What Is an Operating Model in ITIL® 5?

What Is an Operating Model?

An operating model is the conceptual representation of how an organization runs in order to create and deliver value — how its resources, activities, and value chain all fit together into a coherent whole. It's a higher-level idea than any single activity or practice: it describes the overall shape of how the organization gets things done.

How the Value Chain Supports the Operating Model

The Service Value Chain is the set of interconnected activities an organization performs to deliver a valuable product or service to its consumers and to facilitate value realization. The value chain activities support the organization's operating model — they're the concrete mechanism through which the more abstract operating model actually gets carried out. An organization's purpose and operating model are supported by value chain activities and the management practices that carry them out.

Operating Model vs Value Chain: The Core Distinction

It's worth being precise here, since the exam treats these as related but distinct: the value chain is not the same thing as an operating model, and the value chain is also distinct from the product and service lifecycle — the activities a product moves through. All three are related, organization-level concepts, but they aren't interchangeable.

Real-World Example

A software company's operating model describes, at a high level, how its people, technology, partners, and processes come together to deliver its products — the overall shape of the business. Within that operating model, the company's Service Value Chain activities (planning, engaging, designing, obtaining/building, delivering, supporting, and improving) are the concrete, interconnected work that actually executes against that operating model, recombining in different ways depending on whether the demand is a new feature request or an incident needing resolution.

Why This Matters

Understanding operating model as a distinct concept matters because:

• The exam tests the ability to distinguish the operating model (conceptual) from the value chain (the concrete activities that support it)
• It clarifies that the value chain is deliberately flexible, recombining into different value streams depending on the demand
• It reinforces that the value chain and the product/service lifecycle are related but separate models, not the same thing described twice

Common Exam Mistakes

The most common mistake is treating "operating model" and "value chain" as identical terms. The operating model is the broader conceptual picture of how the organization runs; the value chain is the specific set of activities that supports and carries it out.

A second mistake is merging the value chain with the product and service lifecycle. They're related, organization-level concepts, but the lifecycle describes what a product moves through, while the value chain describes the organization's operating activities.

Memory Trick

Think:

Operating model — the big picture of how we run.

Value chain — the specific activities that make that picture real.

If you're describing the overall shape of how resources, activities, and processes fit together, that's the operating model. If you're naming the specific interconnected activities, that's the value chain.

Key Takeaways

• An operating model is the conceptual representation of how an organization runs to create and deliver value.
• The Service Value Chain is the set of interconnected activities that supports and carries out that operating model in practice.
• The value chain is deliberately flexible, recombining into different value streams depending on the type of demand.
• The value chain, the operating model, and the product and service lifecycle are related but distinct concepts.
• This distinction is a tested area connected to the ITIL® Value System.

One Practice Question