3.1 Focus on Value and Start Where You Are

What a Guiding Principle Is

Quick Answer: A guiding principle is "a recommendation that guides an organization in all circumstances, regardless of changes in its goals, strategies, type of work, or management structure." ITIL 4 defines seven of them, and they account for roughly 15% of the Foundation exam. The first two are Focus on value and Start where you are.

The seven guiding principles are universal and enduring — they apply to any improvement, any initiative, and any decision, and they do not expire when the business changes direction. They are designed to be adopted into how an organization works without modification, and they help every part of the service value system (SVS) pull in the same direction. On the exam you are tested at the understand level: given a short scenario, you pick which principle is being applied or violated. Knowing the precise wording and the recommendations behind each principle is therefore essential.

Focus on Value

Focus on value states that everything the organization does should map, directly or indirectly, to value for its stakeholders — customers, users, sponsors, and the organization itself. Value is defined from the consumer's perspective, not the provider's, so the first practical step is to know who is being served and understand what that person actually values. ITIL stresses that value is co-created and is shaped by the consumer's own perception and preferences, not just the features a provider ships.

A key insight is that the customer experience (CX) and user experience (UX) are part of value. A service that is technically correct but frustrating to use is not delivering full value. Equally important: identifying and eliminating activities that contribute nothing to value is itself value-creating, because it frees resources for work that matters.

Recommendations for Focus on Value

• Know how service consumers use each service — understand the real expected outcome, not just the requested output.
• Encourage a focus on value among all staff, so every role can connect its work to stakeholder value.
• Focus on value during normal operations as well as during improvement — not only on project work.
• Include a focus on value in every step of any improvement initiative.
• Map every activity back to a stakeholder — if you cannot, question whether the activity should exist.

A Common Exam Trap

A frequent distractor describes adding a flashy feature the provider assumes customers want. That is not focus on value, because value is defined by the consumer's perception. The principle requires you to first determine who is being served and what they value, then act.

Continually Asking 'Why?'

ITIL recommends keeping the focus on value alive in daily operations, not just in formal projects. A simple discipline is to ask, for any task, which stakeholder does this serve and what outcome does it enable? If the answer is unclear, the activity is a candidate for removal. Because value is co-created between provider and consumer, both sides contribute — the provider supplies capability, the consumer supplies context, resources, and the situations in which the service is used. Understanding that shared creation prevents the common mistake of measuring value only by internal outputs such as tickets closed.

Start Where You Are

Start where you are advises: "Do not start from scratch and build something new without considering what is already available to be leveraged." When improving a service, teams should first assess the current state — the existing services, processes, people, tools, and culture — and identify what is already working and can be reused. Discarding everything and rebuilding wastes resources and risks throwing away capabilities that are perfectly good.

Critically, the principle insists on direct observation and measurement rather than assumption. You should look at the current state with your own eyes (or with reliable data) instead of relying on reports, hearsay, or what should be happening on paper. Measurement supports this, but ITIL warns against measuring for its own sake — the act of measuring can distort behavior, and data should be gathered to inform decisions, not to generate numbers nobody uses.

Recommendations for Start Where You Are

• Look at what exists as objectively as possible — use the consumer of a service as a starting point.
• When examples of successful practice are found in the current state, decide whether and how to replicate them.
• Apply your risk-management skills — there may be risks in reusing existing practices.
• Recognize that sometimes nothing from the current state can be reused — but verify that by observation rather than assuming it from the start.
• Use measurement to support assessment, but do not let measuring become the goal.

Distinguishing the Two

Focus on value asks whether an activity is worth doing; start where you are asks what already exists before you do it. A scenario about reusing an existing tool rather than buying new is start where you are; a scenario about cutting a step that helps no stakeholder is focus on value.

Note also that start where you are is not an instruction to keep everything unchanged. Sometimes the honest result of an objective assessment is that little can be salvaged and a fresh approach is warranted. The principle simply forbids assuming that from the outset — the decision to rebuild must be earned by observation and measurement of the current state, not adopted as a default.