PeopleCert ITIL-SOA Quiz 1 Topic 8 Questions 1-5

Question: 1

Scenario

An IT security company provides secure data services to many large financial organizations in several countries. The company has an administrative headquarters in its home country and a data centre in each country of operation.

Each data centre obtains support for services from third-party contracts provided by a number of suppliers. All supporting services are scoped and documented, and are aligned to the corporate strategy and the regulations in force in each country. The security services company maintains and regularly reviews a preferred supplier list from which suppliers are selected as required.

A service desk function is provided by one of the suppliers. Over the last 10 years, a strong relationship has been built up with the supplier based on the high-quality, consistent service they have provided. The nature of the financial business requires the service desk contract to contain severe penalty clauses that can be enforced if the agreed service levels are not maintained, although these have never been required.

A number of complaints have been received from a new banking customer highlighting that, over the previous three months, the level of service provided by the service desk in the management and handling of incidents has been inconsistent, and many incidents have not been resolved in line with agreed targets.

The IT security company has a service level manager who has performed the role for many years. Recently, a new supplier management process was implemented and a supplier manager appointed. Some confusion has arisen over how, and by whom, the recent complaints should be dealt with.

Refer to the Scenario.

You have been asked to resolve the confusion over the service level manager and supplier manager roles. Which one of the following options BEST represents the correct division of responsibilities and will also address the current complaints regarding the service desk supplier?

AService level manager: Apologize to the customer and compensate them financially for the poor service levels. Assure them that, under the terms and conditions of the contract, a review with the service desk will be carried out and that the supplier will be strictly monitored against agreed targets and penalties imposed, potentially leading to contract termination.
Carry out a risk analysis of the supplier and their contract.
Supplier manager: Log the complaints. Set up a review of the supplier and the service desk function. Invoke the contract's penalty clause to recover compensation from the supplier. Increase the supplier's risk rating. Initiate a service improvement plan in conjunction with continual service improvement.

BService level manager: Log the complaints. Inform the customer that the complaints will be reviewed as a matter of urgency. Collect evidence of failures and pass to the supplier manager. Ensure that the complaints are dealt with efficiently and effectively and improvements are initiated where appropriate. Keep the customer informed of both progress and outcome.
Supplier manager: Arrange a meeting with service desk supplier to investigate the complaints. Review performance of the supplier for all the services they deliver to the company's customers. Report findings back to service level manager.

CService level manager: Log the complaints. Inform the customer that the complaints will be discussed with the supplier at the next scheduled review meeting. Assure the customer that the contractual disputes process will be invoked to ensure that the complaints are dealt with in an efficient and effective manner. Inform the customer of the actions taken.
Supplier manager: Discuss the complaints with the supplier at the next review meeting
Initiate the dispute process with the supplier. Carry out a risk analysis of the supplier and their contract.

DService level manager: Inform the customer that the complaints will be reviewed as a matter of urgency. Assure the customer that a disputes process is in place to ensure that the complaints are dealt with in an efficient and effective manner. Inform the customer that they will be updated on the outcome. Review performance of the supplier for all the services they deliver to the company's customers.
Supplier manager: Log the complaints. Quickly arrange a meeting with service desk supplier to investigate the complaints. If necessary, initiate the dispute process.

Show Answer

Question: 2

Scenario

A commercial IT services company has been successful for many years. Its key strategic differentiator has been the provision of new services to meet customers' needs in very short lead times. Recently profits have dipped, forcing senior management to take a look at the lifecycle costs of providing the IT services to their external customers.

The organization has had a service catalogue containing customer and supporting views for some time. It is an essential source of information about the IT services and is used by both the business relationship managers and the IT services teams. Services are designed internally but often transitioned and operated in partnership with other suppliers.

For each service, the service catalogue currently contains:

* A description of the service

* Summary of the service level targets

* The level of support and support details

* Details of the supporting services and components

* Details of services obtained from suppliers

When sales leads are obtained from potential new customers, the requirements are compared with services in the service catalogue and, if no matching service can be found, a project is set up to quickly develop a new service. In the past this has been justified as meeting the needs of the customers, and full business cases were not developed.

A senior service manager has suggested introducing a service portfolio management process and needs to get the support of the IT management team. The management team wishes to know what extra information would be included in a service portfolio over and above what is already in the service catalogue and what value it would be to them.

The company is looking to restrict investment in new resources. Therefore, only a few projects can be authorized in the next budget cycle.

Refer to the Scenario.

Which one of the following sets of statements BEST describes the elements that a service portfolio contains in addition to the elements in a service catalogue, and describes the additional value service portfolio management would bring to the IT services company in resolving their current issues?

AThe service portfolio will include: resource allocation; support terms and conditions; ordering and request procedures; the value proposition; offerings and packages.
The service portfolio will show where additional resources will be required to operate new services.
Service portfolio management will enable the organization to rationalize existing services to optimize the use of resources.

BThe service portfolio will include: business cases; risks; business outcomes supported; cost and pricing.
The service portfolio will show the proportion of resources acquired from key suppliers so that the cost of new services can be accurately estimated.
Creating a service portfolio that includes services in the service pipeline, as well as those in the service catalogue, will enable new services currently being developed to be included in service offerings. This increased visibility of new services extends the range available for new opportunities.

CThe service portfolio will include: ordering and request procedures; service level targets; support terms and conditions; details of services obtained from suppliers.
The service portfolio will show the resources and capabilities that are needed to improve the services in the service catalogue.
Service portfolio management will enable the organization to expand the service catalogue to include details of service requests and standard changes, providing a valuable self-help portal to users.

DThe service portfolio will include: business cases; risks; investment priorities; value propositions.
The service portfolio will show where resources are used across all stages of the service lifecycle both within the provider and where they have been acquired from suppliers.
Service portfolio management will improve the organization's ability to compare potential investments and make sound decisions.

Show Answer

Question: 3

Scenario

The IT organization of a manufacturing company is carrying out an annual review of its service portfolio. There is limited budget available for the next year and some projects may be delayed or cancelled. The company has control of most of its IT services, however some are mandated by the company's corporate owners.

The following services are under review:

* Service 1: Web ordering service. This is a new service that will enable the company to fulfill its strategy to sell products on-line and increase its customer base by 20%. Only high-level business requirements have been established so far but. if the project goes ahead, the system will be provided by a supplier using standard applications and technology. A business case has been created which shows the ratio of value-to-cost to be much greater than one.

* Service 2: Sales office service. The service has grown from a number of separate applications that have been combined into one suite. The technical solution for each application is similar but some use different versions of the same operating system. The applications themselves provide the required utility and support their business outcomes well. There is some overlap in functionality across the set of applications contained in the service suite.

* Service 3: Finance reporting service. The service is used by the finance department to create statutory reports to fulfill legal obligations. The service is hosted on a legacy system. The cost of supporting the service is increasing gradually and the return obtained from the service is decreasing. Eventually the service will be replaced by the new enterprise resource planning (ERP) service. It is projected that, over the next two years, the ratio of value-to-cost will drop to less than one.

* Service 4: This is a new ERP service that is being implemented across all companies in the corporate group. It will eventually replace many existing services including the finance reporting service. The service has been approved and chartered, and has a current status of "design". A large number of assets have been allocated to this project. As this service is mandated by the corporate owners, no further decision is required.

Refer to Scenario:

As part of the service portfolio management team you have been asked to recommend whether investments should be made in these services in the next year.

Which of the following options is the BEST set of decisions to make for the services?

AService 1 - invest. Charter the service and set up a service design project
Service 2 - replace. Set up project to replace the set of applications with a single application designed to support the business outcomes
Service 3 - retire. Mark the service for retirement and set up a retirement project. This will make best use of resources and ensure that information is migrated to the ERP service.

BService 1 - promote to the service catalogue, project
Service 2 - retain. Keep the service and support
Service 3 - delay decision. It is likely that this project will use assets that will be allocated review. Allocate resources to the transition stage of the it in its current form service will be retired, but not yet. The retirement elsewhere this year. Reconsider at next annual

CService 1 - invest. Charter the service and set up a service design project
Service 2 - rationalize. Set up a project to identify the best way of retaining the support of the business outcomes but eliminating the duplication of functionality and supporting components
Service 3 - delay decision. It is likely that this service will be retired, but not yet. The retirement project will use assets that will be allocated elsewhere this year. Reconsider at next annual review.

DService 1 - promote to the service catalogue. Allocate resources to the transition stage of the project
Service 2 -- re-factor. Set up project to redesign the applications to concentrate on the core functionality of the service
Service 3 - retain. As the service is needed to fulfill legal and statutory compliance it should be retained.

Show Answer

Question: 4

Scenario

A flower delivery company introduced ITIL-based service management processes 12 months ago.

One major benefit of the associated service improvement initiatives was that the service availability of the business critical on-line flower ordering IT service increased from 97% to 98.9% over the last quarter. This exceeds the service availability target of 98.5%. Last month, reports were circulated showing the availability improvement.

The service level manager is chairing a service review meeting to review the progress and report upon this achievement. The customer managers acknowledge the improvement but despite the reports of improved service availability, a major service outage occurred during the busiest week of the year when over 25% of the annual business revenue is normally earned. Although IT dealt with the outage satisfactorily, the loss of revenue and credibility in this mission critical, high-visibility trading period are serious concerns. The customer managers are concerned that the reporting does not seem to reflect this or their actual perception of the service.

Agreement is reached at the meeting to address two primary concerns:

1. Service availability targets for the mission critical periods are to be revised.

2. Amended and more representative business reports are to be produced.

Refer to the Scenario.

Which one of the following options will BEST ensure that the primary concerns related to the revision and reporting of targets are addressed?

ADetermine what information each IT team can provide regarding the collection and reporting of component availability. Implement revised mechanisms for the analysis, calculation and reporting of service availability. Ensure that event management is implemented to trigger alerts in response to availability issues. This will allow for reactive measures to be introduced so that, if services fail to meet their availability targets, proper actions can be taken to mitigate future failures.

BMeet with the customer managers to conduct a thorough review of all services and document all revised service level requirements (SLRs), ensuring that business impact and seasonal variations are taken into account. The SLRs should be transformed into a balanced scorecard of service targets with a dashboard for reporting purposes. Mechanisms should be agreed and implemented to collect, analyze and report against the agreed service targets using the change management process. Reports should be circulated to customer managers five working days in advance of service review meetings.

CMeet with the customer managers to review and document their availability requirements, ensuring that business impact and seasonal variations are taken into account. Review the monitoring and measurement mechanisms and ensure that they can measure both component and end-to-end service availability. Agree the revised service availability reporting requirements with the customer. Agree and revise service level agreements and operational level agreements as necessary and implement any changes to the monitoring and reporting mechanisms using the change management process.

DReview the requirements for service availability against the data collection and measurement currently provided by the IT teams. Design availability metrics and controls to report any variances at the monthly service review meetings, as well as how these variances will be addressed in the future. Internal IT staff and a customer manager will attend the service review meetings. All changes have to be agreed in the service review meetings before any actions can be performed, thus forcing the customer to come to the meetings and reach agreement before any improvement work or change can occur.

Show Answer

Question: 5

Scenario

A travel company specializes in providing complete holiday packages to meet customer requirements. There have been instances over the past year where the business has been unable to process holiday bookings due to failure of the IT services. Sales have been lost and the failure has been raised at board level. The IT director has assured the board that the situation will be rectified.

Most holiday bookings are made either by telephone via the company's call centre or through a dedicated website. Both interface with the same back-end booking-processing service. Apart from the call centre and website, the main business services map onto organizational departments and cover: marketing, finance, business operations and central administration.

After some initial investigation within the IT organization, it is clear that the intermittent failures, which were related to a lack of capacity, have occurred during exceptional peak holiday booking periods. The IT organization is not certain when or if these are going to occur in the future. Some booking periods are predictable, such as those associated with promotional offers. Other patterns are totally unpredictable as they often coincide with bad weather being experienced where customers live.

You have been asked how the activities of demand management, based on ITIL practices, can be used to address this issue.

Refer to Scenario

Which one of the following options is the BEST set of actions required to resolve the issue?

AIdentify the pattern of customer enquiries for holiday bookings and the resulting volume, frequency and location of staff activity. Document these as patterns of business activity (PBA)
Gain an understanding of the different roles that are performed by staff from all business units and how these relate to the PBA for all business processes.
Use this information to identify any shortfall in capacity and create cost estimates of additional resource required to enable the IT services to meet the PBA.
Recommend that, where PBA are very predictable, investment should be made in additional resource.
Where PBA are unpredictable, the risks associated with railing to meet demand should be discussed with the business managers, and mitigation actions agreed.

BIdentify the pattern of customer enquiries for holiday bookings and the resulting volume, frequency and location of staff activity. Document these as PBA.
Gain an understanding of the different roles that are performed by the call centre staff and how these relate to the PBA for the call centre business processes.
Use this information to identify any shortfall in capacity and create cost estimates of additional resource required to enable the IT services to meet the PBA.
Discuss the risks associated with failing to meet demand with the business managers. Reach agreement on how to avoid a repeat of the IT failures caused by demand at busy periods.

CIdentify and understand the PBA resulting from metrics of all the IT services. Ensure that the volume, frequency and location of service use is taken into account.
Gain an understanding of how the PBA relate to the use of the IT assets especially the hardware and software that may be the cause of the IT failures.
Once these activities have been completed, the PBA will be used to plan and implement sufficient capacity to meet all demand at all times.
Discuss the risks associated with failing to meet demand with capacity management and technical staff. Reach agreement on how to avoid a repeat of the IT failures caused by demand at busy periods.

DImmediately implement demand management, document the process and allocate roles and responsibilities.
The demand manager should initiate an activity to identify and understand user profiles resulting from business use of the IT services. Code the user profiles linking them to the associated business roles.
Match the user profiles to the IT services and analyze any shortfall in capacity required to meet the business objectives. Create a business case for the additional resource required to exceed the business demand for the IT services to account for unpredictable business activity.
Work with service portfolio management and financial management to agree on the approval of the investment and initiate the project to acquire all the additional resources.

Show Answer

PeopleCert ITIL-SOA Quiz:1 Topic:8 Questions:1-5