ITIL: The 7 Guiding Principles

The seven guiding principles are:

- Focus on Value: Aims at creating value for service consumers.
- Start Where You Are: Focuses on considering what is already available instead of starting from scratch (or Reusability).
- Progress Iteratively with Feedback: Focuses on avoiding everything in a go and gathering the timely feedback.
- Collaborate and Promote Visibility: Focuses on removing silos and building trust.
- Think and Work Holistically: Focuses on working in an integrated way.
- Keep it Simple and Practical: Focuses on simplifying the complex work methods.
- Optimize and Automate: Focuses on optimizing the work carried out by its human and technical resources. The following guidelines that you should consider for each guiding principle:
- Focus on Value: Know how service consumers use each service. Encourage a focus on value among all staff. Focus on value during normal operational activity as well as during improvement initiatives.
- Start Where You Are: Look at what exists as objectively as possible, using the customer, or the desired outcome, as the starting point. When examples of successful practices or services are found in the current state, determine if and how these can be replicated or expanded upon to achieve the desired state. Apply your risk management skills. Recognize that sometimes nothing from the current state can be reused.
- Progress Iteratively With Feedback: Comprehend the whole, but do something. The ecosystem is constantly changing, so feedback is essential. Fast does not mean incomplete.
- Collaborate and Promote Visibility: Collaboration does not mean consensus. Communicate in a way the audience can hear. Decisions can only be made on visible data.
- Think and Work Holistically: Recognize the complexity of the systems. Collaboration is key to thinking and working holistically. Where possible, look for patterns in the needs of and interactions between system elements.
- Keep it Simple and Practical: Ensure value Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. Do fewer things, but do them better. Respect the time of the people involved. Easier to understand, more likely to adopt. Simplicity is the best route to achieving quick wins.
- Optimize and Automate: Simplify and/or optimize before automating. Define your metrics. Use the other guiding principles when applying this one.