Focus on value

The first guiding principle is the one the others serve. Everything an organization does should link back, directly or indirectly, to value for itself, its customers and other stakeholders. That sounds obvious, yet a surprising amount of work in most organizations cannot be traced to anyone's benefit: reports nobody reads, approval steps nobody remembers the reason for, features nobody uses. This lesson explains what focusing on value means in practice, how to find out what consumers actually value, and how the principle applies at every level, from a single support ticket to an investment decision.

What the principle asks

ITIL-110 defined value as the perceived benefits, usefulness and importance of something. Two words in that definition matter here. "Perceived" means value is judged by stakeholders, not declared by the provider. "Importance" means value depends on what matters to the stakeholder at that moment. Focusing on value therefore starts with knowing who the stakeholders are and what they consider valuable, and then checking that each activity contributes to it.

Applying the principle involves four steps:

• Know who the service consumer is, and who the other stakeholders are for this piece of work.
• Understand what the consumer values: why they use the service, what it helps them do, and how it affects their costs and risks.
• Understand the consumer experience, including how it feels to use the service, not only whether it works.
• Focus on value during normal operations as well as during improvement initiatives, so that everyday work also links to value.

Who receives value

Value flows to many stakeholders, and an activity can create value for some while destroying it for others. A new automated billing process may cut the provider's costs (value for the organization), confuse customers who receive unfamiliar invoices (lost value for consumers) and reduce workload for the finance team (value for employees). Focusing on value means seeing all of these effects and deciding consciously which trade-offs are acceptable.

Finding out what consumers value

Providers often assume they know what consumers value, and are often wrong. Common ways to find out include:

• Talking to consumers directly: interviews, workshops and joint reviews.
• Observing the service in use: watching how people actually complete tasks.
• Analyzing data: usage logs, abandoned transactions, repeat contacts and complaints.
• Asking about outcomes, not features: "what are you trying to achieve?" rather than "what features do you want?"

The last point deserves emphasis. Consumers asked for features tend to list everything they can imagine. Consumers asked about outcomes reveal what actually matters. A clinic asking for "more reports" from its booking system may really need to reduce no-shows; a reminder message might achieve that better than any report.

Value also changes over time. A feature that delighted users two years ago may now be taken for granted, and a slow response that was tolerated in a quiet period may be unacceptable during a peak season. Focusing on value is therefore continuous, not a one-off requirements exercise.

Value and experience

ITIL places growing weight on experience. Two services can deliver identical outcomes while one feels smooth and the other frustrating. The frustrating one delivers less value, because frustration is a cost to the consumer and damages the relationship. ITIL (Version 5) gives experience even more prominence across the product and service life cycle. In practice, focusing on value includes asking how it feels to request help, wait for a fix or use a self-service portal, and treating those feelings as part of what the service delivers.

Value in everyday operations

The principle is not reserved for big projects. Every interaction is a chance to create or destroy value. A service desk agent who closes a ticket quickly but leaves the user unable to work has met a time target while failing on value. An agent who spends two extra minutes confirming the fix creates more value even if the average handling time rises. Measures that reward speed alone can push people away from value, a problem lesson 11 returns to.

Value in investment decisions

At the strategic level, focusing on value means choosing investments by the value they enable, not by technical appeal. A useful approach is to state the expected value in measurable terms before work starts, then check afterwards whether it was achieved. This links to the benefits realization ideas in ITIL-150 and to the continual improvement model in lesson 11.

When the principle is ignored

Organizations that lose sight of value show recognizable symptoms. Teams measure activity (tickets closed, changes deployed) instead of outcomes. Projects are judged on delivery to schedule rather than on benefits. Processes accumulate steps that once had a purpose but now exist only because nobody removed them. Consumers describe the provider as bureaucratic. Staff cannot explain why they do parts of their job. The remedy is to ask, persistently and at every level, "who gets value from this, and how do we know?"

One test that works well in practice is to follow a single request from start to finish and ask, at each step, whether the consumer would be willing to pay for that step if they could see it. Steps that pass the test add value. Steps that fail are candidates for removal, simplification or automation. The test is borrowed from Lean, and it connects focus on value directly to keep it simple and practical (lesson 7).

Value for different kinds of organization

In the Canadian public sector, the Treasury Board Policy on Service and Digital asks departments to design services around client needs and to measure client satisfaction and service standards. Focusing on value there means asking what outcomes Canadians need from a service, such as a passport or a benefit payment, and designing to deliver them reliably. In a private company, value may be measured more in revenue, retention and cost. The principle applies to both; only the measures of value differ.

Focus on value in exam scenarios

Scenario questions about this principle usually describe a provider doing something that looks efficient or impressive but does not help anyone. The best answer is normally the option that goes back to the consumer: find out what outcome they need, check how they experience the service, or remove work that cannot be linked to value. Distractors often sound sensible, such as adding a new report, buying a tool or tightening a target, but none of them starts from what the stakeholder values. When two options both mention consumers, prefer the one about outcomes over the one about features or requests.

A second pattern describes a trade-off between stakeholders. A change may cut costs for the provider while adding effort for users. The principle does not say the provider must always lose, nor that users always win. It asks that all affected stakeholders be identified and the trade-off made consciously and openly, which also draws on collaborate and promote visibility.

Key point to remember

If you remember one idea from this lesson, make it this: value is decided by the people who receive it. A provider can make a service faster, cheaper or more feature-rich and still fail to create value if those changes do not matter to its stakeholders. Every other principle in this course is a way of delivering value more effectively.