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ITIL® Intermediate Lifecycle Stream: CONTINUAL SERVICE IMPROVEMENT (CSI) CERTIFICATE Sample Paper 2, version 6.1

Gradient Style, Complex Multiple Choice QUESTION BOOKLET Gradient Style Multiple Choice 90 minute paper Eight questions, Closed Book Instructions

1. All 8 questions should be attempted. 2. You should refer to the accompanying Scenario Booklet to answer each question. 3. All answers are to be marked on the answer grid provided. 4. You have 90 minutes to complete this paper. 5. You must achieve 28 or more out of a possible 40 marks (70%) to pass this examination.

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Question One Refer to Scenario One Which one of the following options BEST represents the scope of the assessment for the company at this time? A. • The scope of the assessment should cover only the processes. The technology does not need to

be included as it is less than two years old and is not causing any issues • Since most IT employees have been with the company for more than 15 years, it is

understandable that there will be some relationship and co-operation issues • In order to view whether the processes are aligned with ITIL, the assessment should include

process governance and management information

B. • The scope of the assessment should cover people, process, and technology • Although the technology is less than two years old, it may not have been implemented correctly

and may not be delivering the appropriate value • The business is complaining about the responsiveness of IT. This could be an indication that the

processes and people are misaligned • The assessment should look at process governance, technology issues, and management

information

C. • The scope should only cover people and processes • The technology can be excluded since it is less than two years old and is not causing any issues • It would; however, be appropriate to allow only those managers who have achieved the ITIL

foundation certificate to participate in the process assessment, as they will have an appreciation of all the processes and will, therefore, have a greater understanding of the standards required

D. • The assessment needs to be a full assessment and should therefore extend beyond people,

process, and technology to include other factors that may impact process effectiveness • Knowledge of ITIL is not a prerequisite for IT staff performing the assessment, as long as they

have an appropriate understanding of the assessment process • The assessment should include any cultural issues which can have an impact on the success of

an improvement program, the business and IT alignment, process governance and management information



Question Two Refer to Scenario Two Which one of the following options is the BEST approach that will address the issues? A. • A service failure analysis (SFA) team should be created consisting of IT staff and customers.

This would form a structured approach to identifying end-to-end availability improvement opportunities

• Activities, methods or techniques that may help the team include: o Expanded incident lifecycle – to assist in trying to reduce resolution times o Workload management – to identify how usage of the service impacts performance of

the service and / or its components o Technical observation – technical specialists who will focus on the availability issues with

the components

B. • An SFA team should carry out an analysis using technical specialists from within IT to focus on specific aspects of IT availability

• Activities, methods or techniques that may help the team include: o Training needs analysis – to identify why the customers seem to be having trouble with

the data o Demand management – to gain an understanding of how the customer uses the service

and what can be done to influence that o Risk management – assess and take the responsibility for the management of risks

C. • An SFA team should be created consisting of IT staff. As this is a problem management

technique the team will focus on identifying the root cause of the incidents logged against the service to try to improve availability

• Activities, methods or techniques that may help the team include: o Component failure impact analysis – to identify single points of failure and assess the

validity of recovery procedures o Component capacity management – understand the capacity and utilization of each

component o Risk management – assess and take the responsibility for the management of risks

D. • An SFA team should be created, consisting of IT staff and customers. The focus of the team is to

identify improvement opportunities that will benefit the end user • Activities, methods or techniques that may help the team include:

o Workload management – to identify how the use of the service impacts performance of the service and / or its components

o Component failure impact analysis – to identify single points of failure and assess the validity of recovery procedures

o Modelling – to predict the behaviour of any improvements that are recommended



Question Three Refer to Scenario Three Which one of the following options BEST describes the action for this organization’s scorecard approach? A. Ensure that the component measurements are used to feed end-to-end system measurements and

support the guidelines defined for the system. This will form the basis for creating a balanced scorecard (point-in-time information) and a system dashboard (real-time information). The framework should be cost-effective and SMART. Changes to the framework should only be initiated when any relevant business changes are recognized.

B. Ensure that the process measurements are used to feed end-to-end service measurements and

support the CSFs defined in the service portfolio. This will form the basis for creating an SLA (point-in-time information) and an OLA (real-time information). The framework should be integrated into service operation and able to withstand change. The framework should be designed in the service design stage of the lifecycle and updated only as an operational service change.

C. Ensure that the component measurements are used to feed end-to-end service measurements and

support the targets defined in the SLA for the service. This will form the required information needed for creating a balanced scorecard (point-in-time information) and a service scorecard (real-time information). The framework should be integrated into IT planning and be balanced in its approach to what is measured. Adjustments to the framework must be coincident with service review meetings.

D. Ensure that the component measurements are used to feed end-to-end service measurements and

will support the KPIs defined for the end-to-end service measurements. This will form the basis for creating a service scorecard (point-in-time information) and a service dashboard (real-time information). The framework should be integrated into the business planning and change cycle. There may be a need for trial and error in setting up the framework to fine-tune it to what is required.



Question Four Refer to Scenario Four Which one of the following high-level overviews of the types of tools and their functionality gives the MOST accurate descriptions of the tools available and how they support the organization’s aims? A. • Systems and network management tools – allow the technology to be managed remotely. This

will enhance the ability of capacity and availability management to achieve their aims and also assist in reducing incident resolution times

• Performance management tools – collect availability, capacity and performance data. This can be used to generate information in support of process effectiveness reporting

• Information security management tools – guard against intrusion into services and inappropriate

access and usage. This will help address the information security issues • Statistical analysis tools – analyses service data. This type of tool will allow logical grouping of

data to allow predictive models to be generated that support future growth predictions

B. • Systems and network management tools – give a dynamic real-time view of the current state of service delivery. They will provide metric data in support of CSI

• Event management tools – deliver data on availability impacts and performance thresholds that have been exceeded. This will identify availability and performance improvement opportunities

• Performance management tools – collect availability, capacity and performance data. This will

be useful to generate information in support of SLA reporting • Statistical analysis tools – analyses service data. This can help end-to-end analysis by taking

raw data from the other tools and bringing it together for collective analysis

C. • Event management tools – delivers data that can be correlated. This will identify improvement opportunities across the IT and business infrastructure

• Performance management tools – collects performance data. This will help analyse

performance against SLAs and regulate performance to remain cost-effective • Systems and network management tools – give a snapshot view of the current state of service

delivery. They will provide metric data in support of CSI • Automated incident / problem resolution – automatically triggered diagnosis and repair.

This will allow a proactive approach to CSI activities by utilizing pre-programmed scripted self-healing techniques

Question continues overleaf



D.

Question continued

• Event management tools – allow a view of events that are occurring in the business infrastructure. This will assist in identifying suitable times to implement improvements

• Performance management tools – collect availability, capacity and performance data. This can be used to generate information in support of OLA reporting

• Systems and network management tools – give a snapshot view of the current state of

service delivery. These tools will provide metric data in support of CSI • Request services – self-help tools to allow users to log their own requests. This will reduce

the workload on the service desk



Question Five Refer to Scenario Five Based upon the business requirements provided in the accompanying scenario, which one of the following candidates is BEST suited to the role of continual service improvement (CSI) manager? A. Candidate A

• Has successfully performed a service level management role for the last five years • Has excellent people-management skills and is well liked throughout the organization • Has experience of dealing with suppliers • Has experience of designing and documenting business processes

B. Candidate B

• Has successfully performed a service desk manager role for the last five years • Has an excellent understanding of the IT services and how they support the business • Has excellent problem management skills • Has previous experience of managing multi-discipline projects

C. Candidate C

• Has successfully performed a business relationship management role for the last five

years • Has an excellent understanding of the IT services and supporting services • Has previous experience of managing teams and has good organizational skills • Has a good understanding of statistical and analytical principles and processes

D. Candidate D

• Has worked in the technical management team for five years • Has excellent knowledge of the services and the factors that lead to failure • Has experience of managing teams • Has excellent experience of the organization’s documentation systems and service

management systems



Question Six Refer to Scenario Six The CSI manager has reviewed the information and has concluded that there is insufficient information to identify the cause. However, the CSI manager believes that the information does indicate one or two areas that require further investigation. Which one of the following options is the BEST description of conclusions that can draw from the information?

A. The information indicates that the information provided in the reports is satisfactory but the number and type of reports is inappropriate. Presenting the availability and performance data in one report and the incident data in a second report is confusing and makes it difficult to understand the overall situation.

B. The information indicates that there is nothing wrong with the way that the data is gathered,

processed or analysed. The issue is to investigate whether its presentation is meeting its need since service level targets seem not to be well understood by the users. Users may need some training to understand the SLAM chart.

C. The information indicates that there are too many monitoring tools used to collect the data.

Combining data from many sources is likely to result in inaccurate information. The issue to investigate is whether the number of tools can be reduced.

D. The information indicates that in the processing step the availability data from the monitoring tool is

not combined with the incident data from the service desk tool and so does not provide a true representation of availability. This is compounded by the fact that the incident data is presented in a different report and thus it is not easy to compare it with the availability data.



Question Seven Refer to Scenario Seven Which one of the following options is the BEST description of the tool functionality that will help resolve the issues? A. • IT service management suite that supports all service management processes

• Process / workflow engine to improve the coordination of the service management processes • Self-help technology to enable users to log requests without contacting the service desk

B. • Statistical analysis tools that can be used to derive service metrics from technology metrics • Statistical analysis tools that can be used to analyse incident and problem data • Tools to automate recovery from incidents by automatically restarting components

C. • IT service management suite that supports all service management processes • Statistical analysis tools that can be used to analyse incident and problem data • Self-help technology to publish the service catalogue and provide real-time reports on the

company IT web portal

D. • Statistical analysis tools that can be used to derive service metrics from technology metrics • Statistical analysis tools that can import and analyse incident and availability data from different

sources • Network management tools that can monitor end-to-end service performance and availability



Question Eight Refer to Scenario Eight Which one of the following options BEST summarizes what are, and are not, risks to the continual service improvement (CSI) implementation in this organization? A. • Implementing CSI without knowledge transfer and training is a risk

• Lack of resources is a risk • Failing to involve the right people in the plan, build, test and implementation of

improvements is NOT a risk • Failing to discuss opportunities with the business is NOT a risk

B. • Being overly ambitious is a risk

• Not prioritizing improvement projects is a risk • Lack of management commitment is NOT a risk • Failing to discuss opportunities with the business is NOT a risk

C. • Being overly ambitious is a risk

• Lack of resources is a risk • Failing to involve the right people in the plan, build, test and implementation of

improvements is NOT a risk • Implementing CSI without knowledge transfer and training is NOT a risk

D. • Lack of management taking action is a risk

• Failing to discuss opportunities with the business is a risk • Implementing CSI without knowledge transfer and training is NOT a risk • Being overly ambitious is NOT a risk

© The Official ITIL Accreditor 2012. The Swirl logo™ is a trade mark of the Cabinet Office. ITIL® is a registered trade mark of the Cabinet Office. ITIL Intermediate Lifecycle CSISample2 SCENARIO BOOKLET v6.1.




Gradient Style, Complex Multiple Choice SCENARIO BOOKLET This booklet contains the scenarios upon which the eight examination questions will be based. All questions are contained within the Question Booklet and each question will clearly state the scenario to which the question relates. In order to answer each of the eight questions, you will need to read the related scenario carefully. On the basis of the information provided in the scenario, you will be required to select which of the four answer options provided (A, B, C or D) you believe to be the optimum answer. You may choose ONE answer only, and the Gradient Scoring system works as follows:

• If you select the CORRECT answer, you will be awarded 5 marks for the question • If you select the SECOND BEST answer, you will be awarded 3 marks for the question • If you select the THIRD BEST answer, you will be awarded 1 mark for the question • If you select the DISTRACTER (the incorrect answer), you will receive no marks for the

question In order to pass this examination, you must achieve a total of 28 marks or more out of a maximum of 40 marks (70%).

© The Official ITIL Accreditor 2012. ITIL Intermediate Lifecycle CSISample2 SCENARIO BOOKLET v6.1. This document must not be reproduced without express permission from The Accreditor.


Scenario One You are the IT service manager for a national company and you are planning a major process improvement programme. You have adopted the CSI approach and have started to plan the “where are we now?” step in order to create a baseline for future comparison. You have invited the IT senior management team to a meeting to discuss the scope of the assessment to establish this baseline. The requirement for the improvements has been initiated because the business believes that the IT organization is not responsive to its needs. As the meeting progresses it becomes obvious that the managers hold different opinions about the scope of the assessment. Some of the group suggest that it is the processes that are the reason for the issues identified by the business and therefore the processes are all that need to be assessed. Others feel that the assessment needs to go deeper and also include people and technology – as there may be gaps in the skills required and the tools needed to support the processes. A few feel that the processes and technology are not the issue but that there are much deeper issues within the organization and the assessment should consider all aspects of IT. Many reasons were given to support the differences of opinion, including:

• The majority of the supporting technology is less than two years old and is causing no apparent issues

• There is limited cooperation between the various IT groups • Nearly three quarters of the IT staff have been with the company for more than 15 years

Some of the managers, those who have achieved ITIL Foundation certification, believe that they are the appropriate ones to conduct the assessment. However, others who have not achieved ITIL Foundation certification feel this is neither necessary nor relevant to the exercise.



Scenario Two

Your organization’s time management service is critical to the accurate billing of clients. The service allocates the time spent by financial consultants to the appropriate client accounts. From an IT delivery perspective the service is notoriously unreliable and has recently been blamed for customer complaints arising from inaccurate bills. The business is now asking IT to act quickly to try to increase the availability, reliability and performance of the service. Customer perception of the service is very poor. As the service owner for the time management service you are under pressure to identify improvements that will allow an increase in the warranty levels of the service to ensure it delivers value to the customer. Your organization implemented ITIL several years ago and all of the processes are in place and are working effectively. When incidents are raised for this service they are usually resolved within agreed targets – but only just in time, and there is usually a need to escalate the incident and utilize additional resources to meet targets. The types of incidents raised include:

• Slow response times – normally to a degree where the service is unusable • Error messages – application and database errors • Missing and inaccurate data – thought to be a result of users’ “finger trouble” • Service unavailable – analysis points to a variety of failed components

Problem management has analysed the incidents and cannot find any trends that indicate specific reasons for the failures and therefore cannot identify a single root cause. You now need to consider your next steps in identifying where improvements are needed.



Scenario Three The internal IT provider in your company has traditionally monitored and reported on service achievements by using component level performance information and presenting this in a monthly service report for business stakeholders. The business tries to make sense of this information but the reports have proved meaningless in demonstrating the performance of IT to the business. The reports are too technical and have rarely been used to identify any opportunities for improvement. Business managers have shown a particular interest in adopting a scorecard approach and have encouraged the IT provider to create a new framework that will align to their needs. Some progress has been made over the last couple of months. As service management has matured, the requirements for consolidating the component information into a more meaningful measurement have been met. Service level management has reached an acceptable level of maturity: SLAs are in place, as are monthly service reviews. A recent meeting of the business relationship managers in the organization concluded that the current methods of measuring and reporting performance to stakeholders have delivered improvement, but are in need of further improvement. All parties agree that a suitable measurement framework has to be put in place in order to fully address the scorecard approach, but there are a variety of differing opinions on how best to approach this.



Scenario Four

An IT organization’s last service improvement analysis found deficiencies within the monitoring and reporting tools used. The analysis recommends updating the technology to:

• Improve the ability to deliver accurate reports to the business on service levels • Recognize improvement opportunities within IT • Address the business demand for better management of information security • Support other service management processes including:

o Capacity management o Availability management o Incident management

Prior to making an investment in new tools, the IT director has asked you to identify which types of monitoring and reporting tools are commonly used, and what their purposes are, and how they could best help address the findings from the improvement analysis.



Scenario Five As the chief information officer (CIO) for your company, you are generally pleased with your team, which has been introducing service management best practices through the implementation of many of the ITIL processes. You are particularly pleased with the success in the areas of change, release and deployment, and incident and service level management. These successes have been widely endorsed by the business. You are developing a culture within your team so that it becomes more service-oriented and you wish to recruit a continual service improvement manager. You want to recruit internally from existing staff in order to make use of current skills and knowledge within the organization. The candidate will need to facilitate the continued momentum with existing processes, as well as the implementation of new processes.



Scenario Six

An internal IT service provider of a large publishing company has implemented service management practices over the last year, and has made many improvements to the IT services and processes. The service provider monitors services regularly to identify service level achievements. Despite detailed monitoring and reporting, the sales manager has informed the service level manager that there is dissatisfaction with the service the sales department is receiving. A service level agreement (SLA) is in place with the sales department. Reports are produced in time for the monthly service review meeting and consistently show that all service level targets are met. However, the users are complaining that there is more downtime than there should be. The CSI manager has been asked to investigate and has chosen to use the seven-step improvement processes to try to identify the cause. He has collected the information below. The relevant part of the SLA includes the following targets:

• System response time: less than two seconds for 70% of transactions during daily service hours

• Maximum number of users: 200 • Service hours: 07:00 to 19:00 • Availability: 99% over the weekly service hours

The current procedures include:

• Several tools that monitor, collect and store the necessary data. One tool collects transaction rates at various service components, including server transaction rates and network bandwidth utilization. There is also a tool that collects end-to-end transaction data from a workstation to the server. The same monitoring tools collect data on the duration of the downtime. However, the tools cannot provide all the data required to directly calculate end-to-end availability

• Incident data is collected from the service desk logging tool and provides information about the downtime experienced by users

• The performance and availability data is uploaded from the monitoring tools to a statistical analysis tool on a weekly basis

• The statistical analysis tools perform data processing. The performance data and availability data from the monitoring tools are combined into two separate reports ready for analysis

• Analysis is also performed by the same tool that compares the processed performance and availability data with the service targets

• A report is produced for the sales business unit and circulated two days before the service review meeting. The report is in the form of a service level agreement monitoring (SLAM) chart

• A separate report is produced showing the incident data that is taken from the service desk tool

.



Scenario Seven

An IT provider organization is having difficulty demonstrating service achievement to their customers. Many service management processes are in place and many improvements have been made. However, no further progress can be made until improvements are made to the service management tools. The organization already has many tools including an IT service management suite that supports incident management, problem management, change management and integrates with the organization’s configuration management system (CMS). It also provides workflow support to the service management process. Individual tools are available for component monitoring and these provide reliable data and information about the components of the services. The need to improve the tools is due to a number of limitations of the existing tools; which the organization wishes to overcome. These are as follows.

• The organization cannot provide reports that indicate end-to-end achievement of service levels

• The organization is unable to link details of incidents to outages detected by other tools • The organization is unable to provide information regarding trends for incidents and problems • A large amount of data processing is performed manually

A decision has been made to acquire tools to provide functionality that will address the current limitations. As an input to the tool selection process, you have been asked to compile an overview of the most urgently required functionality of the new tools.



Scenario Eight

The IT department of a technology manufacturing company adopted ITIL 12 months ago. The department’s activities are structured around the service lifecycle and most of the main service management processes are now in place. The staff are highly motivated and many are considered to be technical experts in their field. They are proud of their service achievements, particularly their ability to deploy new infrastructure and applications into the live environment in short timescales. This has occasionally lead to unplanned downtime in the initial weeks after the implementation but it tends to settle down once IT operations staff are up to speed with the changes. The business users and customers are very tolerant of these interruptions because of the demands they put on IT to respond to changes very quickly. The IT department is now preparing for the implementation of continual service improvement (CSI). Much thought has been given to the project and detailed plans are now in place to ensure that the right people will be involved in building and testing the CSI improvements prior to implementation. IT senior management is keen to take advantage of improvements that can be made to the services and processes and are committed to a programme of change. Further, they have already allocated the CSI roles, and other resources will be made available as necessary. The organization has high expectations and is used to rapid change. Already a long list of possible improvement opportunities has been created. Many of these opportunities have been reviewed with business customers who see improvement in IT services to be a part of their business plans and a means of achieving financial targets. Plans have been drawn up to implement most of the opportunities as soon as possible.

© The Official ITIL Accreditor 2012. The Swirl logo™ is a trade mark of the Cabinet Office. ITIL® is a registered trade mark of the Cabinet Office. ITIL Intermediate Lifecycle CSISample2 ANSWERSandRATIONALES v6.1.




Gradient Style, Complex Multiple Choice

ANSWERS AND RATIONALES

© The Official ITIL Accreditor 2012. ITIL Intermediate Lifecycle CSISample2 ANSWERSandRATIONALES v6.1. This document must not be reproduced without express permission from The Accreditor.


Answer Key:

Scenario Question Correct:

5 Marks 2nd Best: 3 Marks

3rd Best: 1 Mark

Distracter: 0 Marks

One 1 D B C A

Two 2 A D C B

Three 3 D C B A

Four 4 B A C D

Five 5 C B A D

Six 6 D A C B

Seven 7 D B C A

Eight 8 B A C D



QUESTION One Scenario One

Question Rationale

An assessment is required to establish a baseline. The question is based on the need to select the appropriate scope of the assessment from the following ITIL recommendations:

• Process only • People, process and technology • Full assessment

The case study has some considerations that point toward a full assessment, which include that:

1. The scenario points to people issues (limited cooperation and managers comments).

2. Technology may be an issue. There is no definitive statement that the tools are not causing issues.

3. Embedded culture may be the issue, especially as the majority of staff have been in place for a long period.

4. Business / IT misalignment is suggested in the first section of the scenario. MOST CORRECT (5) D The elements of the assessment discussed in this answer will mean the

organization will have a full understanding of “where we are now”. This can be used then to plan the improvements needed to move them toward the desired end state. Restricting the scope of the assessment to either of the other two options may mean that the issue of business / IT alignment is not considered and therefore means the exercise will not deliver the required results.

SECOND BEST (3) B The scope of this assessment will not cover point three above. The second bullet looks at process and people misalignment. This will be an issue but without a wider scope may restrict findings to IT departmental issues rather than business and IT alignment which would not be covered in anything but a full assessment. The ITIL description of this type of assessment does not include the points mentioned in the final bullet.

THIRD BEST (1) C While adapting the option is acceptable, the scope defined here is not. This answer would mean only point one in the list above would be fully addressed and therefore the information attained may not give a true reflection of the current situation. There are advantages to using the ITIL-qualified staff on the assessment as they will understand the processes but it is not essential. Any suitable person(s) could carry out the assessment. What is more important is that a well-defined assessment framework is available to aid consistency and repeatability.

DISTRACTER (0) A This answer is incorrect for the following reasons: • A process assessment is not relevant in this case as the scenario points to

wider issues • Just carrying out a process assessment would mean all of the points in the

list above may be missed • The ITIL description of this type of assessment does not include business /

IT alignment Syllabus Unit / Module supported

ITIL SL: CSI04 Continual service improvement methods and techniques

Bloom’s Taxonomy Testing Level

Level 4 Analysis – The ability to use the practices and concepts in a situation or unprompted use of an abstraction. Can apply what is learned in the classroom, in workplace situations. Can separate concepts into component parts to understand structure and can distinguish between facts and inferences. Application – This question requires the delegate to analyse the situation in order to make a recommendation on the type of assessment that best fits the situation



described in the scenario. Subjects covered

Categories Covered: • How to use assessments and what to assess

Book Section Refs CSI 5.2 – Continual service improvement methods and techniques – Assessments CSI 5.2.2 – Continual service improvement methods and techniques – Assessments – What to assess and how

Difficulty Easy



QUESTION Two Scenario Two

Question Rationale

This question focuses on an understanding of how CSI can use techniques from other processes to assist in identifying where improvements are required. The question assigns the task of service improvement to the service owner. The service owner is carrying out CSI to improve the situation.

The answer is based around a service failure analysis (SFA) and the delegate must know that:

• SFA is a multifunctional team and looks at all aspects (people, process and technology) of availability

• It is described and classed as a technique of availability management

There are several other techniques mentioned, all of which can be used as part of CSI activities (see CSI section 5.8). The delegate must also analyse these and consider if they are appropriate in relation to the scenario. The descriptions of the techniques are all correct: the delegate is required to select the appropriate answer in relation to their use in the scenario.

MOST CORRECT (5) A This answer gives a correct description of an SFA. The second sentence is a quote from the CSI book. The expanded incident lifecycle is a valid technique as there seems to be an issue with resolving incidents – even though they are not breaching SLAs regularly, being able to restore service in a faster timescale will increase the availability. Workload management (demand management) will help identify bottlenecks and recommendations can then be made as to how to alleviate these and increase performance. Technical observation (availability management) can be used to identify any technical availability issues. As the SFA takes into account people, process and technology, it should consider how the user is using the service and why “finger trouble” seems to be an issue.

SECOND BEST (3) D This answer gives a correct description of an SFA. The second sentence is also a quote from the CSI book. Workload management (demand management) will help identify bottlenecks and recommendations can then be made as to how to alleviate these and increase performance. Component failure impact analysis will be a useful technique as it can identify whether there are any single points of failure that may require a level of resilience. Modelling is a predictive and forward-looking technique as it tests the validity of the solutions – but the question is about techniques to identify what is currently wrong.

THIRD BEST (1) C This answer incorrectly describes SFA in three ways: • It does not include business representatives in the team • It classes it as a problem management technique • The functional description is based on reactive problem management

Component failure impact analysis will be a useful technique as it can identify whether there are any single points of failure that may require a level of resilience. Component capacity management is relevant and will help, but it concentrates too much on the component view rather than a service view. Risk management – the processes in the organization are all in place and mature so risk management can be considered to be in place and working.

DISTRACTER (0) B The description of SFA is actually the description of a technical observation. A training needs analysis may be valid as the users seem to have difficulties with the service – but it would be better to confirm that the difficulties are due to a lack of training before looking at the needs. Also, this is not an ITIL-



recognized technique. Demand management may give useful information on PBAs and influencing user activity may have some impact on the poor performance but some of the other techniques are much more relevant in terms of the scenario described. Risk management – the processes in the organization are all in place and mature so risk management can be considered to be in place and working.

Syllabus Unit / Module supported



Level 4 Analysis – The ability to use the practices and concepts in a situation or unprompted use of an abstraction. Can apply what is learned in the classroom in workplace situations. Can separate concepts into component parts to understand structure and can distinguish between facts and inferences. Application – This question tests the delegate’s knowledge on the techniques used in other processes and requires them to analyse a situation and allocate the relevant techniques to assist.

Subjects covered

Categories Covered: • The relationship between CSI and the other service management processes

Book Section Refs CSI 5.8 – Continual service improvement methods and techniques – CSI and other service management processes CSI 5.8.1 – Continual service improvement methods and techniques – CSI and other service management processes – Availability management CSI 5.8.2 – Continual service improvement methods and techniques – CSI and other service management processes – Capacity management CSI 5.8.5 – Continual service improvement methods and techniques – CSI and other service management processes – Component capacity management CSI 5.8.6 – Continual service improvement methods and techniques – CSI and other service management processes – Workload management and demand management CSI 5.8.8 – Continual service improvement methods and techniques – CSI and other service management processes – IT service continuity management CSI 5.8.9 – Continual service improvement methods and techniques – CSI and other service management processes – Problem management

Difficulty Moderate



QUESTION Three Scenario Three

Question Rationale

This question tests whether the delegate understands the elements that go together to form a service measurement framework. It also requires information on the critical elements in a framework.

Consistent with the CSI book: “Measuring at the component level is necessary and valuable, but service measurement must go further than the component level. Service measurement will require someone to take measurements and combine them to provide a view of the true customer experience.”

MOST CORRECT (5) D A good answer. Individual component measurements are the basis of service measurements. It recognizes that KPIs are critical to support the service scorecard and dashboard. The KPIs will be defined in a service scorecard; which, in turn, will ensure the service is improved to meet service levels. The service scorecard results will only be realized at the end of a period (point in time). A service dashboard will be associated with this, providing a more dynamic view of service performance and showing if it is likely that the service scorecard KPIs will be met.

By integrating this into business planning, any changes in business requirements can be considered in terms of their impact on the targets and measurement procedures in order that they stay aligned.

It is expected that organizations will not get the framework correct from the start and fine-tuning is acceptable.

SECOND BEST (3) C Although different from the first statement in answer D, this statement is still mostly correct. Any measurement framework must ensure we have the ability to show performance against SLAs.

The statement on the balanced scorecard is not correct; since it misses the connection between service measurement and the balanced scorecard (the service scorecard). The second statement referencing the service scorecard is also incorrect as it designates this as a real-time view whereas it is a point-in-time view.

The integration into IT planning is correct but the scope is too narrow. It should be integrated into business planning.

The balanced statement is correct. If a balanced set of measurements is not incorporated, then these frameworks often do not deliver the right information; and therefore some improvement opportunities, through identifying poor performance, may be missed.

The final statement on the adjustment of the framework is incorrect; it is satisfactory to adjust the framework at any time, providing the proper level of control is exercised.

THIRD BEST (1) B This answer starts off incorrectly by suggesting that process measurements are used to feed the service measurements rather than component measurements.

CSFs may be defined in the service portfolio and the service measurements will support these so the second part can be classed as correct.

Suggesting that service measurements will be the basis for SLAs and OLAs is wrong. It should be the other way around; the service level requirements will be the basis for what is measured. It should be noted that while an SLA is a point in time measurement, so is an OLA – it is not real time.

The framework should be integrated into service operation, but a better statement would be integrated across the service lifecycle (as an example,



consider its importance to CSI).

Including it within the service design stage of the lifecycle is correct; however, changing it would never likely be classified as an operational-level service change.

DISTRACTER (0) A This answer incorrectly uses the term ‘system’ instead of service in several places. It also uses the term guidelines which are too loose for any system / service definition.

The statement on the balanced scorecard is not correct; there is a level between service measurement and the balance scorecard (the service scorecard).

Changes should be made when relevant business changes are recognized, but this section of the answer limits changes to this scope, whereas IT changes, supplier changes, etc. may also cause an update to the framework.




Level 3 Applying – Use ideas, principles and theories in new, particular and concrete situations. Behavioural tasks at this level involve both knowing and comprehension and might include choosing appropriate procedures, applying principles, using an approach or identifying the selection of options. Level 4 Analysis – The ability to use the practices and concepts in a situation or unprompted use of an abstraction. Can apply what is learned in the classroom in workplace situations. Can separate concepts into component parts to understand structure and can distinguish between facts and inferences. Application –This question requires the delegate to use their knowledge of the service measurement framework theory and relate it to the needs of the company depicted in the scenario, selecting an approach that balances long-term and short-term needs.

Subjects covered Categories Covered: • Service measurement framework.

Book Section Refs CSI 5.4 – Continual service improvement methods and techniques – Service measurement

Difficulty Easy



QUESTION Four Scenario Four

Question Rationale

This question examines the delegate’s understanding of the different types of technology available that support CSI and related activities.

MOST CORRECT (5) B This is also the best group of tools (out of the four supplied answers) to support the issues in the scenario. • Bullet 1. These tools will support the capacity, availability and incident

management processes by providing event messages and will provide data that can be used to measure the performance of the services. It addresses the issues in the scenario.

• Bullet 2. Event management tools are used to detect, correlate and management events of all types. They provide data that can be used to measure and report on availability and performance achievements.

• Bullet 3. These tools will address the issues regarding the lack of ability to measure end-to-end service performance.

• Bullet 4. These tools will address the reporting issues by importing data from other tools for analysis and reporting.

SECOND BEST (3) A • Bullet 1. Correct. The statement on systems and network management tools is correct.

• Bullet 2. Incorrect. Performance management tools are not used for process effectiveness reporting, although they may help.

• Bullet 3. Correct. Addresses one of the issues in scenario. Security management tools can be used to support information security management by detecting intrusion and incorrect access to services.

• Bullet 4. Correct. The statement on statistical tools is correct. THIRD BEST (1) C • Bullet 1. Incorrect. The event management description has overlapped into

the business infrastructure. It is quite probable that event management can be used in this way but it is not a scenario requirement.

• Bullet 2. Partially correct. ITIL describes the use of these as primarily a tool for collecting performance data for population into the CMIS and AMIS for further analysis. However, ultimately this information can be used to manage the services.

• Bullet 3. Incorrect. Systems and network tools give a dynamic view rather than a snapshot view.

• Bullet 4. Partially correct. These are useful tools and do support incident management. It is not clear in the scenario whether technical recovery from incidents is a major issue.

DISTRACTER (0) D • Bullet 1. Incorrect. This answer appears to describe event management tools as a diary system.

• Bullet 2. Incorrect. The description of performance tools is correct but their use is too narrow. They will be used in reporting OLA, UC and SLA information. However, the scenario is looking for service reporting.

• Bullet 3. Incorrect. Systems and network tools give a dynamic view rather than a snapshot view.

• Bullet 4. Incorrect. Self-help tools do not address any issues in the scenario. There is no mention of workload issues at the service desk.


ITIL SL: CSI06 Technology for continual service improvement

Blooms Taxonomy Testing Level

Level 3 Applying – Use ideas, principles and theories in new, particular and concrete situations. Behavioural tasks at this level involve both knowing and comprehension and might include choosing appropriate procedures, applying principles, using an approach or identifying the selection of options. Level 4 Analysis –The ability to use the practices and concepts in a situation or unprompted use of an abstraction. Can apply what is learned in the classroom in workplace situations. Can separate concepts into component parts to understand



structure and can distinguish between facts and inferences. Application – This question requires the delegate to have understood the use of technology available and to analyse the situation to identify the most accurate statement.

Subjects covered Categories Covered: • Tools supporting CSI activities

Book Section Refs CSI 7.1 – Technology considerations – Tools to support CSI activities Difficulty Hard



QUESTION Five Scenario Five

Question Rationale

This question requires careful comparison of the profiles of potential candidates for the CSI manager role. Many of the skills and experience described are relevant to the CSI manager role. The candidate is required to select the best combination. The key skills needed by the CSI manager are:

• Good relationship management skills • A good understanding of the IT services • An understanding of the customer’s business • Good communication skills • Good people-management and meeting-facilitating skills • A good understanding of statistical and analytical principles and processes • Good organizational and planning skills

This is not a complete list, but contains the skills referred to in this question. MOST CORRECT (5) C This answer has the best combination of the skills described in the list above.

Bullet 1. Experience performing the business relationship manager role implies that this candidate has good relationship management skills, good communication skills and an understanding of how the IT services support the business processes. Bullet 2. An understanding of the supporting services will compliment the understanding of how the services support the business. Bullet 3. Good people management and good organizational skills are essential for a CSI manager. Bullet 4. A good understanding of statistical and analytical principles will enable the CSI manager to interpret data and information and identify opportunities for improvement.

SECOND BEST (3) B This candidate has many of the necessary skills but is missing some of the key skills, including statistical and analytical skills. Bullet 1. Experience performing the service desk manager role implies that this candidate has good people management and organization skills. Bullet 2. An understanding of the IT service is an appropriate skill. Bullet 3. Incorrect. Problem management skills are not essential for a CSI manager. Bullet 4. Experience of managing multi-discipline projects implies good organization skills and, perhaps, people management skills.

THIRD BEST (1) A This candidate has fewer of the key skills required by a CSI manager. Bullet 1. Experience performing the service level management role implies that this candidate has a good understanding of the IT services. Bullet 2. People-management skills are a key skill. Being well-liked is not essential. Bullet 3. Incorrect. Experience dealing with suppliers is useful and is considered to be a secondary skill. However, this question is looking for key skills. This skill is included at the expense of more important skills. Bullet 4. Incorrect. Experience of designing and documenting business processes is useful but not a key skill.

DISTRACTER (0) D This candidate’s skills are primarily technical. Many of the key skills listed above are missing. Bullet 1 and bullet 2. Incorrect. Good technical experience but does not mean the candidate understands how the services support the business. Bullet 3. Good people management skills are a requirement. Bullet 4. Incorrect. Once again this is a more technical skill.


ITIL SL: CSI05 Organizing for continual service improvement


Level 3 Applying – Use ideas, principles and theories in new, particular and concrete situations. Behavioural tasks at this level involve both knowing and comprehension and might include choosing appropriate procedures, applying principles, using an



approach or identifying the selection of options. Level 4 Analysis – The ability to use the practices and concepts in a situation or unprompted use of an abstraction. Can apply what is learned in the classroom, in workplace situations. Can separate concepts into component parts to understand structure and can distinguish between facts and inferences. Application – This question requires the delegate to have understood the various roles within CSI and to differentiate primary and secondary skills to assess the most appropriate skills for recruitment. The primary skills of the service level manager have been put in as the distracter answer.

Subjects covered

Categories Covered: • Roles and responsibilities of the CSI manager

Book Section Refs CSI 6.3.5 – Organizing for continual service improvement – Roles – CSI manager CSI Table 6.8 – Organizing for continual service improvement – Roles – Comparison of CSI manager, service level manager, service owner and business relationship manager roles CSI 6.3.5 – Organizing for continual service improvement – Roles – Business relationship manager

Difficulty Moderate



QUESTION Six Scenario Six

Question Rationale

This question focuses on an understanding of the CSI process (seven-step improvement process) and the ability to apply it to the situation in the scenario. The information in the scenario provides the following evidence: • Description of the collection of data from the monitoring tools and the service

desk tool • Description of the processing and analysis of the performance and availability

data • It does not provide any description of the processing or analysis of the incident

data from the service desk tool • It is implied that the incident data is taken straight from the service desk tool and

put into a report MOST CORRECT (5) D The evidence described above indicates failures in the processing and

reporting steps of the seven-step process. • During processing the incident data should be combined with the

availability data to provide a more accurate picture of availability achievements.

• During the presenting step, combining the incident and availability data into a single report should be considered.

SECOND BEST (3) A It is true that there are issues with the report format but this is not the only issue. This answer does not address the fundamental issue that the incident data is not correctly processed.

THIRD BEST (1) C The number of monitoring tools is not an issue. Good statistical analysis tools can take data from many tools, process it and analyse it. There is no evidence in the scenario that the tools are at fault.

DISTRACTER (0) B This answer is wrong. There is evidence that there is something wrong, as described in the section above.


ITIL SL: CSI03 Continual service improvement process


Level 3 Applying – Use ideas, principles and theories in new, particular and concrete situations. Behavioural tasks at this level involve both knowing and comprehension and might include choosing appropriate procedures, applying principles, using an approach or identifying the selection of options. Level 4 Analysis – The ability to use the practices and concepts in a situation or unprompted use of an abstraction. Can apply what is learned in the classroom, in workplace situations. Can separate concepts into component parts to understand structure and can distinguish between facts and inferences. Application – The candidate must apply their knowledge of seven-step process to analyse the information provided in the scenario to draw a conclusion about a given situation.

Subjects covered

Categories Covered: • Seven-step improvement process

Book Section Refs CSI 4.1.5 – Continual service improvement processes – The seven-step improvement process – Process activities, methods and techniques

Difficulty Easy



QUESTION Seven Scenario Seven

Question Rationale

This question focuses on an understanding of the tools and technology that can support the service management processes and their relevance to CSI.

MOST CORRECT (5) D Bullet 1. As the organization cannot provide reports that indicate end-to-end achievement, statistical analysis tools will allow calculation of service metrics from the component (technology) metrics. Bullet 2. Statistical analysis tools can be used to combine data from different sources and can be used to link incident data from the service management suite to outage and availability data from other tools. Bullet 3. Network management tools can monitor end-to-end performance and availability and will provide information to indicate the achievement of service levels.

SECOND BEST (3) B Bullet 1. Correct. See answer D bullet 1. Bullet 2. Correct. Using statistical analysis tools to analyse incident and problem data will enable the organization to analysis trends of incidents and problems. Bullet 3. Incorrect. Using tools to automatically restart components is a good thing but does not address any of the issues described in the scenario.

THIRD BEST (1) C Bullet 1. Incorrect. The scenario states that the organization already has an IT service management suite. Bullet 2. Correct. See answer B bullet 2. Bullet 3. Incorrect. Self-help tools are a good thing but do not address any of the issues described in the scenario.

DISTRACTER (0) A Bullet 1. Incorrect. See answer C bullet 1. Bullet 2. Incorrect. The scenario states that the organization already has an IT service management suite which provides workflow support. Bullet 3. Incorrect. Self-help tools are a good thing but the scenario does not describe any issues associated with request fulfilment.


ITIL SL: CSI06 Technology considerations


Level 3 Applying – Use ideas, principles and theories in new, particular and concrete situations. Behavioural tasks at this level involve both knowing and comprehension and might include choosing appropriate procedures, applying principles, using an approach or identifying the selection of options. Level 4 Analysis – The ability to use the practices and concepts in a situation or unprompted use of an abstraction. Can apply what is learned in the classroom, in workplace situations. Can separate concepts into component parts to understand structure and can distinguish between facts and inferences. Application – The candidate must apply their knowledge of the tools and technology to the scenario in order to select the correct answer.

Subjects covered

Categories Covered: • Tools to support CSI activities

Book Section Refs CSI 7.1 – Technology considerations – Tools to support CSI activities Difficulty Moderate



QUESTION Eight Scenario Eight

Question Rationale

The question tests whether or not the delegate can understand the potential risks when carrying out the implementation of continual service improvement (CSI). All the risks are valid risks to CSI projects; however, not all of them are relevant to the scenario. The candidate must establish from the scenario which ones are relevant.

MOST CORRECT (5) B Bullet 1. Over-ambition is a risk. The evidence for this comes in the last paragraph in the scenario, which describes the organization’s high expectations and shows that a long list of suggestions has been drawn up – most of which will be implemented. This suggests the organization is trying to do too much too soon.

Bullet 2. Lack of prioritization is a risk. The last paragraph implies that the IT department plans to implement most of the suggestions as soon as possible.

There is no evidence that the list has been reviewed and prioritized.

Bullet 3. Management commitment is not a risk. Paragraph four in the scenario states that IT senior management is committed to the process and has allocated the necessary resources.

Bullet 4. Failing to discuss opportunities is not a risk. The last paragraph in the scenario states that the business has reviewed many of the opportunities and sees them as supporting future business plans.

SECOND BEST (3) A Bullet 1. Correct. Implementing CSI without knowledge transfer is a risk. The second paragraph in the scenario states that there have been outages associated with new deployments but things settle down “once IT operations staff are up to speed with the changes”. This implies that there is a lack of timely knowledge transfer and training.

Bullet 2. Incorrect. Lack of resources is not a risk. Paragraph four in the scenario states that IT senior management is committed to the process and has allocated roles and resources.

Bullet 3. Correct. Failing to involve the right people is not a risk. The third paragraph in the scenario states that the right people will be involved.

Bullet 4. Correct. See answer B bullet 4.

THIRD BEST (1) C Bullet 1. Correct. See answer B bullet 1.

Bullet 2. Incorrect. See answer A bullet 2.

Bullet 3. Correct. See answer A bullet 3.


DISTRACTER (0) D Bullet 1. Incorrect. There is no direct evidence of this in the scenario. However, there is plenty of circumstantial evidence regarding the previous service management project and the planning of the CSI project that would imply that management does take action.

Bullet 2. Incorrect. See answer B bullet 4.


Bullet 4. Incorrect. See answer B bullet 1.


ITIL SL: CSI08 Challenges, risks, and critical success factors


Level 3 Applying – Use ideas, principles and theories in new, particular and concrete situations. Behavioural tasks at this level involve both knowing and comprehension and might include choosing appropriate procedures, applying principles, using an approach or identifying the selection of options.



Level 4 Analysis – The ability to use the practices and concepts in a situation or unprompted use of an abstraction. Can apply what is learned in the classroom, in workplace situations. Can separate concepts into component parts to understand structure and can distinguish between facts and inferences. Application – This question requires the delegate to understand what risks need to be considered for a successful CSI activity and which ones are missing from the scenario.

Subjects covered

Categories Covered: • The risks associated with implementing CSI

Book Section Refs CSI 9.3 – Challenges, risks and critical success factors – Risks Difficulty Moderate

Documents

CONTINUAL SERVICE IMPROVEMENT (CSI) CERTIFICATE · ITIL® is a registered trade mark of the Cabinet Office. ITIL Intermediate Lifecycle CSISample2 QUESTION BOOKLET v6.1. This document