ITIL ITIL-4-Foundation ITIL 4 Foundation Exam Exam Practice Test

ITIL® has defined four dimensions that collectively are critical to the effective and efficient delivery of value to customers and other stakeholders in the form of products and services. These dimensions are:

• Organizations and People
• Information and Technology
• Partners and Suppliers
• Value Streams and Processes

https://www.bmc.com/blogs/itil-four-dimensions-service-management/

The purpose of the change enablement practice is to maximize the number of successful IT changes by ensuring that risks have been properly assessed, authorizing changes to proceed, and managing the change schedule.

You need to use all of your resources as effectively and efficiently as you can. This means that you should automate wherever you can, and use people only for tasks that can’t be automated. It also means that you need to think carefully about what you can automate and about the circumstances where only a person will do; and about simplifying those processes you do decide to automate to eliminate wasteful or inefficient steps.

You should always optimize the work BEFORE you automate it, as automating something that is inefficient or ineffective may just result in you doing the wrong thing faster!

https://www.sysaid.com/blog/itil/the-7-guiding-principles-of-itil-4-practical-advice-to-help-you-make-decisions

Value Streams & Processes

The value streams and processes dimension is concerned with how the various parts of the organization work in an integrated and coordinated way to enable value creation through products and services. This dimension defines the activities, workflows, controls and procedures needed to achieve agreed objectives. What matters in service management is that an organization establishes an operating model that that effectively organizes the key activities needed to manage products and services.

Value streams

A value stream is defined as a series of steps an organization undertakes to create and deliver products and services to consumers.

Structuring the organization’s service and product portfolios around value streams allows it to have a clear picture of what it delivers and how, and to make continual improvements to its services. By mapping its value streams, an organization can identify what is critical, what introduces waste and what can be improved upon.

Processes

A process is defined as a set of interrelated or interacting activities that transform inputs into outputs.

Processes define the sequence of actions and their dependencies, as well as describe what is done to accomplish an objective. Processes are underpinned by policies and can be broken down further through procedures which outline what is done, when, and by whom.

https://www.bmc.com/blogs/itil-four-dimensions-service-management/

Think and work holistically

No service, practice, process, department, or supplier stands alone. The outputs that the organization delivers to itself, its customers, and other stakeholders will suffer unless it works in an integrated way to handle its activities as a whole, rather than as separate parts.

https://www.bmc.com/blogs/itil-guiding-principles/#:~:text=5.,rather%20than%20as%20separate%20parts .

An SLA is defined as a documented agreement between a service provider and a customer that identifies both services required and the expected level of service.

SLAs are used to measure the performance of services from the customer’s point of view, and it is important that they are agreed in the wider business context.

Some of the key requirements for successful SLAs include:

• They must be related to a defined ‘service’ in the service catalogue. Individual metrics without a specified service context are unhelpful.
• They should relate to defined outcomes and not simply operational metrics. This can be achieved with balanced bundles of metrics, such as customer satisfaction and key business outcomes.
• They should reflect an ‘agreement’: an engagement and discussion between the service provider and the service consumer. It is important to involve all stakeholders, including partners, sponsors, users, and customers.
• They must be simply written and easy to understand and use for all parties.

https://www.bmc.com/blogs/itil-service-level-management/#:~:text=Service%20Level%20Agreements%20(SLAs) &text=Some%20of%20the%20key%20requirements,and%20not%20simply%20operational%20metrics.

The purpose of the release management practice is to make new and changed services and features available for use.

Release: A version of a service or other configuration item, or a collection of configuration items, that is made available for use.

https://wiki.process-symphony.com.au/framework/lifecycle/process/release-management-itil-4/

CIs are simply any component that needs to be managed in order to deliver an IT service. A server, a virtual server, or even the configuration of an application could be considered a CI, for example

https://www.bmc.com/blogs/itil-asset-configuration-management/#:~:text=among%20your%20CIs-,Configuration%20items%20(CIs),considered%20a%20CI%2C%20for%20example .

A service relationship is defined as the cooperation between a service provider and service consumer. Service relationships are established between two or more organizations to co-create value. An organization can play the role of provider or consumer interchangeably, depending on the situation.

https://www.bmc.com/blogs/itil-key-concepts-service-management/#:~:text=and%20stakeholder%20management.-,Service%20Relationships,interchangeably%2C%20depending%20on%20the%20situation .

The Obtain/Build activity is responsible for ensuring that all service components are available when and where needed, and that they meet the agreed specifications.

https://www.beyond20.com/blog/what-is-the-itil-4-service-value-chain/#:~:text=The%20Obtain%2FBuild%20activity%20is,they%20meet%20the%20agreed%20specifications .

Costs are the amount of money spent on a specific activity or resource. From the service consumer’s perspective, there are two types of cost involved in service relationships:

• Costs removed from the consumer by the service (a part of the value proposition). For example, for a car sharing service, the customer does not pay for the actual cost of purchasing the car.

https://www.bmc.com/blogs/itil-key-concepts-service-management/

The purpose of the service request management practice is to support the agreed quality of a service by handling all pre-defined, user-initiated service requests in an effective and user-friendly manner. Service request management is dependent upon well-designed processes and procedures, which are operationalized through tracking and automation tools to maximize the efficiency of the practice. To be handled optimally, service request management should follow these guidelines:

• Service requests and their fulfilment should be standardized and automated to the greatest degree possible.
• Policies should define which service requests will be fulfilled with limited or even no additional approvals so that fulfilment can be streamlined.
• The expectations of users regarding fulfilment times and costs should be clearly set, based on what the organization can realistically deliver.
• Opportunities for improvement should be identified and implemented to produce faster fulfilment times and take advantage of automation.

https://www.bmc.com/blogs/itil-service-request-management/

“Service desk staff require training and competency across a number of broad technical and business areas. In particular, they need to demonstrate excellent customer service skills such as empathy, incident analysis and prioritization, effective communication, and emotional intelligence.

https://www.servicedeskinstitute.com/the-case-for-itil4-foundation-service-desk-analyst-training/#:~:text=%E2%80%9CService%20desk%20staff%20require%20training,effective%20communication%2C%20and%20emotional%20intelligence .

• Emergency changes. These are changes that must be implemented as soon as possible; for example, to resolve an incident or implement a security patch. Emergency changes are not typically included in a change schedule, and the process for assessment and authorization is expedited to ensure they can be implemented quickly. As far as possible, emergency changes should be subject to the same testing, assessment, and authorization as normal changes, but it may be acceptable to defer some documentation until after the change has been implemented, and sometimes it will be necessary to implement the change with less testing due to time constraints. There may also be a separate change authority for emergency changes, typically including a small number of senior managers who understand the business risks involved.”

https://itsm.tools/why-what-change-management/#:~:text=Emergency%20changes. &text=Emergency%20changes%20are%20not%20typically,they%20can%20be%20implemented%20quickly.

No service, practice, process, department, or supplier stands alone. The outputs that the organization delivers to itself, its customers, and other stakeholders will suffer unless it works in an integrated way to handle its activities as a whole, rather than as separate parts.

Taking a holistic approach to service management includes establishing an understanding of how all the parts of an organization work together in an integrated way (remember the four dimensions of service management?), including having an end-to-end visibility of how demand is captured and translated into outcomes. In a complex system, the alteration of one element can impact others and, where possible, these impacts need to be identified, analysed and planned for.

To apply this principle successfully, consider this advice:

• Recognize the complexity of the systems
• Collaboration is key to thinking and working holistically
• Where possible, look for patterns in the needs of and interactions between system elements
• Automation can facilitate working holistically

https://www.bmc.com/blogs/itil-guiding-principles/

Problem Control. Problem control activities include problem analysis and documenting workarounds and known errors.

Just like incidents, problems will be prioritized based on the risk they pose in terms of probability and impact to services. Focus should be given to problems that have highest risk to services and service management.

https://www.bmc.com/blogs/itil-problem-management/#:~:text=2.,probability%20and%20impact%20to%20services .

A help desk is considered to be focused on break-fix (what ITIL calls incident management), whereas a service desk is there to assist with not only break-fix but also with service requests (requests for new services) and requests for information (such as “how do I do X?”).

https://www.atlassian.com/itsm/service-request-management/help-desk-vs-service-desk-vs-itsm#:~:text=A%20help%20desk%20is%20considered,I%20do%20X%3F%E2%80%9D ).

A change is defined as the addition, modification, or removal of anything that could have a direct or indirect effect on services

https://www.bmc.com/blogs/itil-change-enablement/#:~:text=A%20change%20is%20defined%20as,or%20indirect%20effect%20on%20services.

Sponsor: A person who authorizes budget for service consumption; e.g., the Finance Manager

https://www.bmc.com/blogs/itil-key-concepts-service-management/#:~:text=Sponsor%3A%20A%20person%20who%20authorizes,%3B%20e.g.%2C%20the%20Finance%20Manager .

The purpose of incident management is to minimize the negative impact of incidents by restoring normal service operation as quickly as possible. Incident management can have an enormous impact on customer and user satisfaction, and the perception of those stakeholders of the service provider.

https://www.bmc.com/blogs/itil-incident-management/

This dimension encompasses an organization’s relationships with other organizations that are involved in the design, development, deployment, delivery, support and/or continual improvement of services. This dimension also incorporates contracts and other agreements between the organization and its partners or suppliers2.

The service level management practice defines, documents and manages the service levels of all the services and products. Service level management should provide the end to end visibility of all the organizational services. Service level management has to establish and provide the service views with service level target ensure meeting defined service levels by collecting, analyzing, storing and reporting all the defined target metrics of the services regularly (periodically) perform the service reviews and ensure the services meet the organization’s needs continuously identify, capture, review & report the issues related to services, its performance against the defined service targets.