Appendix A

Answers to Review Questions

Chapter 1: Service Management as a Practice

1. D. Auditors are not a recognized source of best practice; they are an external body brought in to check something specific. The other three answers are all sources of best practice.

2. D. ITIL is a service management process framework concerned with planning, designing, transitioning, operating, and improving IT services within budget.

3. B. This is the ITIL definition of a service; all services should deliver value to the customer. A is the definition of incident management, C is an activity of problem management, and D is an activity of supplier management.

4. C. This is the ITIL definition of an outcome, the result of doing something.

5. A. This is the ITIL definition of the makeup of an IT service: the combination of processes (strategic, design, transition, operations, and improvement), the underlying infrastructure and applications the service is dependent on, and the roles required to support the service through the lifecycle.

6. B. There is no “supplier service” type identified. If services are provided by external parties, they would be either core, enabling, or enhancing.

7. C. Both of these statements are correct.

8. D. This is the ITIL definition for an IT service provider, providing IT services to customers.

9. C. There are three types of IT service provider: Type I internally embedded within a business unit, Type II internally shared between business units, and Type III external.

10. A. Functions are self-contained units of an organization with their own resources and capabilities to support an organization. Processes deliver value and define roles for the activities and decisions within that process.

Chapter 2: Understanding Service Strategy

1. C. The strategic phase of the lifecycle is concerned with the high-level planning of a lifecycle approach for all services and the supporting processes of service management to support the services.

2. B. Strategy is concerned with ensuring business outcomes are met by the services and service management processes. Customer satisfaction and measuring improvements are the concern of continuous service improvement.

3. C. The value of a service is always based on a customer’s perspective. The service is delivered to support a customer’s needs.

4. C. Who designed the service is not a necessary piece of information for defining value; you should focus on the deliverables and cost.

5. D. The customer is interested in the value the service provides to them and is not interested in the preferences of the service provider.

6. C. Utility means the service is “fit for purpose” because it has the functionality to support business outcomes.

“Fit for use” refers to how it is delivered with assurances in relation to capacity, availability, security, and continuity.

7. A. Financial capital is classed as a resource, and organization and knowledge are capabilities. People can be classed as both: a resource because of the number of people and a capability because of the skill set of the people.

8. D. Statement 3 is incorrect; the CAB does not assess all changes, and governance does not control this.

9. B. Calibrate risks is not a stage in the risk management approach. It is important to identify risks and to analyze these risks to understand how likely they are to happen and the impact if they did occur. Based on that information, an appropriate response is required to control and manage the risk.

10. A. A PBA profile is created to define and understand PBAs to ensure alignment to services. It needs to be classified and to include customer requirements, the capabilities, and the resources required to provide the service in some detail.

Chapter 3: Service Strategy Processes

1. B. The service portfolio contains details of all services to be under control (pipeline) or live (catalog) or retired. It should provide sufficient detail to ensure the service provider is giving the customers the services required to support business needs.

2. C. Service portfolio management is responsible for creating and maintaining a service portfolio, which consists of the details of all services to be under control (pipeline) or live (catalog) or retired. It should provide sufficient detail to ensure the service provider is giving the customers the services required to support business needs. Option A is an objective of change management, option B is an objective of service asset and configuration management, and option D is an objective of service-level management.

3. B. Projects are not captured in the service portfolio; IT services are captured in the service portfolio.

4. D. Monitoring service performance is performed by service-level management; comparing results of improvement initiatives is carried out by CSI.

5. A. The service portfolio consists of a service pipeline, service catalog, and retired services.

6. D. Financial management is concerned with funding IT services throughout their lifecycles.

7. B. Financial management consists of budgeting, accounting, and charging.

8. A. All of these are recommended elements of a business case.

9. C. Business relationship management is concerned with creating and maintaining relationships between the customer and the service provider.

10. D. BRM is concerned with a high-level relationship with customers. The other answers are very specific and may be activities BRM has an interest in but only to suffice the overall objective of building and maintaining business relationship.

Chapter 4: Understanding Service Design

1. A. All four of these elements are included in the service design.

2. C. Service design should design services that meet the business requirements but can be improved in the future as business requirements change.

3. B. Service design does not consider changes to business strategy; this is the remit of service strategy and continual service improvement. Design should be to customer requirements, right the first time, and to the standards and controls agreed on within an organization.

4. D. This is a description of a service design package, a major output from service design ensuring the service is fully documented and able to pass through transition activities into operations where it can be used, delivered, and managed with appropriate reporting to allow for any necessary improvements.

5. C. These are the four major areas that need to be considered for a holistic design: people to use the service as well as those to design, transition, and operate it; processes to support design, transition, operation, and improvement of the service; product (technology, such as infrastructure and applications) to enable the service; and partners, which are any external suppliers required to assist with the design.

6. B. All of these are identified as part of service composition. Resources are the actual people, applications, information, infrastructure, and financial capital required to support the service; capabilities manage and control resources appropriately; the functionality requirements (utilities) ensure the service is fit for purpose; and the warranty requirements ensure the service is delivered so it is fit for use.

7. D. The service solution is an output from service design, not a constraint.

8. C. The service design package does not include the organizational business strategy, because that is already in existence within the business. All other items are created during the design phase and reside in the SDP.

9. A. Architecture according to ITIL encompasses the technologies required to create a service—such as infrastructure, application, database, and environments—and how these technologies link together.

10. B. These are the five major aspects of service design. The SDP is an output that would contain a service transition plan. Business strategy has already been considered at the strategy level; it would help shape the requirements that go into designing the service solution, one of the major aspects.

Chapter 5: Service Level Management: Aligning IT with Business Requirements

1. A. This is the purpose of service-level management. Option B is a purpose of business relationship management, option C is a purpose of the service desk, and option D is a purpose of service transition.

2. B. This is an agreed-upon objective of service-level management and reflects the steps of the process. Option A is an objective of change management, option C is an objective of request fulfillment, and option D is an objective of problem management.

3. C. These are the correct statements; the other statements refer to service asset and configuration management and change management.

4. D. Customer-based service provider is not a recognized type of service provider. Embedded is Type I, Shared is Type II, and External is Type III.

5. B. Warranty refers to the achievement of fit for use, assuring levels of availability, capacity, security, and continuity, which usually have agreed-on targets within SLAs and are service-level requirements to assist with shaping the service solution.

6. C. The service-level agreement does not include the definition of business strategy but does contain relevant information about the service(s) supported by the agreement.

7. C. An OLA and a contract support the achievement of an SLA. The OLA is the internal agreement based on the ongoing activities of internal service providers, and the contract is the legally binding document supporting service delivery by an external supplier.

8. D. This is the definition of an underpinning contract as described in the ITIL framework. Contracts are required for external suppliers regarding their commitments to providing service.

9. A. These are the three types of service-level agreement in a multilevel structure.

10. B. These reports are sometimes known as RAG reports, for red, amber, green. Green means everything is within target, amber means there is some concern, and red is an exception.

Chapter 6: The Other Service Design Processes

1. C. Option A refers to an SLA, option B refers to the service portfolio, and option D refers to a business case. Option C is the ITIL definition of the service catalog.

2. C. Retired services are part of the portfolio, not the catalog. ITIL does not define strategic services.

3. B. The service catalog contains customer-facing and supporting services and forms part of the service portfolio.

4. C. Option C is the ITIL definition. Agreed service time is the time a service should be available as agreed on within an SLA or underpinning contract, and downtime is an unplanned interruption to service.

5. B. This is the ITIL definition. It refers to part of a business process that is critical to the success of the business.

6. C. MTBSI stands for mean time between service incidents.

7. D. These are all terms that are part of the availability management process. The others are not ITIL terms.

8. C. Items 1, 2, and 3 are all responsibilities of ISM. Implementing is one of the responsibilities of release and deployment management; no other ITIL process has a responsibility for implementation.

9. A. The SMIS is the security management information system. The KEDB is the known error database that is used by problem management. The other terms are not ITIL terms.

10. D. Supplier management does not deal with internal suppliers; it manages all aspects of contract management with third parties to ensure value for money.

11 C. Trusted is not a supplier type described in ITIL.

12. A. It is service level management that is responsible for negotiating the SLA contents (although the service level manager would consult with capacity management before agreeing on capacity requirements). The other three are core responsibilities of capacity management.

13. A. This is the ITIL definition of the three subprocesses of capacity management.

14. C. This is the ITIL definition.

15. C. It is not the job of ITSCM to ensure that the business has contingency plans; this is the role of business continuity management. ITSCM is concerned with the IT services only.

16. D. This is the ITIL definition.

17. B. Design coordination does not design the solution; it coordinates activities and resources.

18. D. The configuration management system (CMS) and governance requirements are not outputs of this process. They are actually inputs to it.

19. C. The service catalog shows how each operational service supports particular business processes - this is useful to customers. The technical view of the catalog shows the supporting services which make up the service.

20. C. It is the responsibility of the business to plan for business continuity in the event of major disruption, based on business priorities. This will define what level of IT service will be required in that eventuality, and ITSCM is then responsible for planning how this could be provided.

Chapter 7: Service Design Roles

1. B. This is one of the defined responsibilities of the process practitioner, who is responsible for carrying out the process and documenting its activities.

2. D. This is the correct list of role responsibilities in the RACI model as described in ITIL and other methodologies.

3. B. This is one of the process owner responsibilities.

4. A. Managing a process requires resources; therefore, the process manager is responsible for this.

5. B. There can be only one person accountable, and not all activities or decisions need to include Consulted or Informed.

6. D. The RACI model defines who is responsible, accountable, consulted, or informed for each process activity.

7. C. ITIL specifies that the process owner is accountable for the process, and there can be only one person accountable.

8. C. Creating and maintaining the process documentation are the responsibilities of the process owner.

9. D. ITIL does not describe a role of process improvement manager. The process owner and manager roles have responsibility for identifying possible improvements.

10. B. The service owner has responsibility for representing the service, and this includes attending the CAB meeting to discuss any amendments to the service, to ensure that the risk assessment had been carried out correctly, and to minimize the chances of the change failing and affecting the service. The service owner is also responsible for attending service reviews with the business (with the service level manager). The responsibility of maintaining the known error database belongs to the problem manager.

Chapter 8: Understanding Service Transition and the Change Management Process

1. A. This is the purpose of the service transition lifecycle stage, to ensure that the new or changed service is delivered into operation successfully.

2. C. Service transition provides value by delivering services consistently, controlling IT assets and increasing confidence in the success of changes.

3. B. The purpose of change management is to provide controlled change across the whole of the service lifecycle.

4. C. Change management does not cover business, project, or minor operational changes. The change process is used for IT service changes.

5. D. A change model provides predefined steps for handling changes of a similar type. This provides a repeatable and consistent approach to managing changes of similar type.

6. B. A standard change has a low or clearly understood risk, follows a predefined procedure, and has a predefined trigger.

7. A. Change proposals are authorized if the change has a major impact on the business in terms of cost, risk, or resources. A proposal is used to ensure that any major change is justified before raising the request for change.

8. D. The change schedule, projected service outage, and remediation plan are all recognized outputs from the change management process. The change schedule shows the proposed authorized changes, and the project service outage document shows the outage of the service. A remediation plan is the plan for how to recover in the event of a failure in change implementation.

9. A. Changes are authorized by the change authority. The change authority will depend on the nature, size, and risk of the change being authorized.

10. B. A change record can be closed only once the change acceptance criteria have been met.

Chapter 9: Service Transition Processes

1. A. Transition planning and support provides overall planning for service transitions and coordination of the resources they require. Option B refers to a change management purpose, option C refers to a purpose of design coordination, and option D would be involved in the planning phase of release and deployment.

2. C. These statements are both objectives of transition planning and support, ensuring that transitions are managed effectively.

3. B. The purpose of the SACM process is to identify and control the assets that make up your services and maintain accurate information about these assets. The management of the changes to your service assets is a purpose of change management.

4. D. SACM is a process that supports all stages of the service lifecycle by providing information about the assets that make up your services.

5. C. A configuration record captures the information about a configuration item and records the attributes and relationships. It is stored in the CMDB. Option A is a service asset, option B is a configuration item, and option D is an activity carried out in SACM.

6. A. The layers of the CMS are closely associated to the Data-Information-Knowledge-Wisdom model from knowledge management; the presentation layer allows for decision making based on the analysis and processing of data.

7. B. This is an objective of the SACM process; knowledge management does not cover the detail of the service assets that make up the services.

8. C. SACM is the process that manages the naming convention for the configuration management database. Release management is concerned with the release controls that are specified in the release policy.

9. D. Verification and audit is a step in the process of SACM to ensure the accuracy of the data in the CMS.

10. C. Early life support takes place in the deployment phase, where the handover to service operation takes place.

Chapter 10: Delivering the Service: The Service Operation Lifecycle Stage

1. D. This is one of the defined service operation activities. Testing and rolling out are transition activities, and decisions about service retirement are made in the strategy stage.

2. D. Design coordination takes place only as part of design. Availability management takes place in service operations, because reasons for downtime are examined and actions are taken to prevent recurrence. ITSCM plans are rehearsed and updated as part of service operations. Performance against service level targets is measured in service operations, and both incident and problem management seek to reduce or prevent downtime that could threaten the achievement of the SLA targets.

3. C. These are the four functions described in ITIL. The facilities management responsibility in option A forms part of the operations management function. The infrastructure management and desktop management responsibilities in option B are not ITIL functions; infrastructure management will be carried out by the technical management function, and desktop support is usually part of operations management.

4. B. This is the responsibility of technical management. The air conditioning and power management responsibilities are part of facilities management’s responsibilities for maintaining the physical operations environment.

5. B. The responsibilities of each function defined in ITIL include the activity listed in option B.

6. C. This is the responsibility of the problem management process; the service desk deals with incidents and does not resolve the underlying problems that would then prevent the incident from recurring. Service desks should resolve all straightforward incidents in order to provide a faster and more efficient support service than would result from escalating them to the next support level.

7. B. The service desk logs incidents and requests and ensures that they are dealt with. It owns the incident and request throughout its lifecycle, ensuring that the customer is happy with the outcome and that service levels are met.

8. D. Service desk staff members do not need specialist technical skills, but they need to have sufficient technical ability to resolve straightforward incidents; they need customer service skills to deal with users and business knowledge to assess priority.

9. D. These are the two aspects described in ITIL. Facilities management refers to the management of the physical environment of IT operations, usually located in data centers or computer rooms. Operations control refers to the carrying out of routine operational tasks, centralized monitoring, and control activities, usually using an operations bridge or network operations center.

10. B. The other three structures are described in ITIL, along with centralized. A local service desk structure will have a service desk co-located with users in each location. Virtual service desk structures provide a number of desks, with calls shared between them. “Follow the sun” will have all calls routed to a service desk dependent on time zones; all calls will be handled by a day shift.

Chapter 11: The Major Service Operation Processes

1. B. This is the ITIL definition. Option A could be describing an incident, but option B is a clearer definition. Option C describes a problem, not an incident.

2. C. Option A describes when a problem, not an incident, should be closed. Option B is incorrect, because the user must agree before the incident is closed. Option D is incorrect because there is no mention of a resolution.

3. B. Incident resolution is about restoring the service; option B is a problem management activity and does not help the user at the time. The other options all attempt to overcome the issue for the user.

4. C. This is the ITIL definition. Normal service is that agreed on and documented within SLAs or contracts.

5. C. This is the ITIL definition of an incident model.

6. D. This is what ITIL recommends. Incidents may also result from events or from technical staff.

7. B. This is the ITIL definition of how to calculate priority.

8. B. ITIL defines hierarchical escalation (going up the chain of command) and functional escalation (passing incidents to more technically knowledgeable teams).

9. C. ITIL defines problems as the cause of one or more incidents. Options A and D are incidents, and option B is a possible root cause.

10. D. Problem management may provide a workaround while waiting for a permanent resolution. This would be documented as a known error. If the resolution required a change, an RFC would be raised.

Chapter 12: The Other Service Operation Processes

1. D. The purpose of the request fulfillment process is to separate the common, low-risk requests and expedite them. Service requests do not need CAB approval. RFCs and emergency requests for change need to go through the appropriate change process.

2. A. Service desk staff deal with many requests, with second-line staff carrying out installations, moves, and so on. Requests do not come under the responsibilities of SLM or BRM.

3. C. Requests that are changes will be standard changes and can be preauthorized; they do not need authorization by the CAB. Changes that needed technical approval would go through the change process, not the request process. If an expense is to be incurred, this will need to be accounted for and authorization granted.

4. D. Option 3 requires a change to functionality that would need to be fully considered and costed; it would need to go through the change process. The others are all requests for information or standard services and are therefore service requests.

5. D. Situation 2 B would not be helped by using events. Situation 1 would detect an alert that a time threshold or a priority condition existed and would carry out the escalation defined. Situation 3 would similarly respond to a particular event such as an alarm and would automatically notify the police station. Situation 4 could use the events signifying the successful backup of each file to automate the start of backing up the next file.

6. C. These are all examples of where event management can be used. Monitoring heat and moisture content can be done through event management, and actions are taken if they breach acceptable parameters. Licenses can be controlled by monitoring who is signing onto applications and raising an alert if the maximum legal number is breached. Staff rosters do not have changing conditions that could be monitored by the use of events.

7. B. This is the definition of a request given in this chapter. A request may involve a standard change, but that may be true only in some cases, so it is not a good description. An RFC is part of the change process, not the request process. A request may involve procurement, but only in some cases, so it is not a good description.

8. C. Types 1 and 3 are the two types of event monitoring described in the chapter. Passive monitoring waits for an error message to be detected, and active monitoring checks periodically on the “health” of the CI. The other two are not recognized event types in ITIL.

9. C. Option C is the definition given in the chapter of an alert. Option A is the definition of an incident. Option B is the definition of a problem. Option D is the definition of an event.

10. B. Option A is incorrect because security management does not remove or prevent access. Option C is incorrect because security management is responsible for setting policies. Option D is incorrect because access management carries out the wishes of whoever is responsible for authorizing access (usually a business manager); it does not make the decision.

Chapter 13: Understanding Continual Service Improvement

1. A. The purpose of CSI is correct in statement 1. This lifecycle stage should ensure you continue to support the business in response to changes in business need. The second statement is the purpose of the service strategy lifecycle stage.

2. B. Options A and D are service transition objectives; option C is an objective of service strategy. CSI is concerned with the identification of improvement opportunities across the whole of the service lifecycle.

3. C. CSI provides guidance on IT service management improvements, not on business strategic planning. This includes the continual alignment of IT services with business requirements and the maturity and capability of the service provider. It will include all aspects of the service because everything may be included in an improvement initiative.

4. D. This is the correct sequence of events for the CSI approach. You can verify this by reviewing Figure 13.1.

5. C. To maintain and manage improvements, you should be utilizing a CSI register. Capturing details of the improvements that are taking place allows you to manage and coordinate improvement activities. Capturing details of the infrastructure is covered by service asset and configuration management, and the service catalog provides details of the operational services. The service knowledge management system captures details of the information used for service management.

6. D. Plan, Do, Check, Act make up the four stages in the Deming cycle.

7. A. KPIs measure critical success factors, which are those elements that enable understanding of the current state of the process, help identify any required improvements, and measure the achievement of any enhancements made.

8. B. Both of these statements about baselines are correct. Baselines are used by CSI to ensure that you have a regular capture of the state of the operational environment, allowing for comparison to demonstrate or track improvements.

9. B. Step 2 (define what you will measure) and step 3 (gather the data) are aligned to the Data part of the DIKW structure. In the DIKW model, the starting point of all capture begins with data, and to do this, you should ensure you define the requirements for your data capture activity by understanding what you will measure and then gathering the appropriate data.

10. A. You need to ensure you engage with suppliers who support your services; it’s a vital part of your approach to improving the quality of service provision. It is important to ensure you review all of the stakeholders engaged in the delivery of services, as well as those receiving them. External or business users will not be reviewing the key performance indicators to help them understand the use of services, because this information will not be provided by the KPIs. Project managers will not be reviewing CSFs for service management processes, because these will not demonstrate how to improve project plans.