ISO/IEC 20000 Standard is becoming a basic requirement for IT Service providers and is fast becoming the most recognized symbol of quality regarding IT Service Management processes. Once you have acquired your ITIL®® Foundation Certification, you are eligible to pursue the ISO/IEC 20000 certification pathways. ISO/IEC 20000 programs aim to assist IT professionals master and understand the standard itself and issues relating to earning actual standards compliance.
Monthly Archives: July 2010
ITIL® Certification Pathways
There are many pathway options that are available once you have acquired your ITIL®® Foundation Certification. Below illustrates the possible pathways that are available to you. Currently it is intended that the highest certification is the ITIL®® V3 Expert, considered to be equal to that of Diploma Status.
Contact us to explore the path that is best for you.
Answers for review questions
The following section provides example reasoning for each answer. This is only a guide however, and does not cover every possible reason why an answer is correct or incorrect.
Service Strategy
ANSWERS
1c, 2a, 3b, 4c, 5b, 6a, 7d, 8b, 9b, 10d
Question 1
Which ITIL®® process is responsible for developing a charging system?
a) Availability Management
b) Capacity Management
c) Financial Management for IT Services – This is an element of IT accounting and chargeback
d) Service Level Management – While SLM does assist, SLM will only review the charges with customers, rather than developing the charging model itself.
Question 2
What is the RACI model used for?
a) Documenting the roles and relationships of stakeholders in a process or activity – this is the primary purpose of RACI, i.e. mapping processes to functions and roles.
b) Defining requirements for a new service or process – not the purpose of RACI
c) Analyzing the business impact of an incident – not the purpose of RACI
d) Creating a balanced scorecard showing the overall status of Service Management – not the purpose of RACI
Question 3
Which of the following identifies two Service Portfolio components within the Service Lifecycle?
a) Catalogue Service Knowledge Management System and Requirements Portfolio
b) Service Catalogue and Service Pipeline – correct, the three areas are Pipeline, Catalogue and Retired Services.
c) Service Knowledge Management System and Service Catalogue
d) Service Pipeline and Configuration Management System
Question 4
Which of the following is NOT one of the ITIL® core publications?
a) Service Operation
b) Service Transition
c) Service Derivation
d) Service Strategy
Question 5
A Service Level Package is best described as?
a) A description of customer requirements used to negotiate a Service Level Agreement – These are Service Level Requirements
b) A defined level of utility and warranty associated with a core service package – Correct, a combination of utility and warranty that meets the customer’s needs.
c) A description of the value that the customer wants and for which they are willing to pay
d) A document showing the Service Levels achieved during an agreed reporting period – These are Service Level Achievements
Question 6
Setting policies and objectives is the primary concern of which of the following elements of the Service Lifecycle?
a) Service Strategy – Correct, see objectives of Service Strategy
b) Service Strategy and Continual Service Improvement
c) Service Strategy, Service Transition and Service Operation
d) Service Strategy, Service Design, Service Transition, Service Operation and Continual Service Improvement
Question 7
A service owner is responsible for which of the following?
a) Designing and documenting a Service – normally the role of Service Architects
b) Carrying out the Service Operations activities needed to support a Service – normally Service Desk and other operational staff
c) Producing a balanced scorecard showing the overall status of all Services – Service owner isn’t responsible for ALL services
d) Recommending improvements – Correct, the Service Owner is responsible for continually improving their service.
Question 8
The utility of a service is best described as:
a) Fit for design
b) Fit for purpose
c) Fit for function
d) Fit for use – this is warranty (i.e. performance, availability etc.)
Question 9
The 4 P’s of ITSM are people, partners, processes and …?:
a) Purpose
b) Products – Correct, see introduction to IT Service Management.
c) Perspectives
d) Practice
Question 10
The contents of a service package includes:
a) Base Service Package, Supporting Service Package, Service Level Package
b) Core Service Package, Supporting Process Package, Service Level Package
c) Core Service Package, Base Service Package, Service Support Package
d) Core Service Package, Supporting Services Package, Service Level Packages – Correct, see Service Packages
Service Design
ANSWERS
1b, 2a, 3d, 4d, 5b, 6b, 7a, 8b, 9c, 10d
Question 1
Which ITIL®® process analyses threats and dependencies to IT Services as part of the decision regarding “countermeasures” to be implemented?
a) Availability Management – concerned with operational disruptions and the measures for recovery (i.e. redundant components), rather than specific recovery environments and countermeasures.
b) IT Service Continuity Management
c) Problem Management – will investigate the cause of a disruption, but only contributes to recovery planning.
d) Service Asset & Configuration Management – only records and provides the information, does not analyze and evaluate anything itself.
Question 2
What is the name of the activity within the Capacity Management process whose purpose is to predict the future capacity requirements of new and changed services?
a) Application Sizing
b) Demand Management – this is a separate process, analyzing how business demand will change over time.
c) Modeling – this is a separate activity, estimating the performance of the infrastructure under certain conditions
d) Tuning
Question 3
In which ITIL®® process are negotiations held with customers about the availability and capacity levels to be provided?
a) Availability Management
b) Capacity Management
c) Financial Management for IT Services
d) Service Level Management – SLM is always the process that negotiates with customers about any aspect of service quality.
Question 4
Which of the following statements is false?
a) It is impossible to maintain user and customer satisfaction during a disruption to service.
b) When reporting the availability provided for a service, the percentage (%) availability that is calculated takes into account the agreed service hours. See measuring Availability
c) Availability of services could be improved by changes to the architecture, ITSM processes or IT staffing levels. See incident lifecycle, for increasing uptime and reducing downtime.
d) Reports regarding availability should include more than just uptime, downtime and frequency of failure, and reflect the actual business impact of unavailability. Correct, this is called business oriented availability reporting.
Question 5
Which of the following activities is Service Level Management responsible for?
a) Informing users of available services – this is the role of the Service Desk
b) Identifying customer needs
c) Overseeing service release schedule – This is the role of Release & Deployment process
d) Keeping accurate records of all configuration items – Service Asset & Configuration Management
Question 6
Which process reviews Operational Level Agreements (OLAs) on a regular basis?
a) Supplier Management – reviews Underpinning Contracts
b) Service Level Management
c) Service Portfolio Management
d) Contract Management – not an ITIL® process, this is included within Supplier Management.
Question 7
What is another term for Uptime?
a) Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF)
b) Mean Time to Restore Service (MTRS) – downtime
c) Mean Time Between System Incidents (MTBSI) – frequency of failures
d) Relationship between MTBF and MTBSI
Question 8
Which of the following is an activity of IT Service Continuity Management?
a) Advising end users of a system failure – Service Desk’s role during a crisis.
b) Documenting the recovery procedure for a critical system – Correct, this is an activity of the ITSCM process
c) Reporting regarding availability – This is an activity of Availability Management
d) Guaranteeing that the Configuration Items are constantly kept up-to-date.
Question 9
Information security must consider the following four perspectives:
1. Organizational
2. Physical
3. Technical
4. ?
a) Process
b) Security
c) Procedural – See scope of Information Security Management
d) Firewalls
Question 10
The 3 types of Service Level Agreements structures are:
a) Customer based, Service based, Corporate based
b) Corporate level, customer level, service level
c) Service based, customer based, user based
d) Customer based, service based, multi-level
Service Transition
ANSWERS
1a, 2b, 3d, 3b, 5b, 6c, 7a, 8b, 9a, 10b
Question 1
The key element of a standard change is: ?
a) Documentation of a pre-approved procedure for implementing the change
b) Low risk to the production environment – this in itself doesn’t guarantee a standard change.
c) No requirement for service downtime – the risk of unplanned disruption may still be high.
d) It can be included in the next monthly or quarterly release. This relates to the packaging of releases, not the classification of changes.
Question 2
Release and deployment options include:
1. Big bang vs. Phased
2. Automated vs. Manual
3. ?
a) Push vs. Proposed
b) Push vs. Pull
c) Requested vs. Forced
d) Proposed vs. Forced
Question 3
The 4 spheres of knowledge management are:
a) Data, facts, knowledge, wisdom
b) Ideas, facts knowledge, wisdom
c) Data, information, facts, wisdom
d) Data, information, knowledge, wisdom – easier to remember as DIKW
Question 4
Which activity in Service Asset & Configuration Management would help to ascertain whether the recorded Configuration Items conform to the physical environment?
a) Control – this is the actual modification of CIs themselves
b) Verification and audit
c) Identification – this collects all the information to be stored for a CI
d) Status accounting – this doesn’t itself doesn’t include validation procedures.
Question 5
After a Change has been implemented, an evaluation is performed. What is this evaluation called?
a) Forward Schedule of Changes (FSC)
b) Post Implementation Review (PIR)
c) Service Improvement Program (SIP)
d) Service Level Requirement (SLR)
Question 6
Which of the following is not change type?
a) Standard change
b) Normal change
c) Quick change
d) Emergency change
Question 7
Which process is responsible for maintaining software items in the Definitive Media Library (DML)?
a) Release and Deployment Management – as R&D will be responsible for storing and deploying all software items in the DML
b) Service Asset and Configuration Management – only responsible for maintaining the records associated with the DML
c) Service validation and testing
d) Change Management
Question 8
Which process or function is responsible for communicating the Change Schedule to the users?
a) Change Management – responsible for maintaining the Change Schedule, but provides this to the Service Desk for communicating to users.
b) Service Desk – should be the single point of contact for ALL user communication
c) Release and Deployment Management
d) Service Level Management
Question 9
Which of the following best describes a baseline?
a) Used as a reference point for later comparison
b) The starting point of any project – only one example of a baseline
c) The end point of any project – only one example of a baseline
d) A rollback procedure
Question 10
The main objective of Change Management is to?
a) Ensure that any changes are approved and recorded – not all changes are approved.
b) Ensure that standardized methods and procedures are used for controlled handling of all changes
c) Ensure that any change requests are managed through the CAB – this is not true for standard changes
d) Ensure that the CAB takes responsibility for all change implementation – CAB only coordinates implementation, the work is performed within the Release & Deployment process.
Service Operation
ANSWERS
1c, 2a, 3b, 4d, 5b, 6b, 7c, 8a, 9a, 10c
Question 1
What is the best definition of an Incident Model?
a) Predicting the impact of incidents on the network
b) A type of Incident that is used as a best practice model
c) A set of pre-defined steps to be followed when dealing with a known type of Incident
d) An Incident that requires a separate system
Question 2
What is the difference between a Known Error and a Problem?
a) The underlying cause of a Known Error is known. The underlying cause of a Problem is not known
b) A Known Error involves an error in the IT infrastructure. A Problem does not involve such an error.
c) A Known Error always originates from an Incident. This is not always the case with a Problem.
d) With a Problem, the relevant Configuration Items have been identified. This is not the case with a Known Error. – explanation is reversed
Question 3
Information is regularly exchanged between Problem Management and Change Management. What information is this?
a) Known Errors from Problem Management, on the basis of which Change Management can generate Requests for Change (RFCs) – Change Management accepts the RFC, doesn’t create it itself.
b) RFCs resulting from Known Errors
c) RFCs from the users that Problem Management passes on to Change Management
d) RFCs from the Service Desk that Problem Management passes on to Change Management
Question 4
Incident Management has a value to the business by?
a) Helping to control cost of fixing technology
b) Enabling customers to resolve Problems – This is problem management
c) Helping to maximize business impact
d) Helping to reduce the business impact
Question 5
Which of the following is NOT an example of a Service Request?
a) A user calls the Service Desk to order a new mouse
b) A user calls the Service Desk because they would like to change the functionality of an application – this would be a Normal Change, due to the potential risk and implications of the change.
c) A user calls the service desk to reset their password
d) A user logs onto an internal web site to download a licensed copy of software from a list of approved options – this is an example of a service request workflow that has been automated.
Question 6
The BEST definition of an event is?
a) A situation where a capacity threshold has been exceeded and an agreed Service Level has already been impacted – only one type of event (exception)
b) An occurrence that is significant for the management of the IT Infrastructure or delivery of services
c) A problem that requires immediate attention
d) A social gathering of IT staff to celebrate the release of a service
Question 7
Technical Management is NOT responsible for?
a) Maintenance of the local network
b) Identifying technical skills required to manage and support the IT Infrastructure
c) Defining the Service agreements for the technical infrastructure – this is the role of Service Level Management
d) Response to the disruption to the technical infrastructure
Question 8
Which of the following is NOT an objective of Service Operation?
a) Through testing, to ensure that services are designed to meet business needs – this is an objective of Service Transition
b) To deliver and support IT Services
c) To manage the technology used to deliver services
d) To monitor the performance of technology and processes
Question 9
Which of the following BEST describes the purpose of Event Management?
a) The ability to detect events, analyze them and determine the appropriate control action
b) The ability to coordinate changes in events
c) The ability to monitor and control projected service outages – this is only one role of Event Management
d) The ability to report on success of all batch processing jobs – this is only one role of Event Management
Question 10
Which process or function is responsible for management of the Data centre facility?
a) IT Operations Control
b) Supplier Management
c) Facilities Management
d) Technical Function
Continual Service Improvement
ANSWERS
1b, 2b, 3b, 4c, 5a
Question 1
Why should monitoring and measuring be used when trying to improve services?
a) To validate, justify, monitor and improve
b) To validate, direct, justify and intervene – See Service Measurement & Reporting
c) To validate, check, act and improve
d) To validate, analyze, direct and improve
Question 2
Which is the first activity of the Continual Service Improvement (CSI) model?
a) Assess the customer’s requirements
b) Understand the vision of the business
c) Identify what can be measured
d) Develop a plan for improvement
Question 3
The four stages of the Deming Cycle are?
a) Plan, Assess, Check, Report
b) Plan, Do, Check, Act
c) Plan, Check, Revise, Improve
d) Plan, Do, Act, Assess
Question 4
Which of the following is NOT a step in the Continual Service Improvement (CSI) model?
a) What is the vision?
b) Did we get there?
c) Who will help us get there?
d) Where are we now?
Question 5
Which of the following provides the correct set of governance levels managed by an organization?
a) Technology, Service, Business
b) Financial, Legal, Security
c) Process, Service, Technology
d) IT, Corporate, Enterprise
ITIL® Foundation Exam Tips
Exam Details:
* 40 questions
* The correct answer is only one of the four
* 60 minutes duration
* 26 out of 40 is a pass (65%)
* Closed book
* No notes
Practical Suggestions:
* Read the question CAREFULLY
* At this level of exam the obvious answer is often the correct answer (if you have read the question carefully!!)
* Beware of being misled by the preliminary text for the question
* If you think there should be another choice that would be the right answer, then you have to choose the “most right”
* Use strategies such as “What comes first?” or “What doesn’t belong?” to help with the more difficult questions
* Where there are questions that involve multiple statements (i.e. 1, 2, 3, 4), then try to eliminate combinations that are immediately incorrect (based on something you can remember) so that the question is broken into smaller, and more manageable pieces.
Make sure that you prepare adequately in the lead up to your exam by reviewing your notes, reading any available material and attempting the sample exams.
Continual Service Improvement Review Questions
Question 1
Why should monitoring and measuring be used when trying to improve services?
a) To validate, justify, monitor and improve
b) To validate, direct, justify and intervene
c) To validate, check, act and improve
d) To validate, analyze, direct and improve
Question 2
Which is the first activity of the Continual Service Improvement (CSI) model?
a) Assess the customer’s requirements
b) Understand the vision of the business
c) Identify what can be measured
d) Develop a plan for improvement
Question 3
The four stages of the Deming Cycle are?
a) Plan, Assess, Check, Report
b) Plan, Do, Check, Act
c) Plan, Check, Revise, Improve
d) Plan, Do, Act, Assess
Question 4
Which of the following is NOT a step in the Continual Service Improvement (CSI) model?
a) What is the vision?
b) Did we get there?
c) Who will help us get there?
d) Where are we now?
Question 5
Which of the following provides the correct set of governance levels managed by an organization?
a) Technology, Service, Business
b) Financial, Legal, Security
c) Process, Service, Technology
d) IT, Corporate, Enterprise