This webinar, titled Create Value With ITIL 4, is available here for free. Below is the transcript. inforgraphic: 20/20 predictions

Overview: ITIL 4 has the potential to launch a massive shift in the evolution of IT service management. We're used to thinking in terms of a "service lifecycle", but ITIL 4 introduces a service value chain—where activities that create value can be started at any point, by anyone. Let our experts help you sort through the chaos of this intellectual shift. This webinar will give you the insights needed to move away from the linear lifecycle mentality to a more value-based approach within the ITIL 4 framework.

David Martinez: Okay. Why don't we go ahead and get started. Well, I'd like to thank you everyone for joining us and I'd like to say good morning, good afternoon, good evening. Depending on what time of day it is, where you are when you listen to our session, either the live session right now or the recording. My name is Dave Martinez. I am a product marketing manager with Ivanti and I am here with some esteemed colleagues on the panel of discussion talking about ITIL 4 then very much looking forward to.

David Martinez: Our session is called Create Value with ITIL 4, and I've got Alan Taylor with me, Ian Aitchison and Kevin J. Smith to talk about what we're doing here. Before we start off with the session itself, let me do a few housekeeping items. On this next slide you'll be seeing a couple things that just like to talk about. First thing is with putting everybody on mute, you should be on mute, but sometimes WebEx has a few technical issues and we find that you put yourself on mute on your side. That would really help out in case any issues come up. So thank you for doing that.

David Martinez: We'll be taking questions through the session so please enter your questions using the Q&A chat panel you have as part of WebEx. I'll be monitoring it through the course and either we'll get to them for the course of the session or at the end of the session, but if for some reason we don't get to your questions we will be following it up afterwards. So do stay on and we will get to your questions as the session goes on.

David Martinez: As I mentioned earlier, this webinar is being recorded so you will be given a link after the session with the link to recording and also a way to download a copy of the slides including the information that's included with the slide itself. So please look for that in a follow up email from us. And if you find you have some audio problems like you can't hear us right now or in and out. Try dialing in. Sometimes that helps, see the toll free numbers for North America here in the event ID use that if you need to dial in.

David Martinez: So with that, let me turn over to my panel and ask them to introduce themselves. Alan, I'm going to start with you first, do you mind just give me a short introduction of yourself.

Alan Taylor: Yes. Good morning Dave. My name is Alan Taylor as you mentioned and I am the principal product manager for the Ivanti Service Management and voice solution.

David Martinez: Thank you Alan. Ian all the way from the UK. Do you mind just giving us an update this afternoon?

Ian Aitchison: Yeah. Hi Dave. Yeah, indeed. All the way from the UK. My name's Ian Aitchison, a senior product director here at Ivanti and I lead over our service and asset and automation business lines.

David Martinez: Thank you so much. And Kevin, I know you're usually based in Colorado but I have no idea where you are because you're always traveling and talking to our clients. Do you mind doing this quick introduction yourself?

Kevin J Smith: Yeah, good morning. Good afternoon everybody. Thanks for joining us. Kevin Smith, a senior VP with Ivanti and for over 15 years, avid student and fan of the wonderful world of service management and looking forward to discussing something new that I know many of you are thinking about that's ITIL 4.

David Martinez: Okay, great. Thank you so much. I want to thank everybody for joining us again. Let's just get right into it with this next slide here. And the next slide is a kind of compare and contrast and how we find it interesting. I'm looking at here talking about the [inaudible 00:03:32] is, I've heard it describe of ITIL 3, the imagery of the process there ITIL V3 and then ITIL 4 with the service value chain, some of the changes in there. So I find this interesting because even though it's kind of a circle with the version three version of ITIL, in some ways a lot of people thought of it as a linear process.

David Martinez: Whereas with ITIL 4 it looks way near. But a lot of people's comments I've been hearing, it's more of a different process, doing this thing much more agile approach. So very interesting in there. But if we go to the next slide, there's a couple of things that pop out in terms of what's new with ITIL 4. Alan, I'm going to ask you to kick off our discussion and just give me your take the main differences between V3 and ITIL 4 if you wouldn't mind.

Alan Taylor: Yeah. Thanks Dave. Yeah, as the previous slide depicted graphically. And as this slide illustrates, the version three of ITIL did imply a bit of a lifecycle. In fact, those five books were designed around what the lifecycle of a service might be, right? We've got the strategy, then we're going to design the service and then transitioned it into operation and then manage it throughout its life cycle to continual service improvement.

Alan Taylor: And really how that has correlated over into version four is rather than creating what many perceived let's create value wanted then operation version 4 to create that value in any number of ways. So one of the other interesting differences I found with V3 when you think of the service lifecycle was the outer ring, was that continual service improvement. As we look at something like the service value system or the bigger inner core piece of that service value chain, continual improvement is part of that. But we dropped the word service, implying that we want continual improvement on all aspects, not just the service.

Alan Taylor: It's an interesting, different as you look at the graphics on the previous slide, but the service value chain as you see there is really intended to create value for the service once it's in operation and doing that. But it's really designed to create value at any point in this value chain, whether it's as based out there, the demand level as some of those activities, whether delivering the supporting or improving, all of those are creating dune do that.

Alan Taylor: And it's also about the co-creation of value. That's an interesting term that I took forward introduced as well as this concept of code creation of value. And in fact it introduced a new definition of the word service. So yeah, a lot of activities in what would some call a nonlinear approach that can be sometimes kind of hard to wrap your head around to say well we're so I can come in at any point in value at any point in this. And it can kind of feel a bit chaotic. But yeah, that's exactly right. Any point in that entire value chain can create the value, a lot more flexibility to where value is not created at the end once the services and operation but at any point.

Alan Taylor: So just a little bit about that because I think this concept of the service value system in the value chain is one of the big, if not the key piece from ITIL 4 that's really going to create a lot of conversation.

David Martinez: Okay, let's look at the next slide here because we actually go allies a little bit more into the service value chain. And Kevin, let me show this to you even though ITIL 4 has been out here for a year, was it Pink [inaudible 00:07:56] they unveiled it along with the [inaudible 00:07:59]. If you were at the pink shell, which is actually kind of cool to sit in, Alan's point about co-creation. ITIL V3 talk a lot about service delivery, but ITIL 4 has this emphasis on co-creation along with customers. You're out there talking to clients all the time and you're still getting questions about, how should be looking at ITIL 4? I'm going to ask you to jump off on this co-creation point and talk about how are you recommending clients take a look at us and what's the view they have the service value chain because that's the key component here as we look at, ITIL 4.

Kevin J Smith: Well I think it highlights something that we are trying to create a new focus around ITIL 4 and I know the parties working in ITIL 4 were thinking very much about this throughout the process and that is this creating value and that's an even bigger in a bigger context of a business orientation. ITIL 4 tries to introduce common sense, it tries to introduce more of a focus on the business and this strategy really this imperative of focusing on value. And I loved on the previous slide, some of you probably saw it, the second bullet under the ITIL 4 section said embrace the chaos. That's a wonderful mindset to have.

Kevin J Smith: Yeah, embrace the chaos. It's a wonderful mindset because the ITIL organization is undergoing so much change and service management certainly is as well as that and previous versions of ITIL, it was implied that we could work in a linear process or we were working in a static model and that's just not the case. Everything is constantly changing and don't hope for things to slow down and don't hope for the change to stop because that's just never going to occur. What we need to do is welcome change, become great at change and embrace the chaos and work with the business to create value.

Kevin J Smith: It's just a great way to think about everything we're doing in ITIL 4 told and even in service management going forward, regardless of what version of ITIL your organization is, leveraging his focus on business outcomes, focus on creating value and focus on being a good and agile partner with the business.

David Martinez: That's great advice in that. I like the fact that embrace the chaos. That sounds like my morning routine here with everybody getting up at the same time. Ian, let me ask you to jump in here talking about what's new with ITIL 4 and this idea of embracing the chaos. What have you been hearing your discussion from not just a technology perspective, but people really looking at this as a way to create value for not just IT but the rest of the organization, the business.

Ian Aitchison: Yeah. I think one of the things about ITIL 4 is it had to be introduced. It had to be introduced because ITIL 3 in the 2011 update were based in a world which is becoming increasingly history to all of us. It's based in a world of very rigid process. It was based in a world of we'll build it and deliver it to the business and they'll use it whether they like it or not, and very structured approach, which was good for the start of ITIL and the start of service management and hey, what on earth do I do with a request or an incident or how do I improve service?

Ian Aitchison: That was needed but it's all changed and ITIL 3/2011 was feeling increasingly bureaucratic and heavy. ITIL 4 is different and there's an awful lot to it and there's a whole load of great training materials and training courses and consultancy organizations and individuals that will work with you gleefully going through all the detail. One thing I think that is, as I say, because it is necessary is different. This is a mindset change. This is about people working differently, approaching work differently, approaching the reason they work differently and I've referenced to value creation.

Ian Aitchison: That reference also to chaos and taking small steps. Not big bureaucratic projects but doing it a step at a time and I know we'll come onto some about this, but looking at this as we were preparing for this session today, that one thing I kept coming back to was what I've been talking to people about this, this is about individuals changing how they think when they work. It's a cultural change which is essential I think, actually it's a great thing.

David Martinez: Okay, that's interesting. Alan, let me come back to you again because this point about Ian saying it's a mind shift. It's a different way of thinking and working V3 in some ways kind of, I won't say be enforced, but it lets kind of a waterfall development model for services and as Ian said, this is a different way of looking with ITIL 4. It's certainly more agile, a lot more like DevOps model. Is that a correct reading or, let me just pull with you with that.

Alan Taylor: Yeah, actually that is a correct reading. As we look at this service value chain, it's not intended to be step one and then step two and then step three. These are things that as you look at some of these activities here, it's engage and paint and build and all of this, they're kind of loosely connected in that you might hop around and do some different things, but if you think of a service provider, let's say it's IT or it's HR or it's facilities, whomever that service provider might be, they're going to tinker with these activities at various time.

Alan Taylor: So like you mentioned, rather than, like the V3, what's our strategy for this service and then how are we going to design it and new design for value and maintainability and all these other words that you did. And then finally you built it and operated it. I think the concept of value stream with that, whether it's chaotic and it's going to be something to key, but it can be a very DevOps model. In fact, it could be, for example, it's a demand, there's a demand. Perfect, let's deliver it and support it.

Alan Taylor: We already have the pieces in place, let's just do that. And then away we go. You might skip the planning phase or some other deepened elements along the way. It can be very DevOps in the way value is created, it's rather than waiting until the service is live. Let's just create value at any point with that.

David Martinez: So, they're encouraging a lot of practices like obviously have like work blueprinting sessions. You actually get a white board map out with pause as you're looking at them and do a lot of prototyping right? Before you actually put any workloads together, code, just kind of map it out and show your customers, "Hey, is this what you're thinking of with this work?" Is that a lot of behavior you're talking about?

Alan Taylor: Yeah, yeah, certainly. Certainly you could do that and you could rapidly iterate on whatever the value is you're trying to create. But I think one of the interesting pieces that may not be called out as much when you think about this, I think about delivering value and so forth. Who you delivering that value to, is it for the business? Well then you might design that service to be very business oriented or that type of thing. But if that value is going to be from a user perspective, you might very much think about the experience, is the value in the design that I'm doing based on very the experience I want the user to have? And is that how the value is going to be created?

Alan Taylor: As you look at some of these activities, I think it's important to understand who are we creating value for? You might have different personas and you might design things differently, say for the end user value than you might say for the IT analyst value. Just a bit different. And just be aware when we are focusing on value, but also focusing on the experience on who we're delivering value to.

David Martinez: Okay. That makes sense. That gets me actually to the point on the next slide we talked about the dimension in ITIL 4 we're talking about, ITIL has been around since the 80s. So it's even older than me. Well no actually I'm older than ITIL, but it start off with people positive technologies and then went to the 4Ps, people process, product and partners, and what I'd like you to see in ITIL 4, it's kind of grown that ecosystem a bit more and a little bit more finesse to it.

David Martinez: And Kevin, I go with this next point here. You talked about chaos. Part of the chaos aspect is chaos with whom and to what ends. And it feels to me that having a broader view of the ecosystem and the touch points of our partners, you get right down to a beat and customers are technology partners. They actually have a big part to play in focusing on the value. Like Alan was talking about. He's keeping us focused on the value in the best way to create something and deliver it. Thoughts on that as you talk to clients?

Kevin J Smith: Yeah, I love the expansion of the context. I think in fact right up front and the ITIL 4 foundation guide, I think you page two they referenced this context of the customer experience and digital transformation, for example, we could spend the next five webinars just talking about those things and adding in. I think in the next sentence, the guide mentions lean, agile and DevOps, but this is good in that it embraces this graphic that we have in front of us is good and that it embraces this bigger context of, for example, partners and suppliers, the value streams and processes, which we've already talked about.

Kevin J Smith: The challenge we have as people who work in IT organizations and in service management every day is we need to remember that the discipline and the structure and the details are still important and that's what's in the middle here is products and services for example, in terms of incident management, let's pick a couple of our favorites, incident management and problem management. Perhaps change management. Those things don't be confused and think for a second that those are no longer important. The discipline and structure and process of those elements of those practices remains really important. But what ITIL 4 is reinforcing and what we all need to remember is that that is not enough. And there were many years and decades even where we just focused on those details and we thought maybe that was enough.

Kevin J Smith: But now we have to raise our heads and look around and realize that there's a business depending on us, there are customers depending on us and that the IT organization now and service management and delivering services as an engine that makes all that work. And so this is helping us to understand these bigger strategies, this broader context and that organizations and people are very much key to the service value chain and key to service management and information and technology had been there from the very beginning.

Kevin J Smith: They remain important and we now have these value streams. And I think Alan and Ian both made a really important point, which was the culture, the change in culture, the refinement of our culture is so key and so valuable. And Alan mentioned the value, who are we delivering the value to? All that is related here and ultimately that's what the value stream and number four is getting to is that value stream has a destination of ultimately a constituent or a customer. We're delivering value to. So this is a wonderful description of that bigger context and the challenge that we're all being called to.

David Martinez: Okay. Ian, let me come back to you with a subtle thing Kevin just mentioned there I think Alan as well. Kevin mentioned service management, not IT service management. So one thing that ITIL 4, it kind of emphasize a service management as part of IT Service management is implying a larger aspect to it if you were... are we talking about going to service manager practices outside of IT, is that part of a big thing? And ITIL 4 is that something they're encouraging?

Ian Aitchison: Yeah, it's interesting. It doesn't actually, the materials don't dig deeply into service management processes outside of IT functions, that removal of IT and the way it's described, you can see as we see with our customers and organizations we work with around the world, service management principles are increasingly being adopted within and beyond the IT function and interestingly within ITIL 4 many of the new concepts and ideas and factors that come in have come from elsewhere. So this isn't something where service management or IT service management is changing the business all over the place. I think it's more, many factors are coming together and service management is evolving.

Ian Aitchison: It's not just about IT and it's being adopted and adapted for use to enhance and transform organizations in all different ways, all different ways. I think, frankly it all still comes back to IT. Ultimately it comes back to technology because it's built around managing and delivering value through use of technology in various ways. It's hard to get away from that and rightly so. Technology lets us all do things better. So there's no question there. But yeah, and it's a few people are caught, there's been a few subtle terminology changes in ITIL 4, the core concepts really remain pretty much the same. But some of the words I knew we'd come on to this a bit later. Some of the words had been changed, which are quite interesting.

David Martinez: Yeah, it's a new words have been added in there as well. We'll get to that in a bit. But Kevin, let me come back to you again. This idea of, service management one, what will be on IT in terms of delivering value across the organization. Are you seeing now a lot of your clients discussions?

Kevin J Smith: Yeah. And the wonderful thing is just, I think it's part of the recognition of the good work that has been done and IT Service Management and how the organization, how the broader business can leverage that good work. And there's a lot of terminology that we use around that. And new terms are good because it keeps our, this domain fresh. But there's a need across the business and improving service delivery and proving the consistency of how we perform business processes and we can refer to some of that as enterprise service management where any really any element of the business is turning to established and proven processes and tools and applications and IT to better deliver services and to be more consistent and how we do everything across the business.

Kevin J Smith: And we work with organizations that are looking at the finance team and how finance can be more consistent and how they support the business. And we're looking at the marketing organization and how they are more consistent in performance, how they better manage budgets and how they can complete their business processes more quickly with more automation. And let's not forget about the role of automation and intelligent technology and all this. Which of course is being proven out in many ways in the IT organization.

Kevin J Smith: And I know we use HR is a convenient example of how service management improvements facilities improving service management as well. But it doesn't stop there. Virtually every part of the organization is looking at how service performance and service delivery can be improved and what we find out is that the IT Service Management organization as being a very capable partner and helping them get better and go to the next level.

David Martinez: Now, that sounds good. Alan, I don't want to leave you out of the conversation. Anything you want to add to the thread we head for the last few minutes.

Alan Taylor: No, I think Ian and Kevin had said it well. As we take a look at these, four dimensions, just remember it's designed to take a very holistic approach to it. So, you could apply them in general fashion or you could apply them to very specific areas, but yeah.

David Martinez: That sounds great. Okay, great. Thank you, Alan. Speaking of principles or guidelines. The next slide talks about the guiding principles in ITIL 4 and I think this is a big part and not just at ITIL V3 but also on ITIL 4 the guiding principles and I like the way I 4 has kind of expanded and we've had a question or two come in on specifically on this early and here are the seven we're talking about. I kind of like two of them myself just to really focus, kind of hit me or of course focus on value and start where you want to take a very pragmatic approach to it and tied in with the keep it simple and practical. Don't try to over-engineer something, take this interview approach and kind of go with it.

David Martinez: But with that I'm going to just open it up and just have everybody talk about their, if you want to limit to your top two, top three you want to talk about all seven please go ahead. Because I think there's an important part of ITIL 4, it's a question coming in. We had a request question come in and say, "Hey, can you talk about the thinking and working holistically more on the bottom line here." I'm going to ask Ian [inaudible 00:27:34] I just heard you speak up talking about that one first. If you wouldn't mind.

Ian Aitchison: Let me jump in on that one. Yeah, absolutely. And by the way, all of these are great. So the earlier parts of ITIL 4 that we went through a little bit conceptual, this is where I think we really get our heads around that what we're trying to get through as we look at ITIL 4, I love all of this, thing can work holistically is again, it's a mindset change and it's about the journey that a customer or user of a service consumer of a service goes through the experience they have. Don't build something to work for IT to offer. Build something so people can do their jobs better, spend time with the end user, customer, consumer, community, spend time out there with the parts of the organization that receives service. Look at how they work. There's lots of documentation in there. The ITIL 4 body of work around experience, user experience, customer experience.

Ian Aitchison: So it's about, what's the big picture? Even as we look at a little thing, if we're building a new page on our intranet website, if we're enhancing it, application used internally, why are we doing it that way? How's it going to be used? Let's spend time with the people that are going to spend their lives working to this or certainly their working day working with this and that's the difference. I think that's different to how it used to be in the past, and the way through to even when you're providing support all the way through to a service desk environment.

Ian Aitchison: Think about what it's like being the individual that needs to use that capability to do their job. How can you make sure they can do their job? How can you make sure they can be more successful at what they do? Right. Yeah. I love to keep it simple principal just because there's been a lot of complexity that has crept in to what we do and service management and virtually every service management team and every IT organization is thinking about how we automate and how we leverage AI. Well before we go do that, we have to simplify and really lean out the current processes that we have.

Ian Aitchison: That's a very human oriented review and audit and process add to. So we make sure that what we're doing is only exactly what we have to do. And what's likely is that we find that over the last 20 or 30 years, there's been some complexity that just got built into our business processes and into our tools and in everything that we do. And we really need to take a step back, simplify all that, and then we can start looking at automating and leveraging AI and scaling better. And it's not a coincidence at that. Keep it simple principle is very, very important part of lean for example, and agile. So that's a great one to keep in mind is gosh, there's no such thing as too simple.

David Martinez: No, you're right it's automate what you have right now. Take a look at what you're trying to accomplish. Focused on the value, not the steps itself. Like you keep a broader picture of it. Look for the forest, not just the trees. I like that. Hey, Alan you mentioned earlier on this pragmatic approach, start where you are. So that's one of the guiding principles. Do you mind just commenting on that?

Alan Taylor: Yeah. Start where you are really mean, understanding what you've already got. What can you already leverage in the delivery of value. If you already understand, well, I already can leverage these three, four things are already in place and they're kind of pieces I can shuffle and put in a new puzzle. So I'm not starting over. I don't have to define everything from scratch as it were. And then realizing that rather than starting over in from the very beginning, every single time, let's go ahead and take a look at what we've got, leverage what's already may already be in place and then take it from there.

Alan Taylor: And so understanding your existing state is really is a good way to put it. I think the continuous improvement model or flow that you may have seen over the years, the very first piece that it, well, like where are we now? It still reigns. True understanding where are we? What do we have our things as Kevin mentioned, I think is optimized. Are they simple? One of my big bond treasures, automating a bad process or something just makes it go bad faster.

Ian Aitchison: So be honest with ourselves, we hear that all the time. Be honest with yourself. Most companies are a level one maturity and maybe level two. Well just be honest and take a hard look at where the current state of your organization is and it's okay. Whatever it is, it's okay because everybody's different and just being clear on where you are is an important part to starting the journey or taking the next step on the journey because we're all on our own journey and it's amazing how many companies want to believe they're more advanced than they really are. It's not necessary just be honest and be clear and then build a plan around that.

David Martinez: [crosstalk 00:33:33] One thing I like, just go ahead.

Ian Aitchison: I think it also talks to the agile mindset that we increasingly see because there is also, as we saw with ITIL 3 2011, we saw some projects are big and heavy and they take a long time and they may never even get started. We can't do that yet because we need this and this and this and this and this and if you connect together, start where you are with progressive iteratively the idea and the messaging here at ITIL 4 is very much, you know what? just get started. Just get started. Just start. It doesn't have to be perfect. Take a small step, look at where you are, get feedback, take a small step. So things happen, things move forward, that is the fundamental agile model and I think those two start where you are progress iteratively put them together and that's saying to everybody, just stop now. Someone steps go.

Kevin J Smith: Dave, I think we should make tee shirts. I think they'd be a big seller of tee shirts that say embrace the chaos and take small steps.

David Martinez: You just described my parenting skills when I was a little kid. No, but that's exactly why. But a lot of those lines I've actually heard some IT professional thing, they like having the seven principles on their wall. They always keep referring to it, otherwise they don't want to get paralyzed. Like Ian was saying by being overwhelmed by the scope of something they're trying to accomplish is if it's a big picture, what the Chinese phrase the longest journey starts with the first step. That's what's being encouraged here. That's really good. Kevin, something you always talked about and it's this last one here. Collaborate, promote visibility along with request iteratively.

David Martinez: You are a big proponent about celebrating successes. We're all busy as IT professionals and maybe we don't recognize the big things we do that really help out a cause organization. I'm going to ask you to just again talk about how important it is as IT teams to some great... when you do something really, really wonderful that really helps out the organization, what's your view on that?

Kevin J Smith: Well, let's come back to this point that Ian just made a minute ago and that's taking small steps. It can sometimes feel like the work that we have to do in IT can feel overwhelming. There's just so much that we need to do and there's so much pressure and schedules are so aggressive and we're not getting more resource, but just plan for very simple, small milestones, whatever it is, whatever is important to your organization in 2020, whatever your objectives are and the first quarter, we're here at the very beginning of January, 2020 a new year and a new decade.

Kevin J Smith: Whatever your organization is trying to accomplish, don't let yourself become overwhelmed. Simplify your plan, identify a couple of small steps, a couple of simple milestones, accomplish those. That's going to give you some momentum. It's going to give your team some confidence and then celebrate that success and talk about that success to the organization that we got this icon here with a megaphone. That's a great thing to keep in mind is when we hit a milestone in IT, it's not natural for us in IT to communicate. We tend to be a little quieter, but we need to be more communicative in 2020 and going forward and we need to share successes.

Kevin J Smith: We do need to talk to the business and collaborate with key business owners in sales and in marketing and with R&D, and support across all of the business and just talk about what we're doing, talk about what we're working on. Do it at the water cooler, do it in the lunchroom, do it in the hallway. But, yeah, that idea of, I think it's a very powerful concept. It's a very liberating concept to just take very small steps. Do those well, get those milestones completed and then celebrate something simple makes a huge difference for people in IT.

Kevin J Smith: A little bit of recognition, a $20 gift card, a luncheon, anything, a cake, it makes a huge difference. And then just start build this culture that we talked about before as well. Build a culture of more of passion and energy and celebrating and then it becomes more fun and then when that happens anything's possible.

David Martinez: No, I like that. It just promotes a better teamwork, basically better results. And sometimes it's hard to celebrate things that are really quiet, like a change or an update or release that went well, nobody noticed that it happened and the good news is they did and didn't cause any problems. So rating the no news is actually might be a good thing as well.

Kevin J Smith:Well and IT does this stuff all the time. We could upgrade a server this weekend or we could stand up a new, we could upgrade an application, we could be delivering a group of new laptops to a division in the organization. It could be anything, but every one of those things matters. Everything that IT does every day is a boost to the organization and we need to recognize that and it does need, it needs direct. We need to recognize the value in that and it needs to be celebrated and communicated.

David Martinez: Yeah. I'll give a short story here. It was a hospital where the CIO celebrated a new change her EMR system two weeks after the fact because he realized it actually changed. He was so used to hearing the columns after change. It wants to put a proper change process in place. They didn't have the problems anymore and he totally missed the fact that had happened. That's one example where, no news is actually good news, so that's good. Now I do appreciate that Kevin, that's something, we as IT professionals both do enough of, I'm mindful of the time here.

David Martinez: So I want to go talk about what we have on the next slide here and that's the key differences. We've hit some of these, but I really want to go through these a little bit more. Ian I'm going to ask you to kick us off on the seven points you have on this slide. If you wouldn't mind.

Ian Aitchison: And let's be clear, this isn't the definitive sense.

David Martinez: No, no, of course.

Ian Aitchison: It's different, but having a conversation with the customer a little while ago and we were talking about what was different and it boiled down to you know what, if you took anything away, well we've already talked about the first one. Okay. So service life cycle moves into service value chains inside the service value system. We've covered that. Okay. High level conceptual difference, low level processes or practices. We haven't really mentioned that much, but actually processes are now practices rather than the rigid structure of a process. It's the much looser concept to the practice.

Ian Aitchison: IT Asset Management previously included embedded, I'd say almost hidden inside service asset configuration management now pulled out as a separate practice in itself, which it seems like an absolute no brainer and a great move in bringing that together. One of the amusing ones I think is as the evolution of change management, it's spent a little while this year being called change control. The first publications from X loss were referencing change control and then they got feedback and credit to X loss, they got the feedback from the community control doesn't work and they've transitioned and changed management to change enablement.

Ian Aitchison: I bet we're still calling it change management in three years time to be honest, but at least they're trying and we're all contributing and making a difference where we can. Change culture. We talked about co-creation and value, but also culture as in thinking about why you do the things you do and what will add the ability for people to be productive and happy in work. I love the principles. We talked about agility, so those principles are a big improvement over previous years.

Ian Aitchison: Start where you are, move iteratively, communicate. We didn't talk much about automate by the way, automate is huge. ITIL 4 finally, ITIL finally recognizing you really have to be specific about technology and they're really digging into some detail around how automation can help, which is great because in the past you might say you can do everything in ITIL with post ITIL on a whiteboard, which you could, but that's not the point. Point is you've got all this fabulous technology, automate things, make them faster and that's a principle. The concept of having principles stuck up on the board next to somebody's desk is great.

Ian Aitchison: We're into that new cultural model. So those two particularly, that was my brain dump of, you know what, of all the conversations I have, these are the ones we come back to the most. I'd be interested in the other guys, whether they have any other thoughts on any others that aren't covered on that.

David Martinez: Okay. Alan let me turn it over to you. Got the question, any additional thoughts?

Alan Taylor: NO, automation is one of my favorite things. Like, finally we've got good automation in there and understanding some of those key differences. It's all about the co-creation of value. And yeah, there are some nuances and terminology as you've mentioned. I think we'll still be using some of the current terminology for quite some time. So, some of the other things that aren't really in here is you could incorporate some of the DevOps principles like you mentioned earlier, some agile has been mentioned to that type of thing, and that's why, well necessarily called out. We certainly start to see how those come in.

Alan Taylor: I think V3, I remember the version two. You just said very few processes, one function, and the version three kind of brought that up into the 20s with more functions. And I think we're now into the 30s with ITIL before. So it can feel a bit more complex when you start looking at, and now we've got 30 plus. This is the kind of think about, not to mention the functions, but as you mentioned, start where you are. You know the best way to eat an elephant, one bite at a time, so just do that and be aware of not undertaking of these monolithic projects.

Alan Taylor: So key differences there feels like there's more to do, but yet simply keeping in mind that service value chain and systems and so forth. Automation, personal favorite there.

David Martinez: No, it's all good. Hey Kevin, over to you in your all your conversations last year since ITIL 4 come out are these two things that stand out?

Kevin J Smith: Yeah, these things are really important. I love the service value system. It's a great way to frame it. I think we remind people to think in terms of business outcomes. If I had to add something to the list, not really adding to the list completely. Just emphasizing what's implied in some of these business outcomes. It's not... the practices that we love to talk about, I think Alan just mentioned it now for those of you that love to count and keep score, I think we said there are 34 of them now. The practices, it's not about the practices. They are not the end that they are a means to an end and they are really important to operate those practices well and to execute those practices well.

Kevin J Smith: That will still be the case 30 years from now. IT will always be around, priorities will change, technology will change, but we'll always have a need for technology and information and business and the practices will evolve. But the key is outcomes. Understand why we're doing what we're doing and understand the value that we are delivering to our constituents. Internal employees could be internal customers, could be partners, could be external customers, it could be anybody. They're all consumers of services and just understand the outcome, the value we're delivering to them. And then we'll work backwards. Think outside in, work backwards from that. And then that is the ultimate way to validate everything we do in our practices.

David Martinez: Oh thank you for that Kevin. That's good. Let me move along to the next slide. And Alan I'm going to ask you, because I know you get this question a lot is around tool sets. We talked about realizing the end and having the right solution in place for the most service magic perspective is a big help. What's your take on what ITIL 4 means from service management product set?

Alan Taylor: Yeah, from a product set perspective, what it means is that, organizations are going to start talking, start coordinating, start working to get their tool set recognized in support of the ITIL framework. Pink verify is one of the... has really sets the standard for verifying tool sets in support of ITIL best practices and terminology and those types of things. And in speaking with them on a larger scale, many of all of the current verification schemes will just remain in place for the foreseeable future.

Alan Taylor: And they'll of course add additional practices over time. And many vendors, while we're talking about ITIL four and so forth, still on a bit of a holding pattern with to see where the verification scheme bland. [crosstalk 00:48:04] certainly more on that-

David Martinez: [00:48:08]

Alan Taylor: What's that?

David Martinez: I was just saying in the meantime ITIL 3 certifications still hold with verification.

Alan Taylor: Oh yeah, yeah. ITIL 3 certification verification remain valid.

David Martinez: Okay, good. Ian anything you want to add to that?

Ian Aitchison: Nope.

David Martinez: A simple answer.

Ian Aitchison: I look at the pink verify exercises vendor. I know there's a lot of work that goes into achieving pink verify. It's an important assurance for people that invest their career success in partnership with technology, so it is important just looking at it thinking, wow, there's a whole load of work for a whole bunch of vendors when that next one comes out, but that's okay for what we do and people need that reassurance. Remember, it doesn't prove you will be successful personally or as a business or an IT Service Management function. Just because you pick a tool that's got thousands of things verified, you've got to find the right tool for your organization and there is that reassurance. You know what, this has been stress tested and stretched against all of the requirements and it can facilitate and support those.

David Martinez: That makes sense. Let me stay with you because I want to get back to just one point. It's on the next slide actually here we're talking about the culture shift and I know we hit this point about agile a few times, but you have some specific thoughts about this if I remember. So let me turn it over to you.

Ian Aitchison: Yeah, I'd be interested in you guys' thoughts on this as well. We haven't pre chatted on this one. If you look at the managing professional training coursework material, the documentation around create, deliver and support. I know a number of us on this call were involved in the review activity on there, so we know it very well. And in there all sorts of references. We've already outcomes some value talks about shift left, which isn't a new concept, but it talks a lot more about the importance of shift left in the relationship with automation to make that possible.

Ian Aitchison: It talks about understanding experiences, it talks about a culture of thinking about value. And it also talks about outcome-based missions as well. So measuring, not activity, but measuring an outcome and how to approach that. And of course collaboration. And as I was going through those materials myself, I was thinking, you know what, this sounds really familiar and where it sounds familiar is because, well, here at Ivanti, we were a software vendor organization. We build fantastic products and all of these terms and terminologies are used within our own product teams all over the world building product and something else that's changed in ITIL 4 is that it refers to creating products much more in previous questions to previous, it was all about service.

Ian Aitchison: Now you started to see the word product and the blend between product and service and the concept of product teams and how software organizations are becoming an agile and building software products is starting to blend into how IT service organizations or departments are delivering value to a business. There was also, there was a bit of a tweet conversation a few weeks or months back about how is service management becoming product management? And obviously not in every case, but the idea of we're going to create something. We've got to think about what we're going to create. We want to make sure we get it right. We've got to talk to the people that need it, about why they need it. We are going to take small steps. We've got to get feedback.

Ian Aitchison: Are we going to automate what we do? All these things are more than service management or they are from a creation of product concepts coming into service management. I think it's really interesting and again it comes back to in both from creating the product as a vendor or in IT Service Management context, it's about thinking differently about how you build, what you build, why you build it, and how you deliver it so that the same changes are visible. It's interesting.

David Martinez: Now, that makes sense. Thank you for that and going to move on here in just the time. Alan, I'm going to ask you to talk about the next slide. I realized that I asked you this earlier, but as long as what we're doing here in ITIL 4, do you mind just take a minute to talk about that? I think you already mentioned some of these already.

Alan Taylor: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. A service manager's already been verified and they see that in the 13 out of 16 processes for ITIL version three or the 2011 update. I've already reached out to Pink elephant there and as they get ready to add additional elements into the verify process, we'll certainly go in and go through those pieces and you'll maintain and look for updates on their website from a tool set perspective as Ian mentioned just because you get the tool set that has it all. It must mean we get to do it all, but it just means necessarily guarantee success.

Alan Taylor: Just means that the tools been validated to at least give you that best practice out of the box. You still want to ensure that these choose the right tool for where you are in your journey and then of course look for more updates with how service manager aligns to the ITIL best practices.

David Martinez: Great. Great. Thank you. Thank you. Ian, Alan, Kevin wanted to thank you for that. Let me move over to Q&A kind of finish with the formal presentation and we had a few questions come in. I've tried to read them in the conversation. There's some that I didn't read in, let me get back to you. I'm going to combine Mark's questions into one and this came, I think we're talking about the service value system. He speaks to the regimen in place in the service value system. And then a minute after you placed that first question, he goes, it sounded like we were talking about the least viable product method. We're talking about delivering value. Alan, do you mind you take a shot at those questions first?

Alan Taylor: Yeah. Let me think on that, there is so much... Can you repeat the question? I just want to make sure that I understood it.

David Martinez: Okay. Can you speak to the regimen place in the service value system? And then in terms of add on, it sounds like we're talking about the least viable product method.

Alan Taylor: Wait, what do you mean by regi... I guess I'm not sure regimen in place.

David Martinez: Okay. All right. Mark, if you're still on, I guess we'd get a little more context so we can follow up with you.

Alan Taylor: Yeah, a little more context, I'm not really sure what is meant by that.

David Martinez: Okay. Oh, that sounds good. Here's another question now is being with you. We think around but maybe 30 seconds. Could you discuss some of the certification paths like high velocity IT?

Alan Taylor: I'm not particularly familiar with the certification paths in terms of from that to [inaudible 00:55:37] so I can't speak too much on that. Still expanding my own knowledge in a number of areas and that's not an area that I've delve into deeply just yet.

David Martinez: All right, fair enough. Ian, let me throw this one over to you. I guess if I could summarize the question is basically what is the service value? How would you get the 32nd definition of that?

Ian Aitchison: I would say it's the high level description of the fundamental building blocks required to introduce ITIL 4 driven value and operation around your IT Service Management function. It's the very biggest pieces. It's the essentials. You need your principles, you need all of those components coming together. It's the big picture. It's the starting point and understanding. You need to be able to identify those pieces. You need to be able to reference those pieces. And then within there obviously you get into the individual service value chains for each of the different services being delivered. But it's the operating, not the operating model. Sorry that's the service value chain, but it's the top level big pieces that make it all possible.

David Martinez: Okay, great. Thank you. We have a few other questions in here, but interest of time, we're going to follow up with you afterwards. So thank you for bringing these questions I really appreciate that. But before we leave, one thing I like to do is give attendees the opportunity or at least let them know that, excuse me. We'd like to invite you to download the Gartner group ITFM group capabilities report. We talked earlier about how having the right tool set can really make a difference in realizing the vision and the practices we're talking about, the ideal for and a lot of our, our clients that found this report to be a cold buys and information to help you really understand, you know, what, what is the right tool from ideas and perspective could help you realize you know how to better improve what you're doing today depending on where you are in your maturity journey.

David Martinez: So there'll be a link here, you can, you can click on it in the slide deck when you get it, they'll allow you to take a look at the keyboard. And this is a real going to share, you know, among your organizations if you'd like to, and while you're on our website, you know, we'd like to extend the offer view to really give Avanti service manager a a try. It's easy to do. You have a tenant, we have a tenant in the cloud. You can go ahead and try out at a very easy at no cost to you. Give it a give it a spin for free and just see some of the things we've been talking about in here. So, so to ask for you, you'll get these links in the slide deck if you come out of this. That'd be fantastic. And before we go, I'm going to do a special shout out to Mark who's asked a lot of the questions that we've been talking about here today.

David Martinez: So Mark, thank you for being engaged and thank you for the link about the smart stories when we're talking about six sharing successes, Mark shared length, that will include a slide deck, nobody else you two came from Marcus talking about. And with that I like to kind of bring our webinar to a close and I would definitely love to thank Allen, Ian and Kevin for your time this morning, this afternoon talking about ITIL four and and you know what, what we're seeing in this past year. So thank you for this great discussion, really enjoyed it. I hope our attendees enjoyed it as well. And again, our attendees, you're going to get a link to the recording and also the slide as a follow up. So with that, let me just say thank you again and wish you the best for the rest of your day. Thank you so much. Take care, all.