ITIL® Foundation
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01. What is Service Management?


This is a bundle of an accredited eLearning course and the official online exam (all fees included).

Course Information

What is ITIL?

ITIL is the most famous guide for IT service management. If you’re working in such an industry, ITIL would be a great help as it explains every aspect of work and every consideration that is needed for your success.

Organizations behind ITIL

ITIL belongs to a family of best practices that also contains famous methodologies such as PRINCE2®. This package belongs to AXELOS. It used to belong to OCG, and that’s why you may see that name in some old resources.

ITIL exams are administered by PeopleCert. In the past, there were other examinations institutes involved such as APMG and EXIN, but at the moment, it’s exclusively done through PeopleCert.

You can prepare for the exam by taking eLearning courses (such as ours), classroom courses, or self-study. When you’re ready, you can buy the exam voucher from an Accredited Training Organization (such as us) and take the exam online.

Levels of certification for ITIL

There are multiple levels of certification for ITIL. It all starts with ITIL Foundation and then proceeds to the Practitioner, Intermediate, Expert, and Master levels! Yes, there are many levels. However, most people find the ITIL Foundation certificate satisfying and do not proceed to the higher levels.

Is ITIL the right program for me?

If you’re in IT service management, it would be very helpful, both for your knowledge and your credibility.

The most important alternative to ITIL is COBIT®, but ITIL is still more popular.

How can I learn more about ITIL Foundation before making my decision?

You can start taking our eLearning course and see if the topic is interesting to you. The first 30% of the course is free.

This ITIL Foundation eLearning Course

Our eLearning course is accredited by PeopleCert, and designed and delivered by Ivor Macfarlane, the co-author of ITIL 1, ITIL 2, and ITIL 3. So, you’re in good hands!

The course is equivalent to a 3-day classroom course (21 PDUs) and consists of 55 lessons. In short, the course provides everything you need to learn the topic and prepare for the exam. The first 30% of the course is free, and you can take it and see if it meets your needs before finalizing your decision.

In addition to the lessons, there are quizzes and Integrated Flashcards throughout the course. There’s also an exam simulator with 200 questions. In short, the course provides everything you need to learn the topic and prepare for the exam. The first 30% of the course is free, and you can take it and see if it meets your needs before finalizing your decision.

The course is delivered in the following main sections:

  • The basics: This is the first iteration of the course, where we go through the basic concepts of IT service management.
  • Processes and functions: In the second section, we will review all the details needed for the Foundation level.
  • Exam preparation: Even though your trainer was a coauthor of ITIL 1, he still had to take the exam and become certified before becoming an accredited trainer. That made him one of the first people who took the ITIL exam in history! In this section, he will tell you everything you need to know about the exam.

Here’s the list of lessons:

  • The Basics
    • 01. What is Service Management?
    • 02. Scope of Service Management
    • 03. The Lifecycle Concept
    • 04. Lifecycle Phases
    • 05. Mastering the Jargon
    • 06. Best Practice
    • 07. Service
    • 08. Stakeholders
    • 09. Outcome and Value
    • 10. Utility and Warranty
    • 11. Service Assets
    • 12. Incidents, Problems, Known Errors
    • 13. PPT and 4Ps
    • 14. Risk
    • 15. Governance
    • 16. Processes
    • 17. RACI
    • 18. Functions
    • 19. Overview of the ITIL Approach
    • 20. ITIL Structure
    • 21. The Service Lifecycle
  • Processes and Functions
    • 22. Service Strategy
    • 23. Service Design
    • 24. Service Transition
    • 25. Service Operation
    • 26. Continual Service Improvement
    • 27. Service Portfolio Management
    • 28. Financial Management for IT Services
    • 29. Demand Management
    • 30. Business Relationship Management
    • 31. Service Level Management
    • 32. Knowledge Management
    • 33. Supplier Management
    • 34. Service Catalogue Management
    • 35. Availability Management
    • 36. Information Security Management
    • 37. Capacity Management
    • 38. IT Service Continuity Management
    • 39. Design Coordination
    • 40. Service Transition Planning and Support
    • 41. Service Asset and Configuration Management
    • 42. Change Management
    • 43. Release and Deployment Management
    • 44. Testing and Evaluation
    • 45. Event Management
    • 46. Incident Management
    • 47. Request Fulfilment
    • 48. Access Management
    • 49. Problem Management
    • 50. Service Desk Function
    • 51. Other Functions
    • 52. 7 Step Improvement Process
    • 53. Automation and Communication
  • Exam Preparation
    • 54. Simulated Exams
    • 55. Sample Exams

Welcome to the course!
Each lesson has a video similar to the one you see below. After starting the playback, you can use the settings on the video to make it full-screen, change the playback speed, etc.

Enjoy the course :)

Based on AXELOS ITIL® material. Reproduced under licence from AXELOS. All rights reserved.

We've talked about why you might need service management, what do you think falls within the scope for service management?

Who's your trainer?

Your trainer, Ivor Macfarlane, is a coauthor of ITIL (versions 1, 2, and 3), as well as ISO 20000 and ITSM library. He's been an ITIL Examiner since 1991, and has delivered ITIL training in more than 40 countries.

Ivor was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award for outstanding contribution to ITSM in 2017 by ITSMF UK; just a few weeks before we started recording this course!

His deep understanding of IT Service Management in general, and ITIL in particular, experience in training, and decades of hands-on experience in the field, are all used to bring you this course. We hope you'll enjoy taking it as much as we did building it.

Self Evaluation

  1. Why do you need to know about the services you deliver?
  2. Name some of the ways we get better at what we do?
  3. What kind of things limit our ability to deliver services?
  4. Why do we need to know about what the business wants and needs?
  5. Why isn't what the business wants the same as what it needs?

Show answers

  1. Because if you don't understand them, you can't be sure they are relevant, and can't set about improving them. They are the tools your customers use in their everyday jobs, so you need to be sure they are the right tools.
  2. Copy: Learn from what others do
    Practice: improve how we do things
    Adapt: do the right things, don't do the wrong things
  3. Constraints – money, time, skills etc
  4. Because otherwise we work on the wrong things. No matter how good we get at delivering the wrong things, it won;t best help the organisation.
  5. Because people are like that :)

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