10. Glossary
A fast-reference list of the key terms from this guide. Use it for last-minute review — cover the definition, recall it from the term, and check.
Agentic AI — AI that acts with a degree of autonomy, taking actions and decisions to pursue goals with limited human direction.
AI (Artificial Intelligence) — the capability of a machine or system to perform tasks that typically require human intelligence, such as learning and reasoning.
AI governance — directing and controlling an organization's use of AI to ensure it is responsible, ethical, transparent, and aligned with objectives and law.
AI maturity — how advanced and well-integrated an organization's adoption and use of AI is.
Basic service relationship — a transactional, arm's-length relationship with limited joint working.
Build — the lifecycle activity of creating and assembling product or service components.
Business as usual (BAU) — the normal, ongoing execution of routine operations.
Collaborative service relationship — the closest relationship type: deep, ongoing partnership with shared risks and joint innovation.
Continual improvement — the ongoing alignment of practices and services with changing needs; woven throughout the value system.
Continuous delivery — keeping code in an always-releasable state; a human decides when to release to production.
Continuous deployment — automatically releasing every change that passes testing to production, with no manual gate.
Continuous integration (CI) — frequently merging and testing code changes.
Cooperative service relationship — a relationship with more coordination and shared information than a basic one.
Core value stream — a value stream that directly creates and delivers value to external customers.
Cost — the money or resources spent on an activity or resource; services create value partly by removing costs from the consumer.
Critical success factor (CSF) — a necessary precondition for achieving an intended result.
Customer — the person who defines requirements and is accountable for the outcomes of service consumption.
Digital product — a product that consists of or is delivered through digital technology.
Digital product vendor — a party that supplies digital products that others use to provide or consume services.
Digital service — a service delivered or consumed through digital channels.
Disaster — a sudden major event causing serious disruption requiring significant recovery effort.
Enabling value stream — a value stream that supports the core value streams without directly facing the customer.
Error — a flaw or vulnerability that may cause incidents.
Event — any change of state significant for the management of a service or component (not inherently negative).
Experience level agreement (XLA) — an agreement focused on experience outcomes rather than only technical metrics.
Feedback — information about a service, its use, and its value, flowing from consumer to provider.
GenAI (Generative AI) — AI that creates new content based on patterns learned from data.
Good — a tangible or intangible item whose ownership transfers from provider to consumer.
Governance — the means by which an organization is directed and controlled (evaluate, direct, monitor).
Guiding principles — recommendations that guide good decisions in any circumstance; there are seven.
Human-centred design — an approach that puts people's real needs at the centre of design decisions.
Incident — an unplanned interruption to a service or a reduction in its quality.
ITIL AI Capability Model — a model for assessing an organization's capabilities for adopting, using, and governing AI across the four dimensions.
ITIL Practice Guides — detailed, individually-maintained documents, one per management practice.
ITIL Product and Service Lifecycle — the model of activities products and services move through: discover, design, acquire, build, transition, operate, deliver, support.
ITIL Value System — the model describing how the organization's components and activities work together to co-create value.
Known error — a problem that has been analysed and whose cause is understood, but not yet permanently resolved.
Management practice — a set of organizational resources designed for performing work or accomplishing an objective.
Metric — a measurement or calculation monitored or reported for management and improvement.
Observability — the ability to understand a system's internal state from the data it emits.
Operating model — the conceptual representation of how an organization runs to create and deliver value.
Outcome — a result for a stakeholder, enabled by one or more outputs.
Output — a tangible or intangible deliverable produced by an activity.
PESTLE — external factors: Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Legal, Environmental.
Problem — a cause, or potential cause, of one or more incidents.
Product — a configuration of an organization's resources designed to offer value to a consumer.
Reliability — the degree to which a service performs its intended function consistently over time.
Risk — a possible event that could cause harm or loss or affect objectives; includes positive (opportunity) uncertainty.
Service — a means of enabling value co-creation by facilitating outcomes customers want, without their managing specific costs and risks.
Service action — an activity the provider performs as part of a service.
Service consumer — an organization (or part) that uses services.
Service journey — the complete end-to-end experience a consumer has with a provider across all touchpoints over time.
Service level — a defined, measurable target for an aspect of a service.
Service level agreement (SLA) — a documented agreement between provider and consumer specifying services and expected service levels.
Service offering — a formal description of one or more services for a target consumer group; may include goods, access to resources, and service actions.
Service provider — an organization (or part) that provides services and takes on the associated costs and risks.
Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) — a discipline applying engineering and software practices to operations to improve reliability and scalability.
Sponsor — the person who authorizes the budget for service consumption.
Sustainability — the ability to maintain value over the long term, balancing economic, social, and environmental considerations.
Transformation — a fundamental, often large-scale shift in how an organization operates or creates value.
User — the person who actually uses a service.
Utility — the functionality of a product or service; fitness for purpose.
Value — the perceived benefits, usefulness, and importance of something.
Value chain — the set of interconnected activities an organization performs to create value.
Value co-creation — the active collaboration between provider and consumer (and others) that produces mutual value.
Value stream — a series of steps an organization undertakes to create and deliver value.
Value stream management — the ongoing practice of planning, assessing, and improving the flow of value through value streams.
Value stream mapping — creating a visual representation of a value stream to understand and analyse its flow.
Warranty — the assurance that a product or service meets agreed requirements; fitness for use.
