Which statement about service interfaces is untrue?
A) Service interfaces should be easy to find and should suit the range of technical awareness of the users likely to use the service.
B) Service interfaces can be of different types, e.g. technology-facilitated (both the user and the service provider can access the technology) or technology-free (neither the user nor the service provider uses the technology).
C) Service interfaces which are of the self-service type are typically cheaper than employing staff to do the same work.
D) There can only be one service interface per service.
What is a service portfolio?
A) A service portfolio records the current set of services available to customers. It is usually made widely available to be viewed, as long as any commercial and security constraints are respected.
B) A service portfolio is the set of live services on offer to the customer, together with those services that are being developed in the project teams. The descriptions of the live services are widely available, but there may be restricted access to the entries for the services under development.
C) A service portfolio contains descriptions of all live services including core and enabling services, but not any free enhancing services. It is unhelpful for customers to see detailed descriptions of free enhancing services as they may have their expectations falsely set.
D) A service portfolio contains descriptions, business cases, cost models etc for all services, whether they be live, under development or retired. Customers will usually see a view of the live services known as the service catalogue. Members of the service providing organisation may see all details of all services, enabling questions like “what is the true value of that service” to be answered.
Which of the following is the best answer when considering Return On Investment (ROI)?
A) When predicting ROI the service provider should take into account the time value of money, i.e. the fact that inflation (and possibly other factors such as exchange rates) will mean that a dollar 10 years from now is not worth as much as a dollar today.
B) Actual ROI can only be calculated once the full term of the improvement initiative has elapsed, e.g. if it is a 5 year project we must wait at least 5 years to calculate ROI.
C) When thinking of predicting ROI, calculations must exclude intangible factors since they cannot be calculated in any objective way.
D) ROI calculations should always err on the side of optimism, as hardware always gets cheaper over time.
What is the value to your customers of IT having an understanding of service strategy?
A) There is no direct value to customers, the value is mainly for the IT service provider and the customer only indirectly benefits. As customers will always need IT services, the IT provider should concentrate on strategies which provide most value for them.
B) Customers will indirectly benefit when the IT strategy lowers costs for the customers. Therefore the IT provider should be aware of what the customer’s strategies are so that they may control costs now and in the future.
C) Customers will directly benefit from IT strategies only when it forms a part of the service that is provided to the customer’s own end customers. Therefore it is not necessary to have an up-to-date strategy for services that are only indirectly utilised by the customers.
D) All customers will directly benefit when an IT strategy is aligned with their own strategies, ensuring that services facilitate the outcomes that customers are trying to achieve both now and in the future.
Which statement about governance is true?
A) Governors are usually the senior managers in an organisation as it is useful for the governors to be seen to be working on the implementation of the directives.
B) The IT department’s governance must be kept separated from the overall organisation’s governance, due to the wide access to sensitive data that IT department employees need to do their jobs.
C) The three main activities of governance are to direct, monitor and evaluate.
D) There can only be one governance board in any organisation, otherwise differing and conflicting directives may be published.
Financial Management for IT Services (FMITS) is important because?
A) FMITS is important because we must ensure that all services are correctly funded, both now and in the future.
B) FMITS is not relevant (and therefore not important) for IT departments of Small to Medium Enterprises (SMEs) as the customers of those organisations are happy to do all of the financial management for their IT costs themselves.
C) FMITS is important only if the service provider needs to directly charge customers for services, as the service provider will need to relate prices to costs.
D) FMITS is only important for service providers in regulated industries that have to show auditable data relating to profits and loss.
A Service Strategy is best thought of as?
A) A strategy can be thought of as a direction in which the service provider must travel, that allows them to meet objectives defined in terms of their customers’ outcomes while subject to a system of constraints.
A strategy may also need to take into account how the service provider differentiates itself from possible competitors.
B) A strategy is best considered as a set of detailed plans for the achievement of a service provider’s long term goals.
A strategy may also need to take into account the costs of following the plans.
C) A strategy should be thought of as boundaries beyond which the service provider should not move.
A strategy should therefore enforce decisions that are made at every level in a service providing organisation.
D) A strategy is the tool that allows governors to dictate the decisions made at lower levels in an organisation.
A strategy should therefore take into account all future possibilities.
How can we measure the value of a service?
A) The value of a service is calculated from the price the customer is charged – customers will not want to pay for expensive services.
B) The value of a service is calculated by comparing the income it generates with the costs of providing it.
C) The value of a service is ultimately decided by customers and will be based on a consideration of its utility (fitness for purpose), its warranty (fitness for use) and cost.
D) The value of a service is a purely arbitrary decision based upon the customers emotional reaction to the service.
What kinds of services are there?
A) Services are either Purchased by the customer or provided “Free”, i.e. at the service providers expense.
B) Services are either Core (the customer can see a direct connection with achievement of their outcomes), Enabling (have to be there for the core services to work) or Enhancing (provide something extra that the customer values beyond achievement of the outcomes).
C) Services are categorised as Direct or Indirect. Direct services are consumed by the users by interacting with IT technology. Indirect services are consumed in some other way, e.g. a phone call to the Service Desk.
D) Services are either Discretionary or Non-discretionary. Discretionary services must be provided by the service provider, they may choose whether or not to provide non-discretionary services.
Demand Management must be most tightly coupled with which other Service Management process?
A) Incident management, as lack of capacity is very likely to cause incidents. Therefore incident management must see all reports generated by demand management.
B) Capacity management – Demand Management understands and predicts what the users will do, from where, for how long etc. Capacity management then responds to the demand with the appropriate capacity.
C) Financial Management for IT Services (FMITS) is the most important as IT service providers are always asking for more funding to increase capacity.
D) Availability management is the most important other process, since lack of demand may mean that we have over allocated capacity for a particular service and be giving much better availability than the customer has funded.
Oops! You need to select an answer to continue.
