PEOPLECERT ITIL-SOA ITIL Service Offerings and Agreements Exam Exam Practice Test Questions

• Question 1

  ScenarioAn 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 andhandling 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?

  • Service 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.
  • Service 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.
  • Service 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 meetingInitiate the dispute process with the supplier. Carry out a risk analysis of the supplier and their contract.
  • Service 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 Answer: B Next

• Question 2

  ScenarioA clothing manufacturer has made a decision to supplement factory-based retail outlets by opening a series of stores at out-of-town shopping malls.The internal IT organization provides support to many mission-critical business systems for both the manufacturing and retail operations. It must increase its portfolio of services and service options to meet the planned new expansion. Typically, the business is subject to seasonal patterns of demand, which recently have begun to exceed the capability of some of the IT services. This has led to periods of poor performance of some of the critical systems and therefore to degraded service quality. In periods of minimal demand, there is a surplus of capacity and performance is optimal.There is concern that the additional business demand from the new stores will exacerbate these service performance issues.The board of directors, made up of representatives from each business unit, has asked for a review of the business supply and demand issues currently being faced by the IT organization. Many service management processes have been implemented including service portfolio management and capacity management. However, IT does not have a demand management process.Additionally, performance levels on many of the supporting services have remained unchanged for the past 3 years, even though some may now be less relevant to the overall performance of the critical services.Refer to the Scenario.The review of the supply and demand issues concluded that the implementation of a demand management process could help the IT organization address the issues. Which one of the following options provides the BEST solution to both the problems currently being faced and those related to the proposed expansion?

  • The service portfolio should be reviewed and an analysis carried out of each business unit’s requirements in order to understand their patterns of business activity (PBA) and correspondingusage of the IT services.Differentiated service offerings should be developed to match PBA; this will make better use of available IT resources. Supporting service performance targets should be amended to reflect these changes.Work with business relationship management and capacity management to develop long term plans to meet the extra demand resulting from the company’s expansion plans.
  • An analysis should be carried out of each business unit’s patterns of business activity (PBA), and appropriate services for each business unit selected from the service catalogue.In conjunction with the finance department, a revised cost model should be introduced to allow for the fluctuation in usage and costs.Differential charging should be introduced to address the issues of service quality.
  • The service portfolio should be reviewed and an analysis carried out of each business unit’s requirements to understand their current usage of the IT services and where seasonal variations lead to fluctuations in usage.Discussions should take place with the business units to impose limits within specific time periods for each business unit’s usage of IT services.Work with business relationship management and capacity management to develop long term plans to meet the extra demand resulting from the company’s expansion plans.
  • The service portfolio should be reviewed and the business unit’s cumulative service usage should be reviewed, monitored and analyzed.
  • Work with the business to develop short-term measures to manage demand for the IT services, such as delayed or batch processing of retail transactions.
  • Service levels should be reviewed to take into account changes to supporting service performance targets and, where applicable, agreements should be updated through change management.

  Show Answer Answer: A Next

• Question 3

  Refer to ScenarioAn IT services company has been providing hosted and managed IT services to a number of major customers for over 20 years. It has invested heavily in ITIL-based service management processes over the last five years, which has resulted in an increase in the quality of the IT services and an increase in customer satisfaction with the services. This activity has led to a significant growth in the number of customers that the company serves.The company has implemented all of the service design, service transition and service operation processes to some extent, and is now developing other processes based on ITIL service strategy. As a result of this latest activity they have recognized that their existing service management tool is limited in its ability to support several existing processes, and all of the planned new ones. The supplier of the existing tool is reducing its investment in future development of the tool and is, therefore, unwilling to commit to any additional new facilities or functionality. This has now become an issue for the company and, as a result, they are looking to replace the existing tool with a more comprehensive alternative.The company plans to develop a requirements specification for the replacement tool and is redwing the areas that need to be considered, including its deployment throughout the organization. The budget for the new tool is limited, therefore it is essential that the new tool can be implemented and used as quickly as possible in order to obtain maximum return on investment (ROI).Which one of the following options provides the BEST description of the areas that should be addressed by the requirements specification for the new tool?

  • The usability and functionality of the new toolThe ability to customize the tool to the organization's requirementsThe planned use of the tool within the organization, together with the number of customers and users of the services and their geographical locationsThe plans for the deployment and the associated documentation needed for the tool.
  • The utility and warranty of the new toolThe conformance of the tool to international open standardsThe planned use of the tool within the organization, together with the type and number of licenses required for its deploymentThe timing of the deployment and the associated tool training and education.
  • The utility and warranty, and service acceptance criteria of the new tool The ability to customize the tool to the organization's requirementsThe number of potential users of the tool together with the number of licenses and their geographical locations required for its deploymentThe timing of the deployment and the associated tool documentation.
  • The utility and warranty, and service acceptance criteria of the new tool
  • The ability to migrate data from existing tools and to integrate with other tools
  • The planned use of the tool within the organization, together with the type and number of licenses
  • Required for its deployment
  • The type and timing of the deployment and the associated tool training and education.

  Show Answer Answer: D Next

• Question 4

  ScenarioA retail company has enjoyed significant growth in profit over the past year due to negotiating lower buying costs from its suppliers. The organization wishes to reinvest some of this profit to fund a program of change to optimize the use of IT services. They hope this will support revenue growth in the next financial year whilst maintaining profitability.The program consists of two main initiatives:An expansion of the on-line retailing services to offer more functionalityEnhancement of the marketing service to allow greater targeting of promotional offers.There are various options for providing these services that involve use of the current infrastructure or the new virtualization technology, which is slowly being deployed across the organization. The board of directors wishes to conduct a financial review over the next 3 months to compare the cost of providing each service. Projected business revenues will allow the return on investment (ROI) of each option to be calculated. This review will provide an input to the IT organization’s service portfolio management process, allowing the various investment options to be considered and an informed decision to be made.The organization has a good appreciation of its IT costs along with a mature service catalogue and configuration management system (CMS).Refer to the Scenario.Which one of the following options would be the BEST approach to providing the information for the financial review of the service options?

  • Appoint an IT finance manager to implement budgeting and accounting for IT services.Create a cost model that takes into account direct and indirect costs, as well as fixed and variable costs.Use the cost model to calculate the cost of providing the IT services and provide the information to service portfolio management (SPM).
  • Produce a summary of current costs, apportioning all costs directly to the appropriate service.Any investment in virtualization or new infrastructure should be shared equally between the two services.This creates a baseline for comparison with the anticipated business revenues and ROI that will enable a business case to be developed for each option.
  • Produce a summary of current costs, recognizing that the resources are shared across services.Use service level agreements to understand how the services are used and create a model for the services, ensuring that both current and projected costs are shared appropriately.These costs can then be compared with the cost of outsourcing the service and with the anticipated business revenue.
  • Produce a summary of current costs, recognizing that the resources are shared across services.
  • The various options for providing the service, including those requiring investment in new infrastructure, can then be costed. Using the projected revenues supplied, a calculation can establish
  • The ROI for each option.
  • These costs and ROI for each option can then be compared through the service portfolio management process and used as an input to develop a business case for the most advantageous options.

  Show Answer Answer: D Next

• Question 5

  ScenarioA 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 serviceSummary of the service level targetsThe level of support and support detailsDetails of the supporting services and componentsDetails of services obtained from suppliersWhen 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?

  • The 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.
  • The 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.
  • The 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.
  • The 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 Answer: D Next