Service Strategy

Question 1

What are the reasons that ITIL has seen success as it has?

Answer 1

It is vendor-neutral, it is “non-prescriptive” (that is, its practices are applicable to all service providers), and its practices are “best practices.

Question 2

What are the five stages of the service lifecycle?

Answer 2

Service strategy
Service design
Service transition
Service operation
Continual service improvement

Question 3

What is the purpose of the service strategy phase?

Answer 3

The service strategy phase is meant to define the four P’s:
Perspective
Position
Plans
Patterns
These are what a service provider needs to execute in order to meet an organization’s business outcomes.

Question 4

What are the main objectives of service strategy?

Answer 4

The main objectives of service strategy are to provide an understanding of:

• our service(s) and the customers who use them, and why.
• how our services create value, how they are created, supported/funded, delivered, and why. In addition, documentation.
• ow to identify new opportunities to provide services and how to exploit them.

Question 5

What processes are within the scope of service strategy?

Answer 5

The following processes are within the scope of service strategy:

• Strategy management for IT services
• Service portfolio management
• Financial management for IT services
• Demand management
• Business relationship management

Question 6

What is the business value of service strategy?

Answer 6

The business value of service strategy is seen in the following:

• The ability to link the actual activities to the outcomes the customer wants (giving value to them).
• The ability to understand what service levels are most useful for customers’ success, allowing the service provider to arrange itself to offer those levels quickly & easily.
• Enable quick response from the service provider.
• Support for the creation of a service portfolio.
• Aid in communication between the provider and customer.

Question 7

How would you define the value of a service?

Answer 7

The value of a service is the level to which the service meets the customer’s expectations. The value comes entirely from what the service allows someone to do.

Question 8

What are the main characteristics of service value?

Answer 8

The main characteristics of service value are:

• Value is defined by the customer
• Customers will select the service that, to them, has the best fit of features to cost.
• Value is measured by customers in terms of how much the service helps them meet their goals.
• The value of a service may change over time.

Question 9

What are the three pieces of information that are necessary to understand a service’s value?

Answer 9

• What services does IT provide?
• What do the services achieve?
• How much do the services cost?

Question 10

What determines how a customer perceives the value of a service?

Answer 10

The customer’s value from a service is determined by:

• Customer Preference
• Customer Perception
• Customer’s Actual End Result (what they got)

Question 11

What are the components of a customer’s perception of a service’s value?

Answer 11

• Reference Value: The starting point for customer value. It’s the good things they’ve heard about the service, or how much they hate doing it themselves.
• Positive Difference: The positive difference is the perceived benefits the service will bring, based on the additional warranty and utility of the service.
• Negative Difference: This is what the customer sees themselves losing by taking on the service; things like quality issues, hidden costs, etc.
• Net Difference: How the customer actually sees the service, looking at both good and bad.

Question 12

It can be said that customers do not buy services. What do they actually buy?

Answer 12

Customers do not buy services, instead buying the fulfillment of their particular needs.

Question 13

In regards to the value of a service from a customer’s perspective, what is “reference value”?

Answer 13

Reference value is any prior expectation the customer has of the potential new service, compared to previous experiences or research with similar services. This might be a comparison of cost, quality, or even reputation with alternatives.

Question 14

In regards to reference values, what actually drive the customer’s decision to invest in the service?

Answer 14

The customer will take their reference value expectations, and determine if the service is, all-in-all, better than the reference value, taking into consideration any negatives.

Question 15

Why are services different from products in regards to supply and demand?

Answer 15

Products can be pre-made to meet future demand; services cannot, and therefore must be synchronized with demand as it fluctuates.

Question 16

What is a pattern of business activity?

Answer 16

A pattern of business activity, or PBA, is a recognized pattern of demand for a service as observed over a period of time.

Question 17

What elements make up a formal Pattern of Business Activity profile?

Answer 17

A Pattern of Business Activity profile should include the following:
Classification - The classification of the PBA includes whether it is automated or user-driven, the outcomes of the PBA, and the workload supported.
Attributes - Attributes are things like frequency, volume, location, duration.
Requirements - Requirements detail necessary service levels, performance, availability, security, latency, etc.
Service Asset Requirements - This details what resources are necessary and when they will be necessary.

Question 18

What is a service portfolio, and what purpose does it serve?

Answer 18

A service portfolio outlines all the available services that the service provider… provides? It describes specific business needs that the customer might have, and the service to satisfy that need. It is not necessarily customer-facing, as it also outlines retired services, as well as services in the “pipeline”. It also may list third-party services that are necessary to primary services, and detail how the services interrelate to one another.

Question 19

If the service portfolio shows services that are not “customer-facing”, how, then, can the customer make sense of it?

Answer 19

Service portfolios generally have a multitude of views, filters that remove unnecessary elements depending on the intended audience.

Question 20

What is a service catalogue?

Answer 20

A service catalogue is a document that contains all live services, including those that are available for deployment. It includes two types of service: Customer-facing services, and the supporting services that are required to deliver those customer-facing services.

Question 21

What are the two views that a service catalogue is recommended to have?

Answer 21

A service catalogue should have a view for customers, showing customer-facing services, and a view for the IT service provider, showing all the supporting services.

Question 22

What document is key to the decision-making process of determining what initiatives to fund and sponsor? Why?

Answer 22

A business case is invaluable to determining which initiatives to support. This is because a good business case outlines the costs, risks, and benefits of a project. It will even provide an analysis of desired non-financial business impacts that will occur because of the project.

Question 23

What is governance, and why is it important?

Answer 23

Governance is how a business defines common directions, policies, and rules that the business and IT “live by”, as well as defining roles and responsibilities, measuring and reporting, and taking actions to resolve identified issues. This gives a baseline for projects to build off of.

Question 24

What is risk?

Answer 24

Risk is a possible event that could cause harm or loss, or affect the ability to achieve objectives.

Question 25

How is risk measured?

Answer 25

Risk is measured by the probability of the threat, the vulnerability of the asset to that threat, and the impact that it would have if it occurred. The act of determining risk is known as "risk assessment."

Question 26

What does risk management entail?

Answer 26

Risk management entails monitoring risks, having access to reliable and up-to-date information on risks, putting controls in place to manage risk, and to ensure that the decision-making processes are kept informed of risk.

Question 27

What three service strategy processes does the ITIL Foundation cover?

Answer 27

The ITIL Foundation covers three main service strategy processes: 1. Service portfolio management 2. Financial management for IT services 3, Business relationship management

Question 28

Why is service portfolio management important?

Answer 28

Service portfolio management ensures that the service provider has the right mix of services to meet required business outcomes at an "appropriate" level of investment.

Question 29

What does service portfolio management entail?

Answer 29

Service portfolio management monitors the investment in various services throughout their life cycles, working with other service management processes to ensure that appropriate returns are being achieved. It also ensures that services are somehow linked to business outcomes.

Question 30

What is the scope of service portfolio management?

Answer 30

The scope of service portfolio management is basically 100%. It covers all potential services, services being currently offered, and services that have been retired.

Question 31

What does financial management for IT services do?

Answer 31

Financial management for IT services keeps track of an IT service provider's budgeting, accounting, and charging requirements. This

Question 32

What is the point of financial management for IT services?

Answer 32

Financial management for IT services is supposed to secure the needed funding to design, develop, and deliver services that meet the organization's strategy. It maintains the balance between cost and quality of service, between supply and demand of the service.

Question 33

What is the scope of financial management for IT services?

Answer 33

The scope of financial management for IT services is somewhat narrow, only encompassing budgeting, accounting, and charging.

Question 34

What does business relationship management do? How does it do it?

Answer 34

Business relationship management revolves around building good relationships with customers. It identifies customer needs and ensures that the service provider can meet those needs.

Question 35

What is service strategy?

Answer 35

Service strategy is the core component in the ITIL service lifecycle, the methodology of the service provider, identifying who the customers are, what they need, and how we give it to them.

Question 36

What is service design?

Answer 36

Service design is a phase in the ITIL service lifecycle, wherein the design and development of services and service management is handled. The scope includes changes necessary to either maintain or improve customer value, service levels, continuity, etc.

Question 37

What is service transition?

Answer 37

Service transition is a phase in the ITIL service life cycle in which the new and changed services are introduced to supported environments, while controlling risk and supporting knowledge about the change-over.

Question 38

What is service operation?

Answer 38

Service operation is a phase in the ITIL service life cycle in which the status quo is enforced, so that other changes can be made without problems. Incident management happens here.

Question 39

What is continual service improvement?

Answer 39

Continual service improvement is an ongoing "phase" of the ITIL service lifecycle, where opportunities for improvements are sought out and developed, while maintaining a connection to the overall business/service strategy.

Question 40

What is the business value of service strategy?

Answer 40

The business value of service strategy is that it lets us link the customer outcomes that we support to our own support activities; this shows that we provide more than just costs. It also lets us anticipate changes in our service as the needs of the customer change.

Question 41

How is the value of a service defined?

Answer 41

The value of a service is defined by how closely the service meets a customer's expectations. This is because services have zero value without customers. To figure that out we need: The services provide, what they do, and how much they cost. The value is determined by what the customer prefers, what they perceive, and what they actually get.

Question 42

What is reference value?

Answer 42

Reference value is the starting point for a customer's perception of an organization or service. This can be from word-of-mouth, or how much the customer hates providing the service for themselves. Basically, the value they put on the service being done for them.

Question 43

Define pattern of business activity.

Answer 43

A pattern of business activity is the workload profile of one or more business activities. It allows for us to anticipate and plan for changes in demand levels.

Question 44

Define service portfolio.

Answer 44

A service portfolio is a complete set of services that a service manager provides. It includes the service pipeline (in development), the service catalog (current services), and retired services.

Question 45

Define service catalog.

Answer 45

A service catalog is a database (or structured document) with information about any live IT services, including those that could be deployed. There are two types of services, which make up two different views, those of supporting services required by the service provider to provide customer-facing services, and customer-facing services themselves.

Question 46

What is a business case?

Answer 46

A business case is a description of the objectives and likely outcomes of a business decision. It's generally used as justification for a significant expenditure. It usually includes info on costs, benefits, options, and risks.

Question 47

Define governance.

Answer 47

Governance is the process of implementing and enforcing policies and strategy within an organization. It includes defining roles, measuring and reporting, and resolving identified issues.

Question 48

Define risk.

Answer 48

Risk is a possible event that could cause harm or loss, or affect the ability to achieve objectives.

Question 49

Define risk assessment.

Answer 49

Risk assessment is the gathering of information about exposure to risk. It is done to allow intelligent decisions about risk.

Question 50

Define risk management.

Answer 50

Risk management is the process of monitoring risk, while having access to reliable & up-to-date risk information, and having processes in place to deal with risks.