ITIL®, also known as Information Technology Infrastructure Library is a set of ITS practices which focuses on the alignment of IT services with businesses and organizations. Following are some important ITIL® interview questions and answers which will help you prepare for your interview.
Top ITIL Interview Questions
Q1. What is ITIL®?
ITIL refers to a set of ITSM practices which helps in the alignment of IT services with business needs according to the current market trends. It helps businesses to establish a competitive advantage.
Q2. What are the processes that constitute ITIL?
ITIL consists of five service publications:
- Service Strategy
- Service Design
- Service Transition
- Service Operation
- Continual Service Improvement
Q3. What are the benefits of ITIL?
Successful alignment between IT and the business
- Establish a relationship with the customer and focus on customer satisfaction through service delivery
Cost-effective through better utilization of resources
Better managing of risk to the business and service disruption
Supports constant and sudden business change
Q4. What are the processes utilized by the Service Desk?
Workflow and procedure diagrams are the processes utilized by the Service Desk.
Q5. What are the objectives of Incident Management?
The main objectives of Incident Management are:
– Ensure that approved and regulated methods are used for all the processes involved like efficient response, documentation, analysis and ongoing management.
– Report and resolve the incident in the IT services when they occur.
– Focus on user and customer satisfaction.
– Align incident management activities efficiently
Q6. How does the Incident Management system work?
– Records incidents
– Categorizes them based on their impact and urgency
– Authorization of the incident
– Recovery after the occurrence of the incident
Q7. What is an SLA?
An SLA or a Service Level Agreement refers to the commitment between a service provider and the end user.
Q8. Explain the different types of SLA.
Service Level Agreements are of three types:
Customer Service Level Agreement which exists between you and the external customer.
Internal Service Level Agreement which exists between you and an internal customer, which could refer to a department or another organization.
Vendor Service Level Agreement which exists between you and the vendor.
Q9. What is the main goal of Problem Management in ITIL®?
Problem Management helps to execute the following functions:
Recognize and mitigate recurring incidents
Identify the root cause of these occurrences
Prevention of the incident from reoccurring
Q10. List the main steps in the Problem Management process.
- Detection of the problem
- Categorization of the problem and its prioritization
- Investigation of the root cause
- Workaround a solution for the problem
- Initiate a known error record
- Resolving the problem
- Close the problem
- Review the problem
Intermediate ITIL® Interview Questions
Q11. Explain a Known Error.
A Known Error refers to an identified problem that has an acknowledged root cause and a solution. It consists of the following:
- Status
- Error Description
- Root Cause
- Workaround
Q12. List the objectives of the IT Service Continuity Management.
The objectives of IT Service Continuity Management are:
- Analyze the risks involved
- Test backing out situations
- Finalize the back out arrangements
Q13. What is Configuration Management’s purpose in ITIL?
Its main purpose is to receive, collect, store, manage and verify data on IT assets and configurations.
Q14. What is the difference between a project and a process?
A project usually has a fixed time span whereas a process is continuous and does not have an end date.
Q15. What are the responsibilities of an ITIL Service Desk?
Responsibilities of an ITIL Service Desk are:
- To log, classify and prioritize incidents
- To investigate the incidents
- Resolving the incident
- Incident management reporting
Q16. Differentiate between proactive and reactive problem management.
The main difference between proactive and reactive problem management is, proactive problem management prevents incidents from occurring by identifying potential problems and errors in the IT infrastructure whereas, reactive problem management recognizes and eliminates the root cause of incidents that are witnessed.
Q17. Differentiate between an incident and a problem.
An incident is referred to an event that leads to disturbances and disruptions in an IT service, and a problem is the underlying cause of these incidents.
Q18. What is the objective of Change Management in ITIL®?
Change Management’s main objective is to manage change requests in an effective manner and with agility in order to minimize the risk and interruptions through establishing standardized procedures.
Q19. What is Post Implementation Review (PIR)?
Post Implementation Review (PIR) refers to the evaluation and analysis of the entire working process and solution. It is usually performed after the change request is put into effect to determine if the change and its implementation were successful.
Q20. Explain Capacity Management’s main objective and mention its sub-processes.
The main objective of Capacity Management is to ensure that the IT services are sized correctly in order to meet the service level targets in a cost effective manner. It includes three sub-processes:
- Business Capacity Management
- Service Capacity Management
- Component Capacity Management
Moving on with ITIL Interview Questions.
Q21. Define Operational Level Agreement (OLA).
Operational Level Agreement (OLA) is a contract which emphasizes the different IT groups in a company and how they design their services to support SLAs.
Q22. List the seven R’s of Change Management.
- RAISING the change
- REASON for the change
- RETURN that the change will deliver
- RISK regarding implementing the change
- RESOURCES required to perform the change
- RESPONSIBILITY for the change being performed
- RELATIONSHIPS between the change being performed and other changes
Q23. What is the difference between customers and end-users?
A customer is an entity who has the ability to choose from various products or suppliers whereas an end-user is the direct recipient of a product or service.
Q24. What is the importance of information security policy?
Information Security Policy protects information and data of organizations from security risks and threats.
Q25. What is the objective of a Balanced Scorecard?
A Balanced Scorecard helps to make an organization’s mission its reality. It involves strategic planning to work on the internal functions of an organization.
Q26. Differentiate between Service Request and an Incident.
Service Requests are formal requests that are processed by a user for a service of information whereas Incident is an unplanned interruption to an IT service or reduction in the quality of an IT service.
Q27. Explain Service Portfolio, Service Catalog and Service pipeline.
Service Portfolio is a comprehensive list consisting of all the services that are provided by a service provider to the customers. Service Catalog is a subset of Service Portfolio which includes a list of the services that are ready to be offered to the customers. Service Pipeline refers to services that are under development process.
Q28. Differentiate between Emergency Changes and Urgent Changes.
Emergency Changes are the highest priority changes which require fast implementation whereas Urgent Changes are changes that serve an important business or legal requirement but do not help to restore a service.
Q29. What is a Change Advisory Board (CAB)?
Change Advisory Board refers to a group of authoritative people who aid in carrying out the change management process with the authorization, assessment, prioritization, and scheduling of the requested changes.
Q30. What is a Freeze period in ITIL®?
Freeze period in ITIL refers to a particular time period in the development procedure after which strictness and severity is observed in the rules required for making changes to the source code.
Moving on with ITIL Interview Questions.
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Q31. What are the ITIL models adopted by an organization?
The ITIL models adopted by an organization are:
- Microsoft MOF (Microsoft Operations Framework)
It is an organized approach regarding how customers should effectively plan, develop and operate services efficiently.
- Hewlett Packard (HP ITSM Reference Model)
This model describes various IT Management procedures and inter-process relationships which IT required to develop, deploy and support services.
- IBM (IT Process Model)
This model defines business services and procedures across the enterprise. It supports system renewal and integration projects.
Q32. List the work-around recovery options.
Recovery options are commonly classified as:
- Manual workaround
- Reciprocal arrangements
- Gradual recovery
- Intermediate recovery
- Fast recovery
- Immediate recovery
Q33. How is a Known Error recognized?
A Known Error can only be recognized when the cause or the root of the problem is identified.
Q34. Give examples of proactive problem management.
Two examples of proactive problem management are Trend Analysis and Pain Value Analysis.
Q35. Name the 4 P’s required for effective Service Management in ITIL.
- People
- Processes
- Products
- Partners
Q36. Who protects and maintains the Known Error database?
The Problem Manager is responsible to maintain and protect the Known Error database as well as facilitates the initiation of the formal closure of all Problem records.
Q37. Define Workaround.
When the root cause of an issue or problem has not been resolved, a workaround acts as a temporary method for resolving the issue.
Q38. What is the RACI model?
RACI stands for the following:
• Responsible – Responsibility assigned to a particular person the complete the task.
• Accountable – Person held accountable for the given task.
• Consulted – People or groups who are consulted for the task.
• Informed – People who are kept informed about the progress of the on-going task.
Q39. What is Configuration baseline?
Configuration baseline in ITIL® refers to a baseline that is used for a configuration only and has been formally agreed on and managed by the change management process.
Q40. What is ISO/IEC 27002?
ISO/IEC 27002 is a code of practice which lends emphasis on guidelines especially for organizational information security standards as well as information security management practices. It consists of selection, implementation and the management of controls while considering the organization’s information security risk infrastructure.
Q41. What is RACI-VS?
RACI-VS refers to: Verifies Sign off – The person who ensures that the acceptance criteria have been met gives the sign off to the project.
Q42. What is Service Strategy?
Service Strategy is a set of policies and objectives that are established to achieve a service goal.
Q43. Name the four P’s of Service Strategy.
The four P’s of Service Strategy are:
Perspective – the vision behind the strategy and its course
Pattern – method taken to implement the strategy
Position – basis on which the strategy will be completed
Plan – ways to achieve the goal
Q44. What do you understand by Service Transition?
Service Transition is the 3rd stage of the ITIL service lifecycle. The objective of this stage is to build and deploy IT services for different organizations. This stage also responsible for ensuring that changes to services and service management processes are performed in a coordinated way. It consists of the following processes:
- Change Management
- Change Evaluation
- Project Management
- Application Development
- Release and Deployment Management
- Service Validation and Testing
- Service Asset and Configuration Management
- Knowledge Management
Q45. Explain CSI.
CSI in ITIL stands for Continues Service Improvement. It is the final stage in the ITIL service lifecycle. During this stage, all the services within the IT service provider are reviewed in order to identify the areas for improvement and updating.
Q46. List down the 7 steps involved in CSI.
Below are the 7 steps that are involved:
- Identify the strategy for improvement
- Define what will be measured
- Gather the data
- Process the data
- Analyze the information and data
- Present and use the information
- Implement improvement
Q47. What is Financial Management?
Financial Management in IT Services is one of the main processes of the Service Strategy stage. It mainly handles the following requirements:
- Budgeting: It is responsible for providing sufficient funds to run business cost and perform income estimation
- Accounting: It is responsible for providing management information on the cost by performing cost analysis and reporting
- Charging: It is responsible for providing funds by charging the client
Q48. List down the four layers of service management measurements.
- Progress: This is responsible for handling the progression of the current service operations
- Compliance: This mainly deals with the compliance of the trending industry process and market standards
- Effectiveness: This helps in maintaining the effectiveness of the services
- Efficiency: This helps with the efficiency of service maintenance and workflow
Q49. What are the various types of Service Providers in ITIL processes?
Below are the different types of service providers in ITIL processes:
- Internal Service Provider: This type of provider deal with internal organization management. They are physically present and serve the organization.
- External Service Provider: This type of provider generally deal with external organization management. It is responsible for handling specific and special scenarios based on current market standards.
- Share Services: This type of provider usually has its autonomous presence inside the organization.
Q50. Explain the plan-do-check-act (PDCA) cycle?
The PDCA cycle which is also known as the Deming cycle is used in many industries and business areas in order to control and measure the final results. Based on these results, ITIL produces an improved output in the later steps or trials. Below are the four phases of the plan-do-check-act cycle:
- Plan: Identifying and planning the improvements
- Do: Implementation of improvements
- Check: Monitoring, Measuring and Reviewing
- Act: Improvements are completely implemented
With this, we come to an end of this ITIL Interview Questions Article.
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