ITIL Foundation
Syllabus Map

DEFINITION

Value

The perceived benefits, usefulness, and importance of something. In ITIL, value is always co-created between the service provider and the consumer — never delivered one-way.

COMPONENT

Value System

The components and activities of an organisation that work together to facilitate value creation through digital products and services. Takes Demand and Opportunity as inputs; produces Value as output.

COMPONENT

Value Chain

An entire set of activities that create value through the provision of a product or service. Contains 8 activities: Discover, Design, Acquire, Build, Transition, Operate, Deliver, Support.

COMPONENT

Governance

The means by which an organisation is directed and controlled. Sets direction, establishes policies, and ensures accountability.

COMPONENT

Practices

Sets of organisational resources designed for performing work or accomplishing an objective. There are 34 management practices in ITIL Foundation.

COMPONENT

Continual Improvement

An ongoing activity at all levels of the organisation to improve services, practices, and the value system itself. Uses the 7-step CI model.

UTILITY

Utility — Fit for Purpose

What the service does. Functionality that supports a required outcome. Both utility AND warranty are needed for value.

WARRANTY

Warranty — Fit for Use

How the service performs. Covers: availability, capacity, security, and continuity. Without warranty, even a useful service fails to deliver value.

NEW IN V5

Sustainability

Environmental, social, and growth considerations embedded in value creation — new in ITIL v5.

ACTIVITY 1

Discover

Ensure continual alignment of product roadmaps and service offerings with the needs of consumers and organisational strategy.

ACTIVITY 2

Design

Create prototypes and specifications for products and services, detailing functionality, user experience, and operational framework.

ACTIVITY 3

Acquire

Secure and allocate necessary resources efficiently, ensuring sustainability and scalability of products and services.

ACTIVITY 4

Build

Develop, integrate, and test digital products, transforming designs into functional solutions.

ACTIVITY 5

Transition

Seamlessly introduce new or updated products into operational environments.

ACTIVITY 6

Operate

Maintain and monitor digital products and supporting systems, ensuring optimal performance and reliability. Primary home of AI in ITIL v5.

ACTIVITY 7

Deliver

Provide services to users, manage onboarding/offboarding, maintain service quality standards, and gather consumer feedback.

ACTIVITY 8

Support

Identify and resolve incidents, fulfil disaster recovery procedures, and capture consumer feedback.

DEFINITION

Value Stream

A series of steps an organisation uses to create and deliver products and services to a service consumer — a specific path through the value chain.

TECHNIQUE

Value Stream Mapping

A technique for the visual representation and analysis of value streams. Used to identify waste, bottlenecks, and optimisation opportunities.

6C — CREATION

🎨 Creation

AI generates new content, artefacts, code, or solutions. e.g. drafting incident reports, writing test scripts, generating knowledge articles from resolved tickets.

6C — CURATION

🗂️ Curation

AI filters, organises, and prioritises information. e.g. triaging tickets, ranking incidents by severity, surfacing relevant knowledge articles.

6C — COGNITION

🧠 Cognition

AI reasons and supports complex decisions. e.g. root cause analysis, predicting failures before they occur, assessing change risk.

6C — CLARIFICATION

💡 Clarification

AI explains and simplifies. e.g. summarising incident logs into executive briefings, translating technical jargon for non-technical stakeholders.

6C — COMMUNICATION

💬 Communication

AI interacts with users directly. e.g. chatbots handling service requests, virtual agents resolving L1 incidents autonomously.

6C — COORDINATION

🔗 Coordination

AI orchestrates workflows. e.g. auto-routing tickets, triggering runbooks, scheduling change windows without human intervention.

ETHICS

AI Ethics & Responsible Use

Fairness, transparency, accountability, privacy, safety. Humans must remain accountable for AI-driven outcomes — always.

RISK

AI Risks

Bias in outputs · Lack of transparency · Over-reliance · Data quality & privacy · Organisational change. Each requires governance and human oversight.

KEY DISTINCTION

AI vs Automation

Automation: fixed rules, no learning. AI: learns from data, adapts, makes decisions. Both require the optimise-before-automating rule.

GOVERNANCE

AI Governance

Policies, controls, audit trails, and oversight for AI — aligns to the Governance component of the Value System.