Top 53 ITIL Interview Questions and Answers (PDF)
Lawrence Williams
Here are ITIL interview questions / Incident management interview questions and answers for fresher as well experienced candidates to get their dream job.
ITIL Basics Interview Questions and Answers
1) What is ITIL?
ITIL stands for Information Technology Infrastructure Library is a set of guidelines that helps Software professionals deliver the best IT services. These guidelines are best practices that are gathered, observed, and put together over time to provide quality IT services.
2) What is the difference between ITIL and COBIT?
The difference between ITIL and COBIT is:
| ITIL | COBIT |
|---|---|
| ITIL is used for Information Technology Service Management. | COBIT is used for the integration of information and technology |
| It enables to implement guideline of business | It enables us to derive guidelines for business operations. |
It has features like:
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It has features like:
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3) Why ITIL is required?
Here, are reasons why ITIL is needed:
- Improve project delivery success.
- Manage constant business and IT change.
- Offer maximum value to customers.
- Enhance resources and capabilities.
- Provide services that are useful and reliable.
- Plan processes with specific goals in mind.
- Clearly defines roles for each task.
- Deliver value for customers through services
- Integrate business and service strategies.
- Improve the relationship with customers.
- Service management best practices.
- Better management of services and integration.
- Business services IT Functions.
4) Mention the objectives of Incident management?
The objectives of the incident management process are:
- Incident management ensures that regulated methods are used for the efficient response, reporting of incidents, analysis, ongoing management, and documentation.
- Progress communication of incident management to IT staff.
- Align incident management activities and priorities properly.
- Manage the satisfaction of users with quality IT service.
5) What are the advantages of ITIL?
The advantages of ITIL are:
- Increase customer satisfaction
- Helps to create a clear structure of an organization
- Improve service availability
- Financial management
- Allows to improve the decision-making process
- Helps to control infrastructure services
6) Define Service Level Agreement
A Service Level Agreement is a commitment between a service provider and the end-user. It represents the level of service, which is assumed by this service provider.
7) What the important features of ITIL?
The important features of ITIL are:
- One language/terminology.
- Related process and tasks (roles).
- Focus on IT. However, it is just not only suitable for IT.
- ITIL is a means to deliver consistent quality.
- Existing activities and how to optimize them.
8) Explain various service providers that are part of the ITIL process
Various service providers that are part of ITIL process:
- Internal service provider: ISP is a dedicated resource of a business unit and can manage the internal organization.
- External service provider: ESP provides IT services to external customers. It is not limited to any market, individual, or business.
- Shared services Unit: SSU is an autonomous unit that acts as an extension of ISPs.
9) Explain event management in ITIL
Event management is used to ensure configuration items and services are continually observed. It can also be used to filter and categorize events to know specific actions.
10) Mention the basic difference between change requests and a service request?
A change request is a proposal to make changes in a particular system or product. While a service request is submitted by the user and is a request for IT service access and changing of standard.
11) What are the three levels of SLA?
The three levels of SLA are:
- Customer service level agreement: It exists between the service provider and customers.
- Internal service level agreement: It is an agreement between IT and internal customers.
- Vendor service level agreement: It is the agreement between the developer and the vendor.
12) What is the primary difference between a process and a project?
The primary difference between process and project is that a project has a finite lifespan while a process is continuous and having no deadline.
13) List the different Knowledge Management Systems
Different Knowledge Management Systems are:
- DML (Definitive Media Library)
- CMDB (Configuration Management Database)
- CMIS (Capacity Management Information System)
- AMIS (Availability Management Information System)
- KEDB (Known Error Database)
- SKMS (Service Knowledge Management System)
14) Mention the goals of problem management in ITIL
The goals of problem management in ITIL is to:
- Identify recurring incidents.
- Recognize the main cause of these occurrences.
- Prevent incidents from reoccurring.
15) Explain the responsibilities of Service Desk
Responsibilities of an ITIL Service Desk are:
- To log, categorize, and prioritize the incidents.
- Resolve the incident.
- To examine the incidents.
- Make the Incident management report.
16) Differentiate between customers and end-users
A customer is an entity having the capability to choose a product from the suppliers while the end-user is a direct recipient of service or product.
17) Differentiate between service request and incident
A service request is a request which is processed by a user. The incident is an unplanned reduction in the quality of an IT service.
18) What is a CAB?
CAB (Change Advisory Board) is a group of people who are involved in the change management process. They are mainly deal with authorization, prioritization, assessment, and scheduling of the changes.
19) Define Freeze period in ITIL
The freeze period in ITIL is a particular time period in the development, after which severity and strictness and are observed. It requires rules for making changes to the source code.
20) List the workaround recovery options.
Recovery options are commonly classified as:
- Manual workaround
- Reciprocal arrangements
- Gradual recovery
- Intermediate recovery
- Fast recovery
- Immediate recovery
21) Explain the 4 P’s needed for the Service Management in ITIL
4 P’s needed for the Service Management in ITIL are:
- People: People in the IT field perform processes which are associated with ITIL Service Management.
- Processes: It includes an examination of the company’s ability to implement the required processes.
- Products: products are referred to as tools used by IT staff to implement the processes of ITIL.
- Partners: Each and every in-house or outsourced and IT organization, has partners that enable service to work properly.
22) What is the RACI model?
RACI defines as:
- Responsible: Responsibilities which are assigned to a person in order to complete a particular task.
- Accountable: The person is accountable for the specific task.
- Consulted: Groups or people consulted for the task.
- Informed: People who are kept informed about the current process of the task.
23) Explain CSI in ITIL
CSI or Continues Service Improvement is the final stage in the Lifecycle of ITIL. During this stage, services within the IT service provider are reviewed to identify the areas for improvement.
24) What are the important ITIL stages?
Important ITIL stages are:
Service Strategy Operations ensure that services such as fulfilling user requests, working on service failures, fixing problems, and carrying out routine operational tasks efficiently and effectively.
Service Design:
This stage ensures agreed service is delivered when, where, and at the defined cost.
Service Transitions: The goal of the Service Transition process is to build and deploy IT services. It also makes sure that changes to services and Service Management processes are conducted in a coordinated way.
Service Operations: This ITIL stage focuses on meeting end-users’ expectations while balancing costs and discovering any potential problems.
Continual Service Improvement: It makes sure that IT services can recover and continue from a service incident. It helps to conduct business simper analysis to prioritize business recovery.
25) What is the main difference between an incident and a problem?
An incident can be defined as an event that leads to disruptions in IT service, and a problem is the underlying reason of these incidents.
ITIL Incident Management Interview Questions and Answers for Experienced
26) Define Post Implementation Review (PIR)
Post Implementation Review is the evaluation and examination of the working process as well as a solution. It is generally performed after the change request is put into effect to ensure that the implemented changes were successful or not.
27) What is the Operational Level Agreement?
Operational Level Agreement or OLA is a contract. It emphasizes the various IT groups in a company and how they design services to support SLA.
28) Define configuration baseline
The configuration baseline in ITIL is a baseline that is used for a configuration purpose. It is managed by the change management process.
29) Mention layers of service management measurements.
Layers of service management measurements are:
- Progress: It responsible for handling the progress of the existing service operations.
- Compliance: It is mainly concern with the compliance of market standards and the trending industry process.
- Effectiveness: This measurement helps to maintain the effectiveness of the services.
- Efficiency: It helps with the efficiency of workflow and service maintenance.
30) Why Service Transition is used?
Service Transition is used to:
- Make sure that a particular service can be managed, operated as well as supported.
- Give quality knowledge of Change, Release, and Deployment.
- Plan and manage the resource and capacity and requirements to accomplish a release.
31) Mention 7 steps involved in continual service improvement
Seven steps involved in continual service improvement are:
- Find the approach for improvement
- know what should be measured
- Collect the necessary data
- Data processing
- Analyze both information and data
- Proper utilization of information
- Implement the needed improvements
32) Mention the applications of ITIL
The important areas where ITIL plays an effective are:
- IT and strategic business planning
- Implementing continuous improvement
- Obtaining and retaining the right resources and skillsets
- Reducing total cost and overall cost of ownership
- Demonstrating the business value to IT
- Helps you to measure IT organization effectiveness and efficiency
33) List some popular web-based service desk tools
Popular web-based service desk tools are:
- CA service desk
- Bugzilla
- Oracle Service Cloud
- SolarWinds Web Help Desk
- ServiceNow
- BMC
- Spiceworks Help Desk/Cloud Help Desk
- Tivoli
- C-Desk
- OTRS Free
34) Explain Return on Investment
ROI is an investment of resources taking advantage to the investor. It can be calculated as Return on investment (%) = Net profit / Investment x 100.
35) Define change management
Change management is a group of people who find and approve changes to the software. It enables to review the important changes that will take place in the future. Modifications needs and approval by ensuring they do not have any negative impact on the system.
36) Define the concept of IT policy
An IT policy is the management of communication and storage work. For example, One IT policy can be referred to as email attachment size.
37) Define Service Reporting
Service Reporting is the process of producing and delivering reports of trends and achievements against Service Levels.
38) Explain the term Service Assets and Configuration Management
Service Assets and Configuration Management (SACM) mainly deals with maintaining and verifying assets database, which are also made available to other processes.
39) Differentiate between service and product
The difference between service and product is:
| Services | Products |
|---|---|
| Services are both produced as well as consumed at the same time. | Products cannot be produced or consumed at the same time. |
| Services are inconsistent. | Products are consistent. |
| The user can participate in the production of services. | The user cannot participate in product production. |
| They are not tangible. | They are tangible. |
40) Mention processes involve in Service Design
Processes involved in service design are:
- Design coordination
- Service level management
- Service catalogue management
- Availability management
- Capacity management
- Information security management
- IT Service continuity management
- Supplier management
41) What is the responsibility of the process owner?
The process owner is responsible for the design, performance, integration, improvement, and management of a particular process.
42) Explain five qualities of information assets in IT security management?
Five qualities of information assets in IT security management are:
- Confidentiality: It ensures that the asset is available only to a particular party.
- Integrity: It ensures that an unauthorized party has not changed asset
- Availability: It makes sure that the asset may be utilized when needed
- Authenticity: Ensures that the identities of the party is genuine.
- Nonrepudiation: It ensures that transactions, once completed, must not be reversed without approval.
43) What is the significant difference between ITIL v2 and ITIL v3?
The significant difference between ITIL v2. Vs. ITIL v3 is:
| ITIL v2 | ITIL v3 |
|---|---|
| It focuses on the product, process, and people. | It focuses on a product, process, people, and partners. |
| The version provides a process-oriented approach. | The version provides Lifecycle based approach. |
| In v2 of ITIL, security management is part of the evaluation. | In v3, security management is a completely separate process. |
| Focuses on service design and strategy. | Equal attention to all processes. |
| Have 10 processes and 2 functions. | Have 26 processes and 4 functions. |
44) Define SLR
Service Level Requirements or SLR is a document having the requirements for a service from the client viewpoint to define a target.
45) What is capacity management?
Capacity Management is focused on ensuring that at all times, the cost-effective capacity exists that meets the business demands mention in SLA.
46) What is IT Service Continuity Management?
ITSCM process ensures that the service provider provides the minimum agreed-upon levels of service.
It uses techniques like Business Impact Analysis (BIA) and Management of Risk (MOR).
47) Why evaluation process is important?
The evaluation process is important because it assists you in assessing significant changes, like the introduction of a new service to an existing service.
48) What is the difference between Utility and Warranty?
| Utility | Warranty |
|---|---|
| The utility is defined as functionality offered by service or product from the customer perspective. | Warranty is defined as a promise that service or product will agree with the need. |
| The utility deals with is what the client gets. | Warranty deals with how service is delivered. |
| The utility should meet the customer requirement, that is, it should fit for the intention. | Warranty should operate the service properly. |
| Utility can increases the performance average. | Warranty can reduce performance variation. |
49) What is alert in event management process management?
An alert indicates that a failure has occurred. Alerts are created and managed by system management tools. The event management process manages the alerts.
50) Explain various types of services
Different types of services are:
- Core Service: Core service provides the basic results needed by the customers and like to invest.
- Enabling Service: Enabling service is needed to deliver core IT service. It serves the basic factors that enable the client to receive the core service. This service might not be seen by the clients.
- Enhancing Service: Enhancing services deals with those services which are added to core service to make more appealing to the clients. This service encourages customers to use core services frequently.
51) What are the resources?
Resources can be defined as a tangible assets of an organization. They can be purchased in order to deliver service. Resources include the people, applications, and IT infrastructure.
52) What are the capabilities?
Capabilities defined as an ability for coordinating, controlling, and deploying resources to create services. They can be driven by experience and are depending on the information.
53) Explain Core Services in detail
Core services give the basic results needed by the customer. These services signify the value that a customer requires.