SkarpChapter 7 of 19
Organizations and People; Information and Technology
Zoom in on the human and technological sides of the four dimensions to see how culture, skills, data, and tools shape the success of digital products and services.
Orienting the Two Dimensions in the Four-Dimension Model
Two Key Dimensions
We focus on two ITIL 4 dimensions: Organizations and People (human side) and Information and Technology (data and tools side).
Link to SVS and SVC
These dimensions cut across the service value system and all service value chain activities such as Plan, Improve, and Deliver and support.
Why Exams Care
Exam scenarios often ask which dimension is mainly affected. You must spot whether the issue is primarily about people, technology, or their interaction.
Organizations and People: Culture, Structure, Roles, Competencies
What This Dimension Covers
Organizations and people covers structure, roles, skills, culture, and leadership – not just the org chart.
Roles vs Job Titles
A role is a set of responsibilities. One person may hold several roles, and a role can be shared across people.
Culture and Leadership
Culture is how people actually behave. Leadership shapes whether guiding principles like "Collaborate" and "Focus on value" are lived or ignored.
Organizations and People in Action: Two Contrasting Teams
Team A: Siloed
Team A has separate dev, test, and ops silos, unclear accountability, and a blame culture. Outages are frequent and slow to resolve.
Team B: Cross-Functional
Team B is cross-functional with a clear service owner, shared learning, and cross-skilling. Changes are faster and more stable.
Exam Signal
If a scenario stresses unclear ownership, weak communication, or resistance to change, think Organizations and People.
Information and Technology: Data, Applications, Infrastructure, Automation
What This Dimension Covers
Information and Technology covers data flows, applications, infrastructure, and automation that support services.
Data and Compliance
Information flows must be accurate, secure, and compliant with regulations like GDPR when personal data is involved.
Automation and Tools
From ITSM tools to CI/CD and AIOps, tooling can speed up work but must be aligned with good processes and skills.
Information and Technology in Action: A Support Portal Upgrade
Before the Portal
Support is email-based, with unstructured information, no central knowledge base, and poor metrics.
After the Portal
A self-service portal collects structured data, suggests knowledge articles, and routes or automates standard requests.
Dimension Focus
This scenario mainly tests Information and Technology, but technician resistance would bring in Organizations and People.
How People and Technology Decisions Affect Value Co-Creation
Value Co-Creation
Services enable value co-creation: provider and consumer work together to achieve desired outcomes.
Helpful Decisions
Good people decisions (empowerment, training) and tech decisions (monitoring, automation) support value co-creation.
Harmful Decisions
Rigid hierarchies, fear-based culture, or poorly chosen tools can block value, even if they seem efficient internally.
Thought Exercise: Diagnose the Dimension and Impact
Work through these short scenarios. For each one, decide:
- Which dimension is primary: Organizations and People, or Information and Technology?
- Does the situation mainly support or hinder value co-creation?
- Which one guiding principle could help? (e.g., Focus on value, Collaborate and promote visibility, Think and work holistically, Progress iteratively with feedback, Keep it simple and practical, Optimize and automate.)
Scenario 1
A company buys an advanced AIOps platform, but most operations staff do not know how to interpret its dashboards. They continue using their old manual checklists.
- Your analysis:
- Primary dimension?
- Support or hinder value?
- Helpful guiding principle?
Scenario 2
A service desk team holds daily 15-minute stand-ups where they review major tickets, share tips, and update a visible board of work.
- Your analysis:
- Primary dimension?
- Support or hinder value?
- Helpful guiding principle?
Scenario 3
Incident records are stored in multiple tools with inconsistent fields. Managers cannot reliably report on incident trends or root causes.
- Your analysis:
- Primary dimension?
- Support or hinder value?
- Helpful guiding principle?
Write down your answers in a notebook or notes app before checking the explanation in the next slide of your mind: then compare with the patterns we have discussed so far.
Quick Check: Organizations and People vs Information and Technology
Test your ability to spot which dimension is in focus.
A service provider wants to reduce the number of failed changes. They decide to introduce a formal change advisory board (CAB) with clearly defined roles and responsibilities, and they train participants in risk assessment and decision-making. Which dimension is MOST directly addressed?
- Organizations and People
- Information and Technology
- Partners and Suppliers
- Value Streams and Processes
Show Answer
Answer: A) Organizations and People
The key actions are about roles, responsibilities, training, and decision-making structures, which belong to the **Organizations and People** dimension. No new tools or infrastructures are introduced, so Information and Technology is secondary. Partners and Suppliers and Value Streams and Processes are relevant to change management in general but are not the primary focus of this scenario.
Quick Check: Information and Technology Focus
Another short scenario question.
A university IT department replaces its legacy on-premises email system with a cloud-based collaboration suite that includes email, chat, and online storage. The goal is to improve reliability and give students access from any device. Which dimension is MOST directly addressed?
- Organizations and People
- Information and Technology
- Partners and Suppliers
- Value Streams and Processes
Show Answer
Answer: B) Information and Technology
The scenario is primarily about changing applications and infrastructure (moving to a cloud-based collaboration suite). This is squarely in the **Information and Technology** dimension. People and process changes will also be needed, but they are not the main focus of the description.
Linking the Two Dimensions to Guiding Principles and the Service Value Chain
Guiding Principles and People
Collaborate and promote visibility, Progress iteratively, and Think and work holistically shape culture and team behavior.
Guiding Principles and Tech
Optimize and automate, Keep it simple and practical, and Focus on value guide tool and automation choices.
Across the Value Chain
Every value chain activity blends people (skills, culture) and tech (data, tools). Improve relies on both for continual improvement.
Key Term and Concept Review
Use these flashcards to reinforce essential definitions and distinctions.
- service
- A means of enabling value co-creation by facilitating outcomes that customers want to achieve, without the customer having to manage specific costs and risks.
- value co-creation
- The joint activities performed by a service provider and a service consumer to create value.
- service value system (SVS)
- A model representing how all the components and activities of an organization work together as a system to enable value creation.
- service value chain
- A set of interconnected activities that an organization performs to deliver a valuable product or service to its consumers and to facilitate value realization.
- continual improvement
- A recurring activity performed at all levels to ensure that an organization’s performance continually meets stakeholders’ expectations.
- Organizations and People dimension – main focus
- Covers structure, roles, responsibilities, competencies, culture, leadership, and communication within the organization.
- Information and Technology dimension – main focus
- Covers information and data flows, applications, infrastructure, platforms, automation, and tooling that support services.
- Culture vs Structure
- Structure is how the organization is arranged (org chart, reporting lines). Culture is how people actually behave (norms, values, unwritten rules).
- Automation – exam angle
- Usually belongs to Information and Technology, but questions often test whether people, process, and culture are ready to use the automation effectively.
- Role vs Job Title
- A role is a set of responsibilities that can be held by one or more people. A job title is a label for a position and may include multiple roles.
Apply It: Mini Design Challenge
Imagine you are part of a team designing a new online appointment booking service for a university health center.
In your notes, outline answers to these prompts:
- Organizations and People
- Which roles do you need? (Think: service owner, product owner, developers, support staff, security officer.)
- What cultural behaviors would help the service succeed? (Examples: openness to feedback from students, collaboration between IT and medical staff.)
- What competencies are critical? (Technical skills plus soft skills.)
- Information and Technology
- What key information must the service handle? (Appointment slots, student identifiers, medical confidentiality considerations.)
- Which applications and infrastructure will you use? (Existing student portal, cloud hosting, authentication systems.)
- Where could automation help? (Reminder emails/SMS, waitlist management, triage questions.)
- Value co-creation and improvement
- How will students (service consumers) participate in value co-creation? (Self-service booking, providing feedback.)
- What data will you collect to drive continual improvement? (No-shows, peak times, satisfaction scores.)
Finally, pick one guiding principle and write 2–3 sentences on how it would shape your people and technology decisions for this service.
This kind of structured thinking is exactly what the next mock exam will test. After you complete it, your diagnostic and gap guide will highlight whether you are stronger on people, technology, or their interaction.
Key Terms
- AIOps
- AI for IT operations; the use of machine learning and data analytics to enhance monitoring, event correlation, and incident response in complex IT environments.
- culture
- The shared values, norms, and behaviors that shape how people in an organization actually work day to day.
- service
- A means of enabling value co-creation by facilitating outcomes that customers want to achieve, without the customer having to manage specific costs and risks.
- automation
- The use of technology to perform tasks with reduced human intervention, often to improve speed, consistency, and scalability.
- value co-creation
- The joint activities performed by a service provider and a service consumer to create value.
- service value chain
- A set of interconnected activities that an organization performs to deliver a valuable product or service to its consumers and to facilitate value realization.
- service value system
- A model representing how all the components and activities of an organization work together as a system to enable value creation.
- continual improvement
- A recurring activity performed at all levels to ensure that an organization’s performance continually meets stakeholders’ expectations.
- Organizations and People dimension
- ITIL 4 dimension covering organizational structure, roles, responsibilities, competencies, culture, leadership, and communication.
- Information and Technology dimension
- ITIL 4 dimension covering information and data flows, applications, infrastructure, platforms, automation, and tooling that support services.