PeopleCert ITIL Service Offerings and Agreements ITIL-SOA Exam Practice Test

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Question 1

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.

Answer : D

Question 2

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.

Answer : C

Question 3

Scenario

An internet banking organization plans to expand operations outside of its current market. Whilst the exact details have yet to be established, it is clear that the IT organization must expand its service offerings within the current portfolio in order to support this growth. It is equally apparent that external customer needs for banking will vary from market to market and that consequently this will require development of completely new service offerings.

You are the head of service within the IT organization. You helped the organization adopt the ITIL framework some years ago and now have most processes in place. Service owners are allocated for the main IT services. Mature service portfolio, service catalogue and service level management processes are in place.

The expansion requires ownership of a business relationship management process and you are considering the role profile for this post.

Refer to the Scenario.

Which one of the following options provides the BEST overview of the business relationship manager's (BRM) responsibilities which will be key to support the expansion?

AThe BRM will engage actively with the customers, gain a good insight into their business and plans, and develop a strong working relationship. The BRM will work closely with the customer to understand the value proposition of any new IT services that will be required to support the expansion program. The BRM will liaise with the service level manager and service owners to develop the designs of any new IT services, thereby creating value for both parties. The BRM will ensure customer expectations of new services do not exceed what they have agreed to pay for.

BThe BRM will engage actively with the customers, gain a good insight into their business and plans, and develop a strong working relationship. The BRM will identify the business requirements associated with the expansion program especially concentrating on gaining a clear understanding of business outcomes and business drivers. The BRM will liaise with the service portfolio manager to understand how the business outcomes can be supported by IT services, and, where possible, create new services and service offerings for inclusion in the service catalogue. It is key that the BRM understands how changes to the customer environment in different operating markets might affect the delivery of services.

CThe BRM will engage actively with the customers, gain their trust, and help them develop their business area. This would help both the IT organization and the company become more successful. If the BRM commits time and energy, it should be possible to improve the IT services quickly to meet the needs of the expansion program and therefore achieve the business objectives. The BRM should take responsibility for the services and their development, while the service level manager will take responsibility for customer liaison. The BRM will take ultimate responsibility for ensuring the customer needs are met by the service provider by managing any third parties in the emerging markets.

DThe BRM will have primary responsibility for engaging actively with the customers. They should develop a mutual understanding with the customers and have a good working knowledge of their business. The BRM would also work closely with the service owners to understand the profile and usage of the IT services, to help develop the IT services and to create a new service catalogue for the new markets. The BRM will articulate service provider business requirement to the customer to prevent them asking for services that would involve them paying more for the IT service they receive.

Answer : B

Question 4

Scenario

A large, privately owned company has an internal IT organization that runs most of its IT operations from the head office. There has been a history of confusion about what is required from the services and what has actually been achieved, particularly from a warranty perspective. This has resulted in a strained relationship between the business units and the IT organization.

Some service-based agreements exist between IT and the customers, where all levels of response to incidents were set to the same targets. Availability targets have not been reviewed for at least two years. There have been a number of complaints by key customers claiming that the IT staff have been resolving incidents and implementing change requests based on operational ease rather than business priority. This is despite operationally robust processes being in place for incident, change and problem management.

A plan has been put in place to improve the level of the IT service delivered to the organization.

Retirement of the post-holder meant that the first action was to appoint a new IT director. The opportunity was taken to select a candidate from an external organization, who was committed to the ITIL framework. The new IT director believes that good IT service management practices are essential.

The IT director plans to implement many of the service management processes and has already overseen the creation of a basic service catalogue. The IT director is sure that many of the current issues can be rectified through the implementation of service level management (SLM) and has therefore directed that service level agreements (SLA) be introduced for the services provided before moving onto other areas. You have been asked to lead the project to establish SLAs for the IT services.

Refer to the Scenario.

Which one of the following sequence of activities would be the BEST approach to establishing service levels agreements (SLA) in the organization?

AIdentify all of the services currently delivered using the service catalogue.
Define a primarily customer-based approach to implementing service levels agreements (SLAs).
Using a pre-prepared pro-forma service level requirements (SLR) template, meet with the appropriate customer representatives to discuss and document their service level requirements.
Arrange meetings with the appropriate IT teams, specifically those involved in incident, availability and capacity management, to discuss, document and agree the levels of service required.
Draft agreements from these discussions are then reviewed by service operations to ensure that no existing agreements will be compromised and, once this has been confirmed, the
SLA is formally reviewed, agreed, and signed by both the customer and IT.
The service level targets are then formally communicated, monitored, reported upon and reviewed at the agreed intervals.

BIdentify all the services currently delivered using the service catalogue.
Define a primarily service-based approach to implementing service level agreements.
Using the service templates already in use, meet with the appropriate customer representatives and, after discussion, produce formal SLRs which document the levels of service that the customer needs.
Arrange meetings with the appropriate IT teams, specifically those involved in incident, availability and capacity management, to discuss, document and communicate the levels of service required.
From these discussions operational level agreements (OLAs) are then produced.
The SLRs and OLAs can be formally monitored, reported upon and reviewed at the agreed intervals.

CMeet with the IT operations team, specifically, those involved in incident, availability and capacity management, to define what level of service they can offer to the business against each service in the service catalogue.
Meet with the appropriate customer representatives to give them a clear understanding of the levels of service IT can offer.
Produce and agree an SLA and ensure it is signed by representatives of both parties.
Document and agree OLAs with the service operation teams.
Ensure all parties understand their responsibilities and enforce penalties for non-compliance.
Once both agreements have been signed, all service level targets are then formally monitored and reviewed.

DIdentify all of the services currently delivered using the service catalogue.
Define a primarily service-based approach to implementing service level agreements.
Meet with the appropriate business representatives and, after discussion, produce a formal SLA that guarantees the levels of service that the business needs.
Arrange meetings with the appropriate IT teams, specifically those involved in incident, availability and capacity management, to inform them of the service levels you have agreed
Document and agree OLAs with the service operation teams.
Once these are agreed and signed the OLAs are passed back to the business to demonstrate that IT will support the SLA and to build upon the trust between the two parties.

Answer : A

Question 5

A major international company owns shopping malls in many countries. They are responsible for the security, safety and comfort of shoppers visiting the stores in the mall and the facilities management of the locations. The company relies on IT services provided by its IT division. The IT division consists of a corporate IT department at the company's headquarters and a local IT team at each mall. The IT division obtains IT services and products from over 100 different suppliers globally.

The management of suppliers within the IT division is currently performed by the local IT teams in each country, often by the most appropriate technical manager. This has resulted in inconsistent processes and levels of service across the countries.

The management team realizes that this is an ineffective use of IT resources and will have an impact on the future growth of the company. They are currently reviewing the situation and wish to develop supplier management processes that are more closely aligned to ITIL practices. The management team recently conducted a survey of all of the local IT teams within the different countries to collect details about the number and type of contracts and suppliers.

The IT division has developed and implemented many other ITIL processes over the last two years, which has led to significant improvements. The management team would like to build on this success and develop and implement a supplier management process. You have recently joined the corporate IT department and have been given the results of the survey carried out by the management team.

Refer to Scenario

Which one of the following options is the BEST sequence of activities to adopt in order to implement a supplier management process and to bring the current situation under control?

A1. Design and develop a supplier management process.
2. Define and agree a supplier policy.
3. Use the results of the survey to categorize each supplier to determine the type of relationship required.
4. Establish and populate a supplier and contract management information system (SCMIS) from the survey feedback.
5. Deploy the process in the corporate IT department as a pilot.
6. Agree which individuals in the corporate IT department and local IT teams are accountable for the management of each contract and supplier.
7. Deploy the process in the remaining countries and conduct a program of awareness and training.

B1. Define and agree a supplier policy.
2. Design and develop a supplier management process.
3. Use the results of the survey to categorize each supplier to determine the type of relationship required.
4. Establish and populate a SCMIS from the survey feedback.
5. Agree which individuals in the corporate IT department and local IT teams are accountable for the management of each supplier.
6. Deploy the process in all countries and conduct a program of awareness and training.
7. Identify where there are duplicate or multiple contracts in place with suppliers and instigate an initiative to review these with the relevant suppliers.

C1. Carry out a further review of the suppliers used by each store in each country.
2. Establish and populate the SCMIS from the results of the exercise.
3. Design and develop a supplier management process.
4. Define and agree a supplier policy.
5. Appoint a supplier manager from the corporate IT department to manage all contracts and all suppliers.
6. Deploy the process in all countries and conduct a program of awareness and training.
7. Renew all contracts to try to obtain better terms and conditions.

D1. Define and agree a supplier policy.
2. Agree which individuals in the corporate IT department and local IT teams are accountable for the management of each supplier.
3. Use the results of the survey to categorize each supplier to determine the type of relationship required.
4. Establish and populate a SCMIS from the survey feedback.
5. Design and develop a supplier management process.
6. Deploy the process in all countries and conduct a program of awareness and training.
7. Work with the service level manager to ensure that all contracts correctly underpin service level agreements.

Answer : D

Question 6

Scenario

A financial services organization has undergone a period of rapid expansion. From its operating base it has expanded to serve customers in over 25 countries spread around the globe. There are plans to enter more markets in the next 12 months.

The key stakeholders involved in the global expansion project have briefed the chief information officer (CIO) on the plans. They have identified IT service performance as one of the major threats to the plan. The CIO has been under pressure from the board due to poor IT service performance in the previous six months. The chief concern has been significant performance variations in network connectivity and communications.

The organization currently has three contracts with different local external suppliers in operating markets supporting three IT network hubs. Whilst the suppliers are all happy to follow local internal IT processes, getting the three to work together on incidents or changes has proved increasingly difficult.

A number of outages have resulted in a blame culture where even the local internal IT departments have been sympathetic to their service providers, resulting in strained relationships between these internal departments at an operational level.

Other issues encountered at one or more locations have included:

* Long-term service improvements have been sacrificed in favour of short-term fixes that avoid the payment of contract penalties by the suppliers

* Changes in ownership of the customer relationship by the suppliers

The CIO believes that a lack of communication between suppliers has been the key cause of failures.

All three supplier contracts are due for renewal in the next 12 months. After consultation, a decision to re-tender for network services has been taken by IT, and approved by the CIO and the board of directors.

Refer to the Scenario.

When considering suppliers, which one of the following options would BEST ensure that network issues are addressed in order to meet the needs of the financial services organization?

AConsideration should be given to entering into a partnership with three local suppliers who have worked together before in similar circumstances. This will ensure both communication and local cultural differences are addressed.
Supplier management should have a single, defined local point of ownership with responsibility granted for operational management of issues.
The threat of contractual penalties should be removed to encourage suppliers to think longer term about sustainable service improvements.
Suppliers will commit to the use of local IT processes to ensure compliance and good communication.
Suppliers are to ensure that staff engaged in the contract (in particular the account managers and customer service managers) are fully ITIL trained so they understand and can implement service management best practice disciplines.

BConsideration should be given to entering into a partnership with a single supplier where mutual trust and a good relationship can be established.
Supplier management should have a single, defined point of ownership within each country to manage all local operational issues.
A risk-reward framework should be mapped out as an incentive for the supplier to solve local issues.
A strategic alignment should be sought with the supplier where values, goals and cultural fit are similar to that of the financial services organization.
The supplier should set up its own dedicated global account management team to deal with transition and on-going issues by working with local IT support teams.

CConsideration should be given to entering into a partnership with a single supplier where mutual trust and a good relationship can be established.
Supplier management should have a single, defined point of ownership with local responsibility granted for operational management of issues.
A long-term, risk-reward framework should be mapped out to encourage the supplier to work towards sustainable service improvements instead of shorter-term quick fixes.
A strategic alignment should be sought with the supplier where values, goals and cultural fit are similar to that of the financial services organization.
Implementation of a joint partnership team to initially ensure a smooth transition of the service to the new supplier and to subsequently manage on-going service improvement.

DConsideration should be given to re-contracting with the three current local suppliers. There is no suggestion that they are technically incompetent; it appears to be communication and local cultural differences that cause problems.
Supplier management should have a single, defined local point of ownership with responsibility granted for operational management of issues.
The threat of contractual penalties should be removed to encourage suppliers to think longer term about sustainable service improvements.
Communication issues should be addressed by ensuring all incidents are reported to a single global service desk that the financial institution should implement.
Suppliers are to ensure that staff engaged in the contract (in particular the account managers and customer service managers) are fully ITIL trained so they understand and can implement service management best practice disciplines.

Answer : C

Question 7

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.

Answer : C