A Question Of ITIL

EXAM - Availability Management

2012-02-17T05:57:00.001-08:00

Availability Management is responsible for availability of the:

A. Services and Components

B. Services and Business Processes

C. Components and Business Processes

D. Services, Components and Business Processes

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Answer: A

Availability Management is the practice of identifying levels of IT Service availability for use in Service Level Reviews with Customers.
All areas of a service must be measurable and defined within the Service Level Agreement (SLA).
To measure service availability the following areas are usually included in the SLA:

Agreement statistics – such as what is included within the agreed service.
Availability – agreed service times, response times, etc.
Help Desk Calls – number of incidents raised, response times, resolution times.
Contingency – agreed contingency details, location of documentation, contingency site, 3^rd party involvement, etc.
Capacity – performance timings for online transactions, report production, numbers of users, etc.
Costing Details – charges for the service, and any penalties should service levels not be met.

Availability is usually calculated based on a model involving the Availability Ratio and techniques such as Fault Tree Analysis, and includes the following elements:

Serviceability – where a service is provided by a 3^rd party organisation, this is the expected availability of a component.
Reliability – the time for which a component can be expected to perform under specific conditions without failure.
Recoverability – the time it should take to restore a component back to its operational state after a failure.
Maintainability – the ease with which a component can be maintained, which can be both remedial or preventative.
Resilience – the ability to withstand failure.
Security – the ability of components to withstand breaches of security.

EXAM - Data and capacity management process

2012-02-10T05:19:00.000-08:00

Data used to support the capacity management process should be stored in:A. A configuration management database (CMDB)
B. A capacity database (CDB)
C. A configuration management system (CMS)
D. A capacity management information system (CMIS)
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Answer: D

Capacity Management is a process used to manage information technology (IT). Its primary goal is to ensure that IT capacity meets current and future business requirements in a cost-effective manner. One common interpretation of Capacity Management is described in the ITIL framework. ITIL version 3 views capacity management as comprising three sub-processes: business capacity management, service capacity management, and component capacity management (known as resource capacity management in ITIL version 2).
As the usage of IT Services change and functionality evolves, the amount of processing power, memory etc also changes. If it is possible to understand the demands being made currently, and how they will change over time, this approach proposes that planning for IT Service growth becomes easier and less reactive. If there are spikes in, for example, processing power at a particular time of the day, it proposes analyzing what is happening at that time and make changes to maximize the existing infrastructure, for example, tune the application, or move a batch cycle to a quieter period.
These activities are intended to optimize performance and efficiency, and to plan for and justify financial investments. Capacity management is concerned with:

Monitoring the performance and throughput or load on a server, server farm, or property
Performance analysis of measurement data, including analysis of the impact of new releases on capacity
Performance tuning of activities to ensure the most efficient use of existing infrastructure
Understanding the demands on the Service and future plans for workload growth (or shrinkage)
Influences on demand for computing resources
Capacity planning – developing a plan for the Service

Capacity management interacts with the discipline of Performance Engineering, both during the requirements and design activities of building a system, and when using performance monitoring as an input for managing capacity of deployed systems.

EXAM - Identity and Rights

2012-02-06T01:39:00.000-08:00

Identity and Rights are two major concepts involved in which one of the following processes?

A. Access Management

B. Facilities Management

C. Event Management

D. Demand Management

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Answer: A

Access management is the process which grants authorized users the rights to utilize the services and at the same time prevents unauthorized access. This process is also known as identity and access management (IAM). Access management therefore deals with the following topics:

Access, in other words access and entry to services, data and facilities.
Identity, i.e. the identity of the user or technical device which requires the access. The identity must be clearly assignable to the actual person and device. Certificates are often used to ensure this is the case.
Rights, these are the rights or privileges which the user can exercise. Typical rights are read, write, execute, change or delete.
Services or service groups, these are roles that the users perform for their activities. The rights are normally assigned to these roles. The user can take on a number of roles and automatically inherits their rights on assignment to this group. This simplifies the administration and overview of the distributed rights and increases their transparency.
Directory service, describes a specific tool which can be used for the administration of identities, rights and roles.

Access management is in effect the execution of availability and information security management in such a way that the process enables the organization to guarantee the confidentiality, availability and integrity of the services and corporate data. As such, for example, access management ensures that a user is granted the rights in order to utilize the service. However, it is the task of availability management to ensure that this access is also always available within the agreed period. Access management is normally initiated with a service request by the service desk.

EXAM - Workaround documentation

2012-02-02T23:46:00.000-08:00

Where should details of a Workaround always be documented?

A. The Service Level Agreement (SLA)

B. The Problem Record

C. The Availability Management Information System

D. The IT Service Continuity Plan

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Answer: B

Workaround is defined as method of avoiding an Incident or Problem, either by employing a temporary fix or technique that means a Customer is not reliant on a Configuration Item (CI) that is known to cause failure.

By definition, workarounds are ALWAYS documented in the problem record.

EXAM - Problem Management objectives

2012-02-01T04:39:00.000-08:00

Which of the following is NOT a valid objective of Problem Management?

A. To prevent Problems and their resultant Incidents

B. To manage Problems throughout their lifecycle

C. To restore service to a user

D. To eliminate recurring Incidents

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Answer: C

Problem management aims to resolve the root causes of incidents and thus to minimise the adverse impact of incidents and problems on business that are caused by errors within the IT infrastructure, and to prevent recurrence of incidents related to these errors. A 'problem' is an unknown underlying cause of one or more incidents, and a 'known error' is a problem that is successfully diagnosed and for which either a work-around or a permanent resolution has been identified. The CCTA (Central Computer and Telecommunications Agency) defines problems and known errors as follows

A problem is a condition often identified as a result of multiple incidents that exhibit common symptoms. Problems can also be identified from a single significant incident, indicative of a single error, for which the cause is unknown, but for which the impact is significant.

A known error is a condition identified by successful diagnosis of the root cause of a problem, and the subsequent development of a work-around.

Problem management differs from incident management. The principal purpose of problem management is to find and resolve the root cause of a problem and thus prevent further incidents; the purpose of incident management is to return the service to normal level as soon as possible, with smallest possible business impact.
The problem-management process is intended to reduce the number and severity of incidents and problems on the business, and report it in documentation to be available for the first-line and second line of the help desk. The proactive process identifies and resolves problems before incidents occur. Such processes include:

Trend analysis;
Targeting support action;
Providing information to the organisation

The error control process iteratively diagnoses known errors until they are eliminated by the successful implementation of a change under the control of the Change Management process.
The problem control process aims to handle problems in an efficient way. Problem control identifies the root cause of incidents and reports it to the service desk. Other activities are:

Problem identification and recording
Problem classification
Problem investigation and diagnosis

A technique for identifying the root cause of a problem is to use an Ishikawa diagram, also referred to as a cause-and-effect diagram, tree diagram, or fishbone diagram. Alternatively, a formal Root Cause Analysis method such as Apollo Root Cause Analysis can be implemented and used to identify causes and solutions. An effective root cause analysis method and/or tool will provide the most effective/efficient solutions to address problems in the Problem Management process.

EXAM - Continual Service Improvement (CSI) Model

2012-01-26T04:49:00.000-08:00

What would be the next step in the Continual Service Improvement (CSI) Model after:

1. What is the vision?
2. Where are we now?
3. Where do we want to be?
4. How do we get there?
5. Did we get there?
6. ?

A. What is the Return On Investment (ROI)?
B. How much did it cost?
C. How do we keep the momentum going?
D. What is the Value On Investment (VOI)?

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Answer: C

There are 6 Steps Involved in CSI:

Step # 1: What is the vision:
As an organization, the vision tells you where you would like to be. This includes all business missions, goals and objectives. The IT strategies should be in line with the vision of the business and if not, a change should be introduced.

Step # 2: Where are we now:
The second step is to assess the current situation of the business. Without realizing the current position of the business pertaining to its assets, organizations cannot make the appropriate decisions to move ahead.

Step # 3: Where do we want to be:
The third step is to understand the improvements that are required within an organization and agree to them. In this step, an organization needs to determine and focus on its measurable targets.

Step # 4: How do we get there:
The fourth step is to create a detailed CSI plan that provides explanations of the various improvements that are to be made to the business environment.

Step #5: Did we get there:
The fifth step is to verify whether the measurements and metrics are in place or not. These help in confirming whether the goals of a business organization have been successfully met.

Step # 6: How do we keep the momentum going:
The sixth step of the CSI Model is to ensure that there has been an improvement in quality. The CSI Model works in a loop so after this step, the cycle begins again.

EXAM - Operational level agreement (OLA)

2012-01-24T23:57:00.000-08:00

What is the BEST description of an Operational Level Agreement (OLA)?

A. An agreement between the service provider and another part of the same organization

B. An agreement between the service provider and an external organization

C. A document that describes to a customer how services will be operated on a day-to-day basis

D. A document that describes business services to operational staff

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Answer: A

An operational-level agreement (OLA) defines the interdependent relationships among the internal support groups of an organization working to support a service-level agreement (SLA). The agreement describes the responsibilities of each internal support group toward other support groups, including the process and timeframe for delivery of their services. The objective of the OLA is to present a clear, concise and measurable description of the service provider's internal support relationships.

OLA is sometimes expanded to other phrases but they all have the same meaning:

organizational-level agreement
operating-level agreement
operations-level agreement

EXAM - Self-help capabilities

2012-01-24T23:55:00.000-08:00

Which of the following is NOT an example of Self-Help capabilities?

A. Requirement to always call the Service Desk for service requests
B. Web front-end
C. Menu-driven range of self help and service requests
D. A direct interface into the back-end process-handling software

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Answer: A

EXAM - Service Transition processes

2012-01-20T03:49:00.000-08:00

Service Transition contains detailed descriptions of which processes?

A. Change Management, Service Asset and Configuration Management, Release and Deployment Management

B. Change Management, Capacity Management Event Management, Service Request Management

C. Service Level Management, Service Portfolio Management, Service Asset and Configuration Management

D. Service Asset and Configuration Management, Release and Deployment Management, Request Fulfilment

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Answer: A

Following processes are part of the Service Transition:

Change Management
Change Evaluation
Project Management (Transition Planning and Support)
Application Development
Release and Deployment Management
Service Validation and Testing
Service Asset and Configuration Management
Knowledge Management

ITIL V3 Certification Path

2012-01-20T03:40:00.000-08:00

So you just passed Foundation exam and wish to continue your ITIL development but you are confused and don't know what to do next?

Well, you are not alone. ITIL has one of the most confusing certification schemes on the market with multiple pathways and, to be quite blunt, rather strange credit scheme.

So let's see where we stand...

Basically, there are 5 levels of qualifications:

ITIL Foundation
ITIL Intermediate Level
ITIL Managing Across the Lifecycle
ITIL Expert Level
ITIL Master Qualification

Assuming you have successfully passed Foundation exam, Intermediate level is the next logical step and this is where things start to get complicated.

Inside intermediate level there are two ways you can take:

Service Lifecycle
Service Capability

Service lifecycle is for you if you are working in management or if you are team leader and it contains following modules:

Service Strategy Qualification
Service Design Qualification
Service Transition
Service Operation Qualification
Continual Service Improvement

On the other hand if you are working as a process manager or are more focused on day-to-day execution of ITIL practices, the Service Capability modules is the way to and they contain:

Service Offerings and Agreements
Release, Control and Validation
Operational Support and Analysis
Planning, Protection and Optimization

However, if you want to get the next stage of ITIL qualification, one of these streams is simply not enough because of the above mentioned unique credit system.

Basically, ITIL Managing Across the Lifecycle qualification is a go-between the Intermediate qualification and ITIL Expert Level and is concerned with the knowledge required to implement and manage the necessary skills associated with use of the Lifecycle practices.

ITIL Expert level of qualification is aimed at those individuals who are interested in demonstrating a superior level of knowledge of the ITIL Scheme in its entirety.

EXAM - Patterns of business activity (PBA)

2012-01-19T03:24:00.000-08:00

Which process is primarily supported by the analysis of Patterns of Business Activity (PBA)?

A. Availability Management

B. Demand Management

C. Financial Management

D. Service Level Management

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Answer: B

PBA analysis requires careful study of the customers business to truly understand the customer demand cycle.
Therefore, patterns of business activity are used to help the service provider understand and plan for different levels of Business Activity.

EXAM - RACI Model

2012-01-19T03:20:00.000-08:00

What is a RACI model used for?

A. Defining roles and responsibilities

B. Monitoring services

C. Performance analysis

D. Recording Configuration Items

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Answer: A

RACI is a model used to help define Roles and Responsibilities.
RACI stands for

Responsible
Accountable
Consulted
Informed.

The Concept Of Service - Value proposition and composition (02/02)

2012-01-19T00:22:00.000-08:00

Alongside value proposition, equally important aspect of services is the service
value composition.

If you remember, value proposition is all about delivering value but service value
composition is about ensuring that the service has utility and warranty.

Utility is often described as being "fit for purpose" while warranty is described as being "fit for use".

So basically, a service is said to have utility if it meets the purpose for which it is designed or it has utility if it has the functionalities that enhance performance or remove constraints, thereby helping customers achieve the outcome for which they need the service.

Decision whether a service has utility ultimately lies with the customer.

On the other hand, service has warranty if it can achieve the desired outcome securely, quickly and consistently. As with the utility, the warranty of a service is valued by the customer on the way how it is delivered.

Great thing about warranty is that it ensures that the service is always offered with the same value and is available when needed. Basically, warranty ensures customer satisfaction.

So to conclude, a service that has both utility and warranty, can create value and ensure customer satisfaction.

If the service doesn't have both utility and warranty the service provider needs to refine and improve the service until it delivers what the customer needs.

The Concept Of Service - Value proposition and composition (01/02)

2012-01-18T03:19:00.000-08:00

By definition, a service should create value for the company, person or group. One of the most important aspects of each service is its service value proposition. Service value proposition refers to the value that the service generates for customers. Customers assess the value based on how the service enhances performance and reduces costs and risks.

A strong value proposition enables service providers to position their services in the
market. Value proposition clearly communicates the benefits of their services and can provide a competitive advantage over other service providers.

Patterns are usually used by service providers to generate the value proposition of services. Pattern is defined as a design or a model that helps simplify the delivery of a complex service. To create a pattern, you first identify the customer's needs.

You then break down the service by asking two questions:

What tasks does the service include?
And how can it be delivered?

By doing so, a pattern provides a blueprint for quickly providing a service and achieving various outcomes. A pattern also helps in determining how flexible a service is in a way that it helps identify the various ways in which a service can be delivered.

Additionally, it is also useful for service providers to break down services into small tasks. This enables service providers to better manage the costs and risks associated with the particular service.

The Concept Of Service - Definition of a service

2012-01-18T02:17:00.000-08:00

A service is often defined as an action or a method that helps create value for customers. This value can be assessed based on how successful the action was in achieving customer outcomes.

Services increase the probability of achieving successful customer outcomes by removing constraints that hamper performance or by enhancing performance.

In some cases, services can go beyond enhancing performance and removing constraints by directly achieving desired outcome.

An important characteristic of delivering IT services is that the risks and costs associated with them are borne by the service provider alone. The customer has no responsibility for them.

This is because only service provider has the skills to manage the risks and costs. Additionally, the service provider is better placed to manage risks and costs of services by spreading them across multiple customers.

EXAM - Processes needed to operate a new service

2012-01-18T02:09:00.000-08:00

Defining the processes needed to operate a new service is part of:

A. Service Design: Design the processes

B. Service Strategy: Develop the offerings

C. Service Transition: Plan and prepare for deployment

D. Service Operation: IT Operations Management

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Answer: A

The ITIL Service Design (SD) volume provides good-practice guidance on the design of IT services, processes, and other aspects of the service management effort. Significantly, design within ITIL is understood to encompass all elements relevant to technology service delivery, rather than focusing solely on design of the technology itself.
As such, service design addresses how a planned service solution interacts with the larger business and technical environments, service management systems required to support the service, processes which interact with the service, technology, and architecture required to support the service, and the supply chain required to support the planned service.
Within ITIL, design work for an IT service is aggregated into a single service design package (SDP). Service design packages, along with other information about services, are managed within the service catalogues. List of covered processes:

Design coordination (Introduced in ITIL 2011 Edition)
Service Catalogue
Service level Management
Availability Management
Capacity Management
IT Service Continuity Management (ITSCM)
Information Security Management System
Supplier Management

EXAM - Risk Management Concerns

2012-01-18T02:04:00.000-08:00

Which of the following should NOT be a concern of Risk Management?

A. To ensure that the organization can continue to operate in the event of a major disruption or disaster
B. To ensure that the workplace is a safe environment for its employees and customers
C. To ensure that the organization assets, such as information, facilities and building are protected from
threats, damage or loss
D. To ensure only the change requests with mitigated risks are approved for implementation

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Answer: D

Risk is often defined as the uncertainty of outcome, whether positive opportunity or negative threat.
The objective of Risk Management is to identify, assess and control risks. This includes analyzing the value of assets to the business, identifying threats to those assets, and evaluating how vulnerable each asset is to those threats.

Risks are addressed within several processes in ITIL but there is no dedicated Risk Management process and risk management is often called "lost process of ITIL V3". However, ITIL v3 does call for coordinated risk assessment exercise.

EXAM - Definition of Release Unit

2012-01-17T03:52:00.000-08:00

Which of these is the BEST description of a release unit?

A. The portion of a service or IT infrastructure that is normally released together
B. The smallest part of a service or IT infrastructure that can be independently changed
C. The portion of a service or IT infrastructure that is changed by a particular release
D. A metric for measuring the effectiveness of the Release and Deployment Management process

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Answer: A

Just as change management begins with defining which activities will require a change record, release management begins with documenting which components will be released simultaneously.

ITIL defines a release unit as the set of components that get upgraded, installed, or changed all at the same time.

As a simple example, often the next version of a business application requires new versions of middleware software products. This means that the application and the middleware form a release unit, because they are deployed at the same time.

Measuring effects before and after ITIL implementation

2012-01-17T03:43:00.000-08:00

One of the reasons management wants to get ITIL in house is to be more efficient. And in order to prove improve efficiencies, your IT organisation must measure the effectiveness of processes before and after ITIL.

Begin your implementation by benchmarking the activities of the IT organisation to determine how well it’s performing. The owner of ITIL, Office of Government Commerce (OGC), provides online resources that you can use to assess the IT organisation. OGC also provides worksheet that is downloadable from their Web page. To perform basic assessment, you’ll need to answer various sets of questions for each of the processes. For example, the evaluation for Incident Management includes questions like, “Is the business need for a Service Desk clearly identified and understood?” and “Does the Service Desk provide a status update to the customer on the closure of incidents?“

Just take the test and score the results. Basically, the result of the test will usually tend to be much better than you expect because majority of the organisations have at least basic sets of processes in place. However, it is the way these processes work together that shows the true value of your IT readiness.

Why ITIL scares IT managers?

2012-01-17T00:47:00.000-08:00

According to the great article at the Network World (http://www.networkworld.com) there are several reasons why your organisation may resist implementation of ITIL.

To directly quote the article:

"The resistance comes from fear, according to ITIL experts and industry watchers, who argue that education around ITIL, its potential benefits and challenges would help implementations get off the ground more quickly. For one, the premise of re-aligning IT operations around standard processes intimidates most non-believers, and the recent updates to the framework, ITIL Version 3, is causing confusion among many IT managers that started adopting ITIL Version 2.

To help address fears and reduce confusion, ITIL expert and author Linh Ho compiled a list of the most common fears she encounters in customer environments and detailed some ways to keep the anxiety around ITIL at bay. Ho, product marketing manager at Compuware, also served as a reviewer on the ITIL V3 foundation books and is co-author of the itSMF's Six Sigma for IT Management book. Ho also worked for business service management vendor Proxima Technology before it was acquired by Compuware earlier this year. She says that the industry is working toward reducing the confusion around ITIL.

"We are often on the front lines talking to customers and find that there is a lot of fear and confusion out there today," Ho says. "We are working to demystify and help abate fears." "

Here are couple of things you might encounter when you try to implement ITIL in your organisation:

Fear of change
Fear of Measurement
Process limitations
Investment
Buzzword bandwagon
Process selection
Complexity
Executive expectations
Organisation size
Stifled creativity

EXAM - Service Level Agreement (SLA)

2012-01-17T00:21:00.000-08:00

A Service Level Agreement (SLA) is:

A. The part of a contract that specifies responsibilities of each party

B. An agreement between the Service Provider and an internal organization

C. An agreement between a Service Provider and an external supplier

D. An agreement between the Service Provider and their customer

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Answer: D

A service-level agreement is a part of a service contract where the level of service is formally defined. In practice, the term SLA is sometimes used to refer to the contracted delivery time (of the service) or performance. As an example, internet service providers will commonly include service level agreements within the terms of their contracts with customers to define the level(s) of service being sold in plain language terms. In this case the SLA will typically have a technical definition in terms of mean time between failures (MTBF), mean time to repair or mean time to recovery (MTTR); various data rates; throughput; jitter; or similar measurable details.

SLAs are also defined at different levels:

Customer-based SLA: An agreement with an individual customer group, covering all the services they use. For example, an SLA between a supplier (IT service provider) and the finance department of a large organization for the services such as finance system, payroll system, billing system, procurement/purchase system, etc.
Service-based SLA: An agreement for all customers using the services being delivered by the service provider. For example:
- A car service station offers a routine service to all the customers and offers certain maintenance as a part of offer with the universal charging.
- A mobile service provider offers a routine service to all the customers and offers certain maintenance as a part of offer with the universal charging
- An email system for the entire organization. There are chances of difficulties arising in this type of SLA as level of the services being offered may vary for different customers (for example, head office staff may use high-speed LAN connections while local offices may have to use a lower speed leased line).
Multilevel SLA: The SLA is split into the different levels, each addressing different set of customers for the same services, in the same SLA.
Corporate-level SLA: Covering all the generic service level management (often abbreviated as SLM) issues appropriate to every customer throughout the organization. These issues are likely to be less volatile and so updates (SLA reviews) are less frequently required.
Customer-level SLA: covering all SLM issues relevant to the particular customer group, regardless of the services being used.
Service-level SLA: covering all SLM issue relevant to the specific services, in relation to this specific customer group.

EXAM - Three types of metrics

2012-01-16T04:26:00.000-08:00

What are the three types of metrics that an organization should collect to support Continual Service Improvement (CSI)?

A. Return On Investment (ROI), Value On Investment (VOI), quality
B. Strategic, tactical and operational
C. Critical Success Factors (CSFs), Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), activities
D. Technology, process and service

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Answer: D

Explanation:
There are 3 types of metrics that an organization will need to collect to support CSI activities as well as other process activities:

* Technology Metrics: Often associated with component and application-based metrics such as performance, availability etc. The various design architects and technical specialists are responsible for defining the technology metrics.

* Process Metrics: Captured in the form of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and activity metrics for the service management processes which determine the overall health of a process. Four key questions KPIs can help answer are centered on quality, performance, value and compliance. CSI uses these metrics to identify improvement opportunities for each process. The various Process Owners are responsible for defining the metrics for the process they are responsible for coordinating and managing.

* Service Metrics: The results of the end-to-end service. Component metrics are used to calculate the service metrics. The Service Level Manager(s) and Service Owners are responsible for defining appropriate service metrics.