Over the past few months, we’ve hosted four expert-led webinars looking at some of the biggest changes happening across IT and service management currently.
We started with an overview of ITIL® (Version 5) itself, before looking at the changing role of IT, why good digital products can still deliver poor experiences, and the growing challenge of governing AI.
Each webinar approached the subject from a different angle, but a common thread ran throughout all four sessions: IT is being asked to think much more broadly about the value it creates.
If you missed any of the webinars and are short on time, we’ve rounded up the biggest lessons from each below. Or if you’d like to watch them back in full, you can find all the on-demand links below:
1️⃣ ITIL (Version 5) explained
2️⃣ From ticket closer to strategic partner
3️⃣ Your digital products work. So why is nobody using them?
4️⃣ AI: The governance gap nobody is talking about
1. ITIL (Version 5) is built around value
Our first webinar started at the beginning, with ITIL expert Alan Nixon walking through the structure of ITIL (Version 5), its certification paths, and how the framework can support different IT careers.
At the centre of the framework is the ITIL Value System. Alan described it as a “system whereby we are trying to achieve value of some kind”, triggered by opportunities and demands. It uses five interconnected components:
• ITIL guiding principles: Seven high-level principles that guide decisions, including: focus on value, start where you are, progress iteratively with feedback, collaborate and promote visibility, think and work holistically, keep it simple and practical, and optimise and automate.
• Governance: What Alan described as “doing the right thing”. This means understanding stakeholders’ needs, evaluating what the organisation needs to do, providing direction through policies and guidance, and monitoring both compliance and whether it’s working.
• Value chain activities: Eight activity types that can be linked together in different flows, also known as value streams. They can form a complete or partial chain and include: Discover, Design, Acquire, Build, Transition, Operate, Deliver, and Support.
• Management practices: 34 areas of specific, individual guidance, each with its own practice guide, covering everything from incident and problem management to risk, service levels and change enablement.
• Continual improvement model: Regularly looking at services, products, processes, and teams to see where improvements could or should be made.
The key takeaway
ITIL (Version 5) gives you a flexible structure for creating and improving value, while leaving room to apply it to your organisation and circumstances.
👉 More from GEL: ITIL 4 vs ITIL (Version 5) – what’s changed?
2. IT needs to move beyond being the team that fixes things
In our second webinar – this time in association with ITIL by PeopleCert – Adam Griffith, ITIL Architect and ITIL (Version 5) Master, explored how IT can move from ticket closer to strategic asset.
He grouped that transition into three evolutions:
• Altering operational architecture and flow
• Measuring value through human experience and business impact
• Governing advanced capabilities and transforming the workforce
Behind them sit key changes to how IT works. Fragmented processes need to give way to ecosystem-driven product and service management. Linear gatekeeping needs to shift towards flexible, interconnected value streams. Static measures need to be supplemented by a much better understanding of experience and business impact. And AI experiments need governance if they’re going to responsibly deliver value at scale.
Perhaps most importantly, IT professionals themselves need to move beyond isolated ticket-centric roles towards becoming strategic relationship builders and “value orchestrators”.
The key takeaway
Moving from ticket closer to strategic asset means widening IT’s focus across the full flow of value, from products and services to experience, AI governance, and workforce capabilities.
👉 Where does your team sit between ticket closer and strategic asset? Get your free scorecard to find out
3. A digital product can work perfectly and still fail its users
Next up, we heard from David Cannon, Senior Director of ITIL at PeopleCert for our third webinar: Your digital products work. So why is nobody using them?
David’s main argument was that product quality doesn’t automatically guarantee a great user experience: “You can have the best products in the world, but if they are slow, if they’re not delivered well, if they’re not supported effectively by the team who manages those services, then the product gets a bad reputation.”
A big issue here is what David describes as the “great divide” – the gap between the people who create products and services and those who use them. Narrowing that gap requires understanding how people experience your products and services, and then reflecting what matters to them in the way you measure performance.
There’s another lesson here too: the level of service you provide needs to be sustainable. Consistently meeting the expected level, with some overdelivery where you can sustain it, gives users a service they can rely on without setting expectations you can’t maintain.
The key takeaway
Truly understanding experience means looking beyond technical performance and seeing your products and services through the eyes of the people using them.
👉 Full webinar recap: Why great digital products can still deliver poor experiences
4. AI governance needs to catch up with adoption
The final webinar brought us to one of the biggest challenges facing organisations now: AI governance.
Roman Zhuravlev, Senior Architect at ITIL, opened AI: The governance gap nobody is talking about with a stark warning: “We adopt AI way faster than we learn how to effectively control it.”
Your existing IT governance systems are likely not designed to handle all the risks and complexities of AI, so Roman recommended stress testing and assessing what you have now. This will give you a good view of the current weaknesses so you can adapt as needed. At this stage, it’s also important to involve all stakeholders, going beyond the governing body to include managers and employees. Without their needs being considered, Roman argued that governance risks becoming a “paper exercise”.
One of the most useful takeaways from the session was Roman’s guidance on assessing AI risk. Using the ITIL AI Capability Model, he showed how organisations can build a risk picture based on what AI is being asked to do, using a heatmap to highlight areas of greater concern. The circumstances surrounding each use case also matter, with factors such as data sensitivity and regulatory requirements influencing the level of risk. “If you know what you use your AI for,” Roman said, “you know what risks to look at first, and you can prioritise your risk management.”
👉 Get your free AI risk controls checklist
The key takeaway
Understanding what you’re using AI for, alongside the context in which you’re using it, can help you identify which risks need attention first.
👉 Full webinar recap: Implementing AI governance: is your organisation ready?
So, what connects all four?
Across the series, a bigger picture starts to emerge.
ITIL (Version 5) puts value at the centre. The changing role of IT asks teams to understand how that value is created across an organisation. Experience reminds us that value ultimately has to make sense to the people consuming a product or service. And AI governance shows why new technology still needs to be judged against the outcomes and risks it creates.
For ITSM professionals, the job increasingly calls for working across the organisation to understand what users need and use that insight to guide decisions about value. And that’s where ITIL (Version 5) comes in: giving people a common framework for navigating that change.
👉 Explore our ITIL (Version 5) courses
