ITIL 4 Leader: Digital and IT Strategy

Digital strategy documents fail in a recognisable way: an ambition, a technology list, and no account of the operating model, the funding cycle or the capability the organisation actually has. ITIL 4 is useful here precisely because it forces the operating model into the conversation, through the service value system and the practices that have to change for a strategy to be delivered. This week is aimed at the people who have to write and defend a strategy rather than at certification recall, and works from the delegate's own organisation.

It runs 7 times over the published calendar, in 6 cities and live online. Every date is the same programme with the same content and the same certificate.

• State a digital ambition in terms of outcomes the business recognises.
• Assess the current operating model honestly, including the funding cycle.
• Identify which practices have to change for the strategy to be deliverable.
• Build a roadmap sequenced by dependency rather than by preference.
• Govern delivery so the strategy is revised on evidence rather than abandoned.

IT directors and managers responsible for strategy, enterprise and solution architects, service owners, and transformation and portfolio leads.

Short input, then work. Across 5 days of roughly 6 teaching hours each, the balance sits deliberately with the second: a programme where the trainer talks for six hours produces notes rather than capability.

• Your own material

  Exercises run on situations delegates bring, not on a case study written for a different organisation in a different decade.

• A capped cohort

  Small enough that everybody is asked something. Executive programmes are capped tighter still.

• Practice under scrutiny

  The difficult conversation, the challenged assumption, the decision defended out loud. Judgement is not built by watching.

• Something to take back

  Each day ends with a thing you can use on Monday rather than a slide deck you will not reopen.

• A current state assessment of the delegate's operating model.
• A strategy on a page, with outcomes, constraints and sequence.
• A governance approach tying investment decisions to the strategy.

A GATI certificate recording what you attended, issued after the programme has run and attendance has been taken. Attending at least 80 per cent of the days earns a certificate of completion; attending less earns a certificate of attendance stating exactly what was attended.

Every certificate carries a code that anybody can check against GATI's own record, which is what makes it worth holding. It records participation. This site will not imply one it does not have.