One-page cheat sheets for the ITIL Foundation (Version 5) exam ITILFND V5. Pick a topic on the left.
What is ITIL? ITIL is the most widely adopted framework for managing technology-based services and creating value for stakeholders. It's not a rigid process to follow step-by-step. It's a shared vocabulary and a set of principles for how an organization plans, delivers, operates, and continually improves the products and services it provides. Developed by the UK government in the 1980s, it's now owned and maintained by AXELOS/PeopleCert. This guide covers ITIL Foundation V5, launched February 2026.
🔗 ITIL Value System: One-Page Cheat Sheet
In plain terms: something is needed (a customer request, a business need) → the Value System's 5 components work together to turn that need into reality → the result is Value: a benefit the customer, the organization, and other stakeholders actually feel.
The scope is explicitly products and services together, not services alone. This is the single highest-weighted category on the exam (40%).
🧱The 5 Components (frequently tested!)
Component
What it is
Guiding Principles
Recommendations that guide an organization's decisions and actions in any circumstance, regardless of changes in strategy, goals, or leadership.
Governance
The means by which an organization is directed and controlled: evaluating performance, setting direction, and monitoring compliance.
Value Chain / Lifecycle
The set of interconnected activities an organization performs to create, deliver, and support products and services. See the Product & Service Lifecycle topic for the 8 activities.
Practices
Sets of organizational resources (people, process, technology) for performing work. V5 does not name or test individual practices at Foundation level. See the note below.
Continual Improvement
A recurring activity performed at all levels of the organization to ensure performance continually meets stakeholder expectations.
1Focus on value: everything the organization does should map back to value for stakeholders
2Start where you are: don't discard existing services, processes, or tools without first assessing what's already there and reusable
3Progress iteratively with feedback: resist the urge to do everything at once; small iterative steps with feedback loops between each
4Collaborate and promote visibility: work across boundaries, make work and decisions visible to build trust
5Think and work holistically: no service/practice/process stands alone; results come from managing the whole, not the parts
6Keep it simple and practical: use the minimum number of steps to accomplish an objective; eliminate anything that provides no value
7Optimize and automate: maximize the value of human effort; automate only after simplifying/optimizing, never automate a broken process
All 7 apply together to some degree in every situation. The exam often asks "which principle applies here?" from a short scenario, so know the one-line intent of each, not just the name.
⚖️Governance
Governance sits above the organization's management activities: it directs, doesn't do.
EvaluateAssess the organization, its strategy, and performance
DirectAssign responsibility and set direction through decisions/policy
MonitorTrack performance of the organization, its practices, and its products/services against direction and policy
🧠 Memory hook: Governance = EDM. Say it as "ED(A)M", like the cheese: Evaluate, Direct, (a), Monitor. The "A" isn't a real activity, it's just wedged in to make EDM pronounceable (direction from above, not doing the work).
🛠️Practices
34 named management practices, split into two categories: Product and Service Management Practices (22, including practices like Deployment Management, Infrastructure and Platform Management, and Software Development and Management) and General Management Practices (12).
V5 does not name or test individual practices at Foundation level. Know the 2 categories and roughly what sits in each, not each practice in detail.
🔁Continual Improvement
A loop, not a one-off project. It runs at every level: strategic, program/portfolio, team, and individual. Skip it and organizations drift back to baseline and lose momentum.
Step
Question
1
What is the vision? Align the improvement with strategic objectives
2
Where are we now? Baseline the current state with real data
3
Where do we want to be? Set SMART targets
4
How do we get there? Build the action plan
5
Take action: execute iteratively, monitor progress
6
Are we getting there? Measure against baseline and targets
7
How do we keep the improvements relevant? Anchor gains in culture so they don't regress
Pairs directly with the Progress iteratively with feedback Guiding Principle: improvement work should itself be done in small, feedback-driven steps.
🎫Applied example: an IT help desk incident
Scenario: Maria in Sales can't log into the CRM and logs a ticket with the help desk. This one example is used across the Key Terms, Four Dimensions, Lifecycle, and Value Streams topics too, so look out for it.
Guiding Principles at work:Focus on value: the goal is Maria selling again, not just "ticket closed." Keep it simple and practical: a scripted password-reset macro beats a multi-step manual process.
Governance (EDM): leadership Evaluates current ticket performance, Directs an SLA (e.g. "P1 incidents get a 1-hour first response"), and Monitors a dashboard for breaches.
Practices doing the work: Incident Management and Service Desk, 2 of the 34 named practices (Product & Service Management group).
Continual Improvement: root-causing why CRM logins fail so often, then feeding that fix back so the same incident happens less next month.
Value = Maria is back to selling, with minimal cost or risk to her. She didn't need to know or care how the fix happened.
🧠Quick Memory Hooks
5 components: Principles, Governance, Chain/Lifecycle, Practices, Improvement: "People Get Confused, Please Improve." Governance = EDM. Say it as "ED(A)M", like the cheese: Evaluate, Direct, (a), Monitor. The "A" isn't real, just wedged in for the pun (direction from above, not doing the work). Scope = products + services together. The Value System's goal is value co-creation for both, not services alone.
🎯 Test Yourself: ITIL Value System
20 questions, one at a time, drawn only from this category.Presented in a random order each time. Pick an option to see if you got it right, then click Next Question when you're ready. There's no going back. Your score is shown at the end.
20 questions covering the 5 components, the 7 Guiding Principles, Governance (EDM), Practices, and Continual Improvement.
🔀 Match the Terms: ITIL Value System
Match each term to its correct definition.Pick a definition from every dropdown, then click Score Test when you're ready. Nothing is scored until you click it.
📖 Key Terms & Definitions: One-Page Cheat Sheet
The exam's single biggest category (30%) is precise vocabulary, not concepts. Get these exact definitions right and a huge chunk of marks follow.
Confusing Output with Outcome, or Customer with User, is the classic way to lose easy marks here.
📦Product vs. Service (frequently tested!)
Term
Definition
Example
Product
A configuration of an organization's resources (people, technology, etc.) designed to offer value to a consumer.
Vodafone's iPhone 17: hardware, software, and design bundled into one resource.
Service
A means of enabling value co-creation by facilitating outcomes customers want to achieve, without the customer having to manage specific costs and risks.
Vodafone's Unlimited Data plan: reliable connectivity without the customer running their own network.
Digital Product
A combination of an organization's resources, based on digital technology, designed to offer value to consumers.
Vodafone's companion app that manages a customer's plan, data usage, and device settings.
Digital Service
A service that depends entirely or largely on digital products.
Tap-to-pay at checkout. It only works because the companion app and phone hardware exist.
Relationship: the digital product is the engine (e.g. Vodafone's companion app + device firmware); the digital service is the trip it enables (e.g. tapping to pay for a coffee in seconds). If the product fails, the service is disrupted and value evaporates.
🧠 Memory hook: Product = the thing itself. Service = the value it delivers without you managing the cost/risk behind it. Add "Digital" to either when it's software-based, not physical.
🎯Output vs. Outcome, and the Value Equation (the single most-tested distinction)
Term
Definition
Example
Output
A tangible or intangible deliverable of an activity.
Vodafone's new point-of-sale system, installed and running in every store.
Outcome
A result for a stakeholder enabled by one or more outputs.
Average checkout time cut from 8 minutes to 3.
Value
The perceived benefits, usefulness, and importance of something.
A customer walks out with a working phone and peace of mind, not just a box.
Cost
The amount of money spent on an activity, resource, product, or service.
The £799 price tag on a new iPhone.
Risk
A possible event that could cause harm or loss, or make it harder to achieve objectives.
A customer's phone getting damaged before they register for AppleCare.
You can deliver the output (system is live) without achieving the outcome (nobody uses it). The exam rewards spotting this gap in scenario questions.
Value equation:Value = (Outcomes Achieved + Costs Removed + Risks Removed) − (Costs Imposed + Risks Imposed). Costs/risks can be removed (trading in an old phone instead of buying a new charger) or imposed (paying for AppleCare).
🧠 Memory hook: Output ≠ Outcome: output is "we shipped it," outcome is "it actually helped."
🧾Service Offering
A formal description of one or more services, designed for a target consumer group. Think of it like a restaurant menu.
GoodsOwnership of a resource transferred to the consumer (e.g. Vodafone selling an iPhone 17 outright)
Service actionsActivities the provider performs for the consumer (e.g. a Vodafone technician replacing a cracked screen)
Access to resourcesThe right to use resources the provider owns (e.g. Vodafone's cloud storage add-on), the dominant component in modern SaaS/cloud offerings
🧠 Memory hook: Goods = you own it. Service actions = they do it for you. Access to resources = you rent it, the SaaS/cloud default today.
👥Roles: the Service Consumer Triad
Inside the consuming organization, "customer" isn't one person. It splits into three roles whose priorities conflict:
SponsorAuthorizes the budget and cares about cost/ROI (e.g. a company's CFO signing off the budget for 50 new phones on a Vodafone business contract)
CustomerDefines requirements, accountable for outcomes (e.g. that company's IT manager specifying which Vodafone plan and device model)
UserUses the service day-to-day and cares about ease of use/UX (e.g. the staff who just want their phone to get signal on Vodafone)
Also know: Organization (a person/group with functions and authority to achieve objectives), Service Provider, Service Consumer, and Digital Product Vendor (creates/improves the underlying digital product, sometimes the same company as the provider, e.g. Apple building and selling its own iPhones; sometimes not, e.g. Vodafone selling a Samsung device it didn't build).
🧠 Memory hook: Sponsor pays, Customer specifies, User uses.
🤝Service Relationships
The relationship model: Service provision (what the provider does) + Service consumption (what the consumer does) + Service relationship management (joint activity to sustain value co-creation, including the provider educating the consumer on how to consume the service well).
Relationship type
Focus
Characteristics
Basic
Efficiency & support
Off-the-shelf/commodity, standardized, transactional, e.g. a walk-in customer buying a Vodafone SIM-only plan
Cooperative
Improvement & effectiveness
Provider as "trusted advisor," configures to customer needs, e.g. Vodafone's business account manager advising a small business on the right handset fleet
Collaborative
Innovation & growth
Shared objectives/risk, teams blend, highly customized (partnership), e.g. Vodafone co-designing a rugged custom device rollout with a delivery courier company
The Service Journey (7 stages): Explore → Engage → Offer → Agree → Onboard → Co-create (value is actually generated here) → Reflect (continual improvement).
🧠 Memory hook: Basic → Cooperative → Collaborative = transaction → advice → partnership. Trust and customization increase at each step.
✅Service Quality: 4 categories
Service Quality (the overall "is this good?" perception) is measured through Service Levels (objective metrics, e.g. "99.9% availability"), formalized in an SLA. V5 defines 4 categories of Service Quality:
1Utility: what the service does (fit for purpose), e.g. the phone makes calls and browses the web
2Warranty: how it performs (availability, capacity, continuity, security), fit for use, e.g. the battery lasts a full day and the phone doesn't overheat
3Experience: how the user feels, functional + emotional (new in V5), e.g. the Vodafone staff member who made setup painless
4Sustainability: environmental, social, and economic impact (new in V5), e.g. Vodafone's phone trade-in and recycling scheme
🧠 Memory hook:Utility = fit for purpose (does it work) · Warranty = fit for use (does it keep working) · V5 adds Experience (how it feels) and Sustainability (what it costs the planet/society).
🎫Applied example: same help desk incident, in Key Terms language
Product vs. Service: the CRM software itself is the product; "reliable, supported CRM access" is the service built around it.
Output vs. Outcome: Output = the ticket is closed and the password is reset. Outcome = Maria's deal doesn't slip because she's back in the CRM in time. The output alone doesn't guarantee that.
The Triad:User = Maria (uses the CRM day-to-day); Customer = the Sales Manager (defines the SLA, accountable for the team's productivity); Sponsor = the budget holder who signed off on the help desk tooling license.
Service Quality: Utility = the reset actually fixes the login. Warranty = it's fixed inside the 1-hour SLA and doesn't recur next week. Experience = Maria didn't have to repeat her problem to three different agents. Sustainability = one shared multi-tenant help desk platform instead of every department running its own.
🧠Quick Memory Hooks
Product vs. Service: Product is the thing itself; Service is the value it delivers without you managing the cost/risk. Add "Digital" to either when it's software-based. Output ≠ Outcome: output is "we shipped it," outcome is "it actually helped." Service Offering: Goods = you own it, Service actions = they do it for you, Access to resources = you rent it. Sponsor pays, Customer specifies, User uses. Service Relationships: Basic → Cooperative → Collaborative = transaction → advice → partnership. Utility = fit for purpose (does it work) · Warranty = fit for use (does it keep working) · V5 adds Experience (how it feels) and Sustainability (what it costs the planet/society).
🎯 Test Yourself: Key Terms & Definitions
20 questions, one at a time, drawn only from this category.Presented in a random order each time. Pick an option to see if you got it right, then click Next Question when you're ready. There's no going back. Your score is shown at the end.
20 questions covering Product vs. Service, Output vs. Outcome, the Value equation, Service Offerings, the Consumer Triad, Service Relationships, and Service Quality.
🔀 Match the Terms: Key Terms & Definitions
Match each term to its correct definition.Pick a definition from every dropdown, then click Score Test when you're ready. Nothing is scored until you click it.
🧩 Four Dimensions of Product & Service Management: One-Page Cheat Sheet
Four perspectives that must all be balanced for value to actually reach the customer. Over-investing in one while ignoring the others is a classic exam scenario.
V5 adds AI-specific content inside two of the four dimensions. See the notes below.
🧩The 4 Dimensions
Term
Definition
Worked example
1. Organizations & People
Culture, leadership, org structure, competencies. Psychological safety enables continual improvement. Conway's Law: systems mirror the communication structure of the org that built them. Want an integrated product? Build integrated teams. New in V5: an "Organizations, people and AI" section.
The help desk's shift rota, and de-escalation training so agents handle a frustrated caller like Maria well.
2. Information & Technology
The Data → Information → Knowledge hierarchy (raw facts → facts with context → context applied with experience). Adds the new ITIL AI Capability Model ("6C", see the ITIL and AI topic) plus AI data-governance/ethics considerations.
The ticketing system, the knowledge base, and an AI triage bot that auto-categorizes Maria's incoming ticket.
3. Partners & Suppliers
No organization is self-sufficient. Covers sourcing strategy (buy vs. build, driven by strategic focus, cost, expertise) and keeping the value chain running without supplier-side interruptions.
An outsourced overnight/weekend support vendor who'd pick up Maria's ticket if she called outside core hours.
4. Value Streams & Processes
What activities the organization performs and how they're organized to create value efficiently. Adapt the workflow to the complexity of the situation rather than forcing one rigid model onto everything.
The actual incident workflow used to fix Maria's login: log → triage → diagnose → resolve → close.
🧠 Memory hook:OIPV, "Oracle Includes People's Values": Organizations & People, Information & Technology, Partners & Suppliers, Value Streams & Processes.
🌍External Factors: PESTLE
All four dimensions sit inside, and are constantly influenced by, external factors, remembered as PESTLE: Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Legal, Environmental.
Example: a new data-protection law (Legal) or a downturn (Economic) can force changes across all four dimensions at once, a classic way the exam links PESTLE to a scenario.
🧠 Memory hook: PESTLE = the weather system the four dimensions all sit inside; they don't control it, they react to it.
🎫Applied example: the four dimensions of a help desk
Organizations & People: the shift rota, and de-escalation training so agents handle a frustrated caller like Maria well.
Information & Technology: the ticketing system, the knowledge base, and an AI triage bot that auto-categorizes incoming tickets (the 6C model's Curation and Clarification capabilities in action).
Partners & Suppliers: an outsourced overnight/weekend support vendor covering tickets outside core hours.
Value Streams & Processes: the actual incident workflow: log, triage, diagnose, resolve, close.
PESTLE: a new data-protection requirement (Legal) forces the help desk to add identity verification before resetting any password, one external factor reaching across multiple dimensions at once.
🧠Quick Memory Hooks
OIPV: "Oracle Includes People's Values": Organizations & People, Information & Technology, Partners & Suppliers, Value Streams & Processes. PESTLE = the weather system the four dimensions all sit inside; they don't control it, they react to it.
🎯 Test Yourself: Four Dimensions of Product & Service Management
20 questions, one at a time, drawn only from this category.Presented in a random order each time. Pick an option to see if you got it right, then click Next Question when you're ready. There's no going back. Your score is shown at the end.
20 questions covering the 4 dimensions themselves, PESTLE, and the help desk applied example.
🔀 Match the Terms: Four Dimensions of Product & Service Management
Match each term to its correct definition.Pick a definition from every dropdown, then click Score Test when you're ready. Nothing is scored until you click it.
🔄 Product & Service Lifecycle: One-Page Cheat Sheet
8 activities, often drawn as a "diamond," covering a product/service from first idea to retirement. It's iterative, not a fixed sequence: teams move between activities as the work demands.
This is the framework's headline lifecycle model. The 8 activities below are worth knowing in order.
🔄The 8 Activities (frequently tested!)
Activity
Purpose
Example enabling practices
Worked example
Discover
Keep product roadmaps & service offerings aligned with consumer needs and strategy
Business Analysis, Portfolio Management, Relationship Management
Spotting that Sales reps like Maria need a faster way to report CRM problems than emailing IT directly.
Design
Create prototypes and specifications: functionality, UX, operating model
Architecture Management, Service Level Management, Service Design
Designing the self-service portal's ticket form and the SLA Maria's ticket will later be measured against.
Acquire
Secure and allocate the resources needed (buy, hire, build)
Supplier Management, IT Asset Management, Service Financial Management
Buying the ticketing software licence and contracting the overnight support vendor.
Build
Develop, integrate, and test: turn designs into working solutions
Software Development and Management, Infrastructure and Platform Management, Service Validation and Testing
Developing and testing the AI triage bot that will later auto-categorize Maria's ticket.
Duality: the early activities (Discover, Design, Acquire, Build) lean Product; the later ones (Deliver, Support) lean Service; Transition and Operate bridge the two.
🧠 Memory hook:D-D-A-B-T-O-D-S: Discover, Design, Acquire, Build, Transition, Operate, Deliver, Support. Try: "Did Dave Always Build Things Over Dinner, Seriously?" Product-leaning early, Service-leaning late. The diamond shape mirrors that shift.
🎫Applied example: the help desk incident across the 8 activities
Discover / Design / Acquire / Build: done long before Maria ever calls. This is where the ticketing tool, self-service portal, and knowledge base got set up.
Deliver: the self-service portal where Maria logs her ticket and tracks its status.
Support: the incident actually being worked and resolved. This is where the Incident Management and Problem Management practices live (Problem Management chases the recurring root cause, not just this one ticket).
Operate: monitoring that might have caught the login failure automatically, before Maria even needed to call.
🧠Quick Memory Hooks
D-D-A-B-T-O-D-S: Discover, Design, Acquire, Build, Transition, Operate, Deliver, Support. Try: "Did Dave Always Build Things Over Dinner, Seriously?" Product-leaning early, Service-leaning late. The diamond shape mirrors that shift.
🎯 Test Yourself: Product & Service Lifecycle
20 questions, one at a time, drawn only from this category.Presented in a random order each time. Pick an option to see if you got it right, then click Next Question when you're ready. There's no going back. Your score is shown at the end.
20 questions covering the 8 lifecycle activities, their purposes, enabling practices, and the Product/Service duality.
🔀 Match the Terms: Product & Service Lifecycle
Match each activity to its correct purpose.Pick a definition from every dropdown, then click Score Test when you're ready. Nothing is scored until you click it.
🌊 Value Streams: Identification, Mapping & Management (One-Page Cheat Sheet)
A value stream is a series of steps an organization takes to create and deliver a product or service to a consumer. It's the specific, real-world combination of lifecycle activities and practices used for one scenario.
Analogy: the process is the written recipe; the value stream is what actually happens in a packed restaurant kitchen getting that dish to the table.
🔀Types of Value Streams
CoreDelivers products/services directly to an external consumer and generates revenue (e.g. order → delivery)
EnablingDelivers value to an internal customer supporting the core stream, "behind the scenes" (e.g. onboarding a new hire)
A Lean technique to visualize, analyze, and improve a workflow: make the invisible (waste) visible.
1Identify the stream to map
2Map the as-is: real steps, processing time, wait time
3Analyze: find bottlenecks and non-value-adding waste
4Map the to-be: the ideal future state
5Plan and implement the transition
⚖️Mapping vs. Management (frequently tested!)
Value Stream Mapping
Value Stream Management
One-time or periodic technique
Ongoing practice / mindset
A "snapshot" of current + future state
The day-to-day "movie" that keeps work flowing
Diagnoses problems, designs improvements
Continuous optimization, removes impediments
Output: a map + action plan
Output: faster value delivery, higher quality
🧠 Memory hook: Mapping is a photo, Management is a movie.
🎫Applied example: mapping the help desk incident's value stream
"Log an incident and get it resolved" is a concrete value stream: the real, specific path Maria's ticket takes, as opposed to the generic Incident Management process description. It's an Enabling stream here, since it supports internal Sales staff rather than an external paying customer directly.
VSM in practice: mapping the as-is might reveal the agent has to check three separate systems just to verify Maria's account, a bottleneck causing wait time. The to-be map removes that by giving agents one unified view, cutting resolution time without changing the underlying Incident Management practice at all.
🧠Quick Memory Hooks
Recipe vs. kitchen chaos: process = the recipe (idealized), value stream = the real kitchen (messy reality). Mapping is a photo, Management is a movie. Core = external/revenue, Enabling = internal/support.
🤖 ITIL and AI: One-Page Cheat Sheet
V5 was built "AI-native" from the ground up rather than bolting AI on as an afterthought. This small (2.5%) category is mostly about one specific model.
Don't confuse this Foundation-level content with ITIL AI Governance, a separate publication and certification, not part of core Foundation testing.
🧠The ITIL AI Capability Model (the "6C" model)
Sits inside the Information & Technology dimension (see Four Dimensions topic). Six capabilities:
1Creation: generating new content, code, or designs
2Curation: organizing, filtering, and maintaining information/data quality
3Clarification: making meaning and intent explicit from ambiguous input
4Cognition: reasoning, analysis, and decision-support
5Communication: presenting output in a usable, human-facing way
6Coordination: orchestrating multiple AI/human actors toward a shared outcome
🧠 Memory hook: 6C: Create, Curate, Clarify, Cognate(-reason), Communicate, Coordinate. It's the AI doing a job end-to-end: make something, tidy it, explain it, think about it, say it, and work with others on it.
⚠️What else to know
AI adoption raises data governance and ethics questions. Clear policy is needed to manage the risk, not just the capability.
The Organizations & People dimension also gained an "Organizations, people and AI" section: the human/cultural side of AI adoption, not just the technology.
A dedicated ITIL AI Governance publication and certification exist alongside the core Foundation content: relevant context, but it's a separate qualification, not Foundation exam material.
🧠Quick Memory Hooks
6C: Create, Curate, Clarify, Cognate(-reason), Communicate, Coordinate. Think of it as the AI doing a job end-to-end: make something, tidy it, explain it, think about it, say it, and work with others on it.
🧭 ITIL and Other Frameworks: One-Page Cheat Sheet
ITIL was never designed to compete with Agile, DevOps, Lean, or PRINCE2. It's designed to integrate with them. Smallest category (2.5%), usually one scenario question about which framework does what.
🔧ITIL + DevOps
Complementary: they solve different parts of the same problem.
ITIL provides the "what": governance, the Value System, control requirements (e.g. Change Enablement requires changes to be controlled).
DevOps provides the "how": the technical/cultural practices that meet those requirements fast, e.g. a CI/CD pipeline with automated testing instead of a slow change committee.
🧠 Memory hook: ITIL sets the rule, DevOps moves fast within it.
📋ITIL + PRINCE2
PRINCE2 = project management: temporary initiatives to build/change a product; clear start, middle, end.
ITIL = service management, which is ongoing: operate, maintain, and improve value continuously.
The handoff: PRINCE2 delivers the product/change (e.g. a new CRM implemented) → ITIL takes over running that CRM as a live service day-to-day.
🧠 Memory hook: PRINCE2 builds it, ITIL runs it.
🤝Shared Principles Across Frameworks
ITIL, PRINCE2, Agile, Lean, and DevOps all converge on the same underlying values: focus on customer value, collaboration across teams, iterative progress with feedback, and continual improvement, the same language as ITIL's own Guiding Principles and Continual Improvement component.
This is why they compose rather than compete: none of them claims the whole problem space.
🧠Quick Memory Hooks
PRINCE2 builds it, ITIL runs it.ITIL sets the rule, DevOps moves fast within it.
None of these frameworks are rivals. They're specialists on the same team.
📊 Exam Format & Weighting: Exam Reference
40 questions · 60 minutes · closed book · 65% (26/40) to pass · no negative marking.Standard multiple choice: 4 answer options per question, exactly 1 correct. Exam code ITILFND V5, launched by PeopleCert in February 2026.
🖥️Online proctored exam: setup requirements
MicrophoneRequired: the proctor needs audio for the duration of the exam
CameraRequired: the proctor monitors you on webcam throughout
HeadphonesNot allowed: take them off before the exam starts
Screen sharingRequired: you share your screen with the proctor for the full session
RoomPrivate room, no one else present: the proctor checks you're alone for the duration
External screensNot allowed: a single monitor only, nothing else connected
Sort out mic/camera access, clear the room, and disconnect extra screens before the exam starts. Proctoring setup issues eat into your 60 minutes.
Value Streams: identification, mapping & management
5%
2
ITIL and AI
2.5%
1
ITIL and Other Frameworks (e.g. PRINCE2)
2.5%
1
Confirmed directly against PeopleCert's official ITIL Foundation (Version 5) certification page: 40 questions, 60 minutes, closed book, 65% (26/40) pass mark, no negative marking. Not officially confirmed: the per-category mark weighting above. PeopleCert's own page does not publish a percentage breakdown; these numbers come from third-party training-provider syllabus write-ups (consistent across several, but not sourced from PeopleCert directly). Treat the pass/format numbers as solid and the weighting numbers as a useful study-priority guide, not a guaranteed exam blueprint.
Exam tip: the Value System (40%) and Key Terms (30%) together are 70% of the exam, so study those two categories first and deepest, in that order.
🚩Answering technique: watch for absolute wording
If an answer option uses a word like "only" or "must", treat it as a warning sign rather than taking it literally. ITIL concepts are rarely that absolute, so an option phrased this strictly is often the false answer among the four.
🧠Quick Memory Hooks
40/30/10/10/5/2.5/2.5: the two big categories (Value System, Key Terms) carry 70% of the marks between them; the last two (AI, Frameworks) are worth one mark each, so don't over-invest study time there relative to the big two. 65% to pass, no negative marking. Always answer every question, a guess costs nothing. "Only" / "must" = suspicious. Absolute wording in an option is a common tell for the wrong answer.
📝 Mock Exam 1: 40 Questions
40 questions · 65% (26/40) to pass · no negative marking, so answer everything.Weighted to match the real exam's category distribution: Value System 40% (16 Qs), Key Terms 30% (12 Qs), Four Dimensions 10% (4 Qs), Lifecycle 10% (4 Qs), Value Streams 5% (2 Qs), ITIL and AI 2.5% (1 Q), ITIL and Other Frameworks 2.5% (1 Q). Presented one question at a time. Pick an answer to see whether it's correct, with an explanation and memory hint, then move to the next question. At the end you'll get a score out of 40 with a category-by-category breakdown.
📝 Mock Exam 2: 40 Questions
40 questions · 65% (26/40) to pass · no negative marking, so answer everything.Weighted to match the real exam's category distribution: Value System 40% (16 Qs), Key Terms 30% (12 Qs), Four Dimensions 10% (4 Qs), Lifecycle 10% (4 Qs), Value Streams 5% (2 Qs), ITIL and AI 2.5% (1 Q), ITIL and Other Frameworks 2.5% (1 Q). Presented one question at a time. Pick an answer to see whether it's correct, with an explanation and memory hint, then move to the next question. At the end you'll get a score out of 40 with a category-by-category breakdown.
📝 Mock Exam 3: 40 Questions
40 questions · 65% (26/40) to pass · no negative marking, so answer everything.Weighted to match the real exam's category distribution: Value System 40% (16 Qs), Key Terms 30% (12 Qs), Four Dimensions 10% (4 Qs), Lifecycle 10% (4 Qs), Value Streams 5% (2 Qs), ITIL and AI 2.5% (1 Q), ITIL and Other Frameworks 2.5% (1 Q). Presented one question at a time. Pick an answer to see whether it's correct, with an explanation and memory hint, then move to the next question. At the end you'll get a score out of 40 with a category-by-category breakdown.