ITIL-SOA practice question 6 of 10

Scenario A company provides an internet-based gift delivery service which is highly dependent upon IT services provided by the internal IT…

Full set: 14 questions
Scenario A company provides an internet-based gift delivery service which is highly dependent upon IT services provided by the internal IT organization. A year ago the customer payments service that supports the gift ordering website regularly experienced poor availability. The organization hired a service management consultant to assess why the IT services were performing poorly and to rectify the situation. As part of the solution, the consultant implemented service level management and adopted the role of interim service level manager. Service level agreements were negotiated with the business and agreed. The necessary underpinning agreements were negotiated and put in place. Regular monitoring and reporting was implemented. Monthly service review meetings with the business unit managers were established to discuss IT service performance and any issues and improvements. Within a year of the start of the initiative the gift ordering website IT service was performing at 98.7% availability, a significant improvement. This month's service review meeting was attended by the chief executive officer (CEO) after concerns were expressed about the most recent availability figure for the customer payments service, which was 94%. This covered the period which included one of the traditionally most popular gift ordering times. The consultant stated that the poor availability was almost entirely due to an incident that occurred during one of the busiest periods and. as a result, the overall monthly availability percentage was low. Initial investigation has shown that the service desk used the SLA to designate the incident as a 'Priority 2'. This was however lower than the 'Priority 1" the business believed the incident should have been. The subsequent delay in restoration of the service meant some customer orders were lost. The CEO reminded the consultant that a repeat of such an incident would not only have a major effect on monthly revenues but also seriously affect the company's reputation. The consultant agreed that this was unacceptable and committed to review this issue and report back to the CEO. Refer to Scenario
Answer options
A: The SLM should agree with the business managers to set up a service improvement plan (SIP) to address the issue. Differing views relating to the cause of the low availability mean it should be investigated thoroughly to establish whether the slow restoration of service was due to a lack of understanding by the service desk, incorrect service level targets in the SLA or simply that, owing to the type of failure, restoration was always going to take that length of time. Appropriate action can then be taken to rectify the issue. Correct answer
B: The issue is with the service desk and its incorrect interpretation of the SLA and failure to escalate the issues. The SLM should agree to set up a SIP for the service desk. The operational level agreement (OLA) with the service desk should be reviewed to ensure that it underpins the SLAs. The SIP should include the retraining of the service desk staff. A complete review of the service desk tools should ensure that they can be used to prioritize incidents correctly by passing through targets agreed into the priority matrix of the toolset.
C: The issue is clearly a breakdown in understanding regarding the critical business periods and the matching of these to the availability targets in the SLAs. The SLM should agree with the business managers to set up a SIP to investigate the issue. The SLAs should be reviewed with the business to ensure that they match with the business needs and, if necessary are updated. Review and update any underpinning agreements as necessary to ensure that they support the targets in the SLAs.
D: The SLM should conduct an investigation by reviewing incidents and problems. Ask the IT service desk and support staff what ideas they have to resolve the issue. Review the impact on all other SLAs. OLAs contracts and procedures. Review the maturity associated with the service level management process and take steps to improve this process if necessary. Create a SIP with an associated business case for presentation to the chief executive officer (CEO).
Correct Answer:
A. The SLM should agree with the business managers to set up a service improvement plan (SIP) to address the issue. Differing views relating to the cause of the low availability mean it should be investigated thoroughly to establish whether the slow restoration of service was due to a lack of understanding by the service desk, incorrect service level targets in the SLA or simply that, owing to the type of failure, restoration was always going to take that length of time. Appropriate action can then be taken to rectify the issue.
Explanation

This option proposes the most balanced and logical ITIL-aligned approach. It correctly identifies the need for a collaborative Service Improvement Plan (SIP) to formally manage the required improvements. Crucially, it advocates for a thorough investigation into the differing views on the cause, considering multiple possibilities: people (service desk understanding), process (SLA targets), or technology (the nature of the failure). This avoids jumping to conclusions and aligns with the Continual Service Improvement (CSI) principle of first understanding the current situation ('Where are we now?') before implementing corrective actions. This comprehensive investigation is necessary to identify the true root cause and ensure the resulting actions are effective.

Why Incorrect

B: This option prematurely assigns blame solely to the service desk, ignoring that their actions were based on the existing SLA. C: This option jumps to the conclusion that the issue is clearly a misunderstanding of business periods, which is only one of several possibilities. D: This proposes a very broad, process-level maturity review, which is less appropriate than a focused investigation into this specific, critical incident failure.

References

1. ITIL® Continual Service Improvement (2011 Edition), Section 5.5, "Service improvement plan (SIP)": This section describes a SIP as the formal mechanism for managing and implementing improvements to services and processes, which is the central action proposed in the correct answer.

2. ITIL® Continual Service Improvement (2011 Edition), Section 4.1, "The 7-step improvement process": The investigation proposed in option A aligns with the initial steps of this process, specifically Step 2 ("Define what you will measure") and Step 3 ("Gather the data"), which are essential for understanding the problem before acting.

3. ITIL® Service Design (2011 Edition), Section 4.3.5.5, "Service reporting, monitoring and review": This section states that a key activity of SLM is to "review and revise SLAs... in the light of any failures." The scenario describes a failure, and the proposed investigation is the correct precursor to any revision.

4. ITIL® Service Operation (2011 Edition), Section 4.2.4.2, "Prioritization": This section explains that incident priority is based on impact and urgency, which should be agreed upon in the SLA. The dispute in the scenario highlights a potential flaw in this agreement, justifying the thorough investigation proposed in option A.

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