.
Reliability
A view of the service catalogue, providing details on service requests for existing and new services, which is made available for the user.
Request catalogue
A description of a proposed change used to initiate change control
Request for change (RFC)
The action of solving an incident or problem.
Resolution
A person, or other entity, that is required for the execution of an activity or the achievement of an objective. It can used by an organization may be owned by the organization or used according to an agreement with the owner.
Resource
The act of permanently withdrawing a product, service, or other configuration item from use.
Retire
A possible event that could cause harm or loss or make it more difficult to achieve objectives. Can also be defined as uncertainty of outcome and can be used in the context of measuring the probability of positive outcomes as well as negative outcomes.
Risk
An activity to identify, analyse, and evaluate risks.
Risk assessment
A means of enabling value co-creation by facilitating outcomes that customers want to achieve, without the customer having to manage specific costs and risks.
Service
Any action required to deliver a service output to a user. Service actions may be performed by a service provider resource, by service users, or jointly.
Service action
A view of all the services provided by an organization. It includes interactions between the services, and service models that describe the structure and dynamics of each service.
Service architecture
Structured information about all the services and service offerings of a service provider, relevant for a specific target audience.
Service catalog
The practice of providing a single source of consistent information on all services and service offerings and ensuring that it is available to the relevant audience.
Service catalog management practice
The practice of ensuring that accurate and reliable information about the configuration of services, and the configuration items that support them, is available when and where needed.
Service configuration management practice
Activities performed by an organization to consume services. It includes the management of the consumer’s resources needed to use the service, service actions performed by users, and the receiving (acquiring) of goods
Service consumption
The practice of ensuring that service availability and performance are maintained at a sufficient level in case of a disaster.
Service continuity management practice
The practice of designing products and services that are fit for purpose, fit for use, and that can be delivered by the organization and its ecosystem.
Service design practice
The point of communication between the service provider and all its users.
Service desk
The practice of capturing demand for incident resolution and service requests.
Service desk practice
One or more metrics that define expected or achieved service quality.
Service level
A documented agreement between a service provider and a customer that identifies both services required and the expected level of service.
Service level agreement (SLA)
The practice of setting clear business-based targets for service performance so that the delivery of a service can be properly assessed, monitored, and managed against these targets.
Service level management practice
A set of specialized organizational capabilities for enabling value for customers in the form of services.
Service management
A formal description of one or more services, designed to address the needs of a target consumer group. A service offering may include goods, access to resources, and service actions.
Service offering
A role that is accountable for the delivery of a specific service.
Service owner
A complete set of products and services that are managed throughout their lifecycles by an organization.
Service portfolio
A role performed by an organization in a service relationship to provide services to consumers.
Service provider
Activities performed by an organization to provide services. It includes management of the provider’s resources, configured to deliver the service; ensuring access to these resources for users; fulfilment of the agreed service actions; service level management; and continual improvement. It may also include the supply of goods.
Service provision
A cooperation between a service provider and service consumer. It includes service provision, service consumption, and service relationship management.
Service relationship
Joint activities performed by a service provider and a service consumer to ensure continual value co-creation based on agreed and available service offerings.
Service relationship management
A request from a user or a user’s authorized representative that initiates a service action which has been agreed as a normal part of service delivery.
Service request
The practice of supporting the agreed quality of a service by handling all pre-defined, user-initiated service requests in an effective and user-friendly manner.
Service request management practice
The practice of ensuring that new or changed products and services meet defined requirements.
Service validation and testing practice
A model representing how all the components and activities of an organization work together to facilitate value creation.
Service value system (SVS)
The practice of ensuring that applications meet stakeholder needs in terms of functionality, reliability, maintainability, compliance, and auditability.
Software development and management practice
The activity of planning and obtaining resources from a particular source type, which could be internal or external, centralized or distributed, and open or proprietary.
Sourcing
A documented description of the properties of a product, service, or other configuration item
Specification
A person who authorizes budget for service consumption. Can also be used to describe an organization or individual that provides financial or other support for an initiative.
Sponsor
A person or organization that has an interest or involvement in an organization, product, service, practice, or other entity.
Stakeholder
A document, established by consensus and approved by a recognized body, that provides for common and repeated use, mandatory requirements, guidelines, or characteristics for its subject.
Standard
A low-risk, preauthorized change that is well understood and fully documented, and which can be implemented without needing additional authorization.
Standard change
A description of the specific states an entity can have at a given time
Status
The practice of formulating the goals of an organization and adopting the courses of action and allocation of resources necessary for achieving those goals.
Strategy management practice
A stakeholder responsible for providing services that are used by an organization.
Supplier
The practice of ensuring that an organization’s suppliers and their performance levels are managed appropriately to support the provision of seamless quality products and services.
Supplier management practice
A team with the responsibility to maintain normal operations, address users’ requests, and resolve incidents and problems related to specified products, services, or other configuration items.
Support team
A combination of interacting elements organized and maintained to achieve one or more stated purposes.
System
A holistic approach to analysis that focuses on the way that a system’s constituent parts work, interrelate, and interact over time, and within the context of other systems.
Systems thinking
The total rework backlog accumulated by choosing workarounds instead of system solutions that would take longer.
Technical debt
A controlled environment established to test products, services, and other configuration items
Test environment
A stakeholder external to an organization.
Third party
A measure of the amount of work performed by a product, service, or other system over a given period of time.
Throughput
A unit of work consisting of an exchange between two or more participants or systems.
Transaction
A technique using realistic practical scenarios to define functional requirements and to design tests.
Use case
A person who uses services.
User
The functionality offered by a product or service to meet a particular need. It can be summarized as ‘what the service does’ and can be used to determine whether a service is ‘fit for purpose’. To have it, a service must either support the performance of the consumer or remove constraints from the consumer. Many services do both.
Utility
Functional requirements which have been defined by the customer and are unique to a specific product.
Utility requirements
Confirmation that the system, product, service, or other entity meets the agreed specification.
Validation
The perceived benefits, usefulness, and importance of something.
Value
A series of steps an organization undertakes to create and deliver products and services to consumers.
Value stream
A defined aspiration of what an organization would like to become in the future
Vision
Assurance that a product or service will meet agreed requirements. It can be summarized as ‘how the service performs’ and can be used to determine whether a service is ‘fit for use’. It often relates to service levels aligned with the needs of service consumers. This may be based on a formal agreement, or it may be a marketing message or brand image. It typically addresses such areas as the availability of the service, its capacity, levels of security, and continuity. A service may be said to have it, if all defined and agreed conditions are met.
Warranty
Typically, non-functional requirements captured as inputs from key stakeholders and other practices.
Warranty requirements
A development approach that is linear and sequential with distinct objectives for each phase of development.
Waterfall method
A detailed description to be followed in order to perform an activity
Work instruction
A solution that reduces or eliminates the impact of an incident or problem for which a full resolution is not yet available. It may reduce the likelihood of incidents.
Workaround
The practice of ensuring that an organization has the right people with the appropriate skills and knowledge and in the correct roles to support its business objectives.
Workforce and talent management practice
The four dimensions of Service Management
Components of the Service Value System (SVS)
Components of the Service Value Chain
What are some of the main ITIL management practices?
- Continual improvement
- Change enablement
- Incident management
- Problem management
- Service request management
- Service desk
- Service level management
- Information security management
- Relationship management
- Supplier management
- IT Asset management
- Monitoring and Event Management
- Release management
- Service Configuration Management
- Deployment management
Which ITIL practice involves the below?
Supplier planning
Evaluation of suppliers and contracts
Supplier and contract negotiation
Supplier categorization
Supplier and contract management
Warranty management
Performance management
Contract renewal or termination
Supplier Management Practice
These are changes that need to be scheduled, assessed, and authorized
in order to follow a standard process
Normal changes
The infrastructure and process necessary for the effective
management, control, and protection of the software assets within an
organization, throughout all stages of their lifecycle.
Software asset management (SAM)
Two types of IT asset management
IT asset management (ITAM)
This is a sub-practice of asset management that is specifically aimed at managing the lifecycles and total costs of IT equipment and infrastructure.
Software asset management (SAM)
This is the infrastructure and process necessary for the effective management, control, and protection of the software assets within an organization, throughout all stages of their lifecycle
Distinct approaches that can be used for deployment
