ITIL Interview Questions and Answers-(2024)

1 .

ITIL stands for Information Technology Infrastructure Library. It is a set of comprehensive practices and guidelines that helps software developers provide the best IT services according to the current market trends and requirements.

* IT helps businesses establish a competitive environment and achieve their goals in the best possible way, including better plan, management, and deliveries.

* The ITIL framework helps in standardizing the selection, planning, delivery, maintenance, and entire IT services lifecycle.

2 .

Explain the phases of the ITIL Lifecycle?

The different stages of the ITIL® life cycle are:

Service strategy : It provides a plan/ strategy for the overall life cycle of the project. In this stage, it ensures the strategy to be in sync with the business’ objectives to ensure that the customers can derive value from the customers.

Service Design : This stage involves the design of services and additional components that need to be introduced into the live environment.

Service Transition : In this phase, IT services are built and deployed. It also ensures that changes to the service and service management process happen in a coordinated manner.

Service Operations : Service Operations focus on making sure that the expectations of the end-user are met, making sure that costs and potential issues are managed.

Service Improvement : This stage involves quality management to learn from previous losses and successes. With this, the effectiveness and efficiency of IT processes and services can be improved.

3 .

What are the processes that constitute ITIL?

ITIL consists of five service publications :

* Service Strategy

* Service Design

* Service Transition

* Service Operation

* Continual Service Improvement

4 .

Compare ITIL with COBIT.

We can compare ITIL with COBIT with the help of the following table :


ITIL	COBIT
It is mainly used for ITSM (Information Technology Service Management).	It is mainly used for IT integration.
The primary function of ITIL is to implement the guidelines of an organization.	The primary function of COBIT is to derive guidelines for organizational operations.
The main application of ITL is process implementation.	The main application of COBIT is process descriptions.
It has features like design, transitions, service strategies, operation implementations, etc.	It provides features like control objectives, maturity models, management guidelines, etc.

5 .

What are some advantages of using ITIL?

The following are some advantages of ITIL :

* Financial management

* Better customer satisfaction

* Better decision-making processes

* Improved service availability

* Better control over infrastructure services

* Builds a clear structure of an organization

6 .

What are the benefits of ITIL?

The following are the significant benefits of ITIL :

* Better utilization of resources, making it cost-effective.

* Better control over business risks and service disruption.

* Provides powerful alignment between the business and IT.

* Increased customer satisfaction and better service deliveries.

* Availability of quick business change for a controlled service environment.
* An accessible and in-depth vision of a business' IT costs, including the assets.

7 .

What is meant by SLA?

SLA is a short form of 'Service Level Agreement'. It is nothing but a proposal or an agreement signed between a service provider (includes internal or external both) and the end-user. The SLA consists of the different levels of services required by the service provider.

8 .

How many types of service level agreements are there?

There are three different types of service level agreements, such as :

Customer Service Level Agreements : This type of agreement is formed between the customer and the service provider.

Internal Service Level Agreements : This type of agreement is formed between IT and internal customers (for example- any other department or site).

Vendor Service Level Agreements : This type of agreement is formed between the developer and the vendor.

9 .

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.

10 .

What are the 4 Ps of ITIL?

People : These represent the individuals who are associated with the processes and procedures.

Processes : The company’s ability to implement processes are focused on.

Products : These focus on the service itself, along with its underlying technology.

Partners : The partners who work with the IT organization to ensure that the service works properly.

11 .

Explain the Service Value System?

The service value system describes the different components and activities that synergize to create value. These include inputs, elements, outputs, and other components that are relevant to service management. ITIL-SVS

Guiding principles : These are recommendations that can help an organization in any scenario, regardless of the aim, goal, strategy, type of work, management, or structure.

Governance : It offers a structure that’ll help the organization establish and maintain control over its direction. It aims every investment the organization makes to create value and to ensure that they meet business objectives.

Service Value Chain : It is a model used for creating, delivering, and continually improving services. It involves six activities, all of which can be combined in different ways to create multiple value streams.

Practices : These are a collection of organizational resources that focus on performing some specific work or on fulfilling an objective.

Continual Improvement : Focuses on the improvement by improving the service’s effectiveness and efficiency, reducing the cost of services, resources, and other IT management practices.

Opportunity/Demand : Opportunity refers to the organization's options to deliver value to its stakeholders and improve. Demand refers to the need/ desire for products among internal and external customers.

12 .

Mention 7 steps involved in continuous service improvement.

The seven steps involved in continuous service improvement are :

* Find the focus to improve

* Know what to measure

* Collect the necessary data

* Data processing

* Analyze both information and data

* Proper use of information.

* Implement the necessary improvements

13 .

What are the layers of service management measures?

The service management measures layers are :

Progress : You are responsible for managing the progress of existing service operations

Compliance : Mainly refers to compliance with market standards and industry trend process

Effectiveness : this measure helps to maintain the effectiveness of the services

Efficiency : Helps with workflow efficiency and service maintenance

14 .

How are ICT and BCP related?

BCP is a systematic process to predict, prevent, and manage ICT, and includes :

* IT disaster recovery planning

* Wider IT resilience planning

* Elements of IT infrastructure, and services related to (voice) telephonic and data communications

15 .

Enlist a few responsibilities of problem management in context to ITIL.

The problem management in ITIL is mainly responsible for performing the followings :

* Recognizes and troubleshoot recurring incidents.

* Determines the root cause of these occurrences.

* Takes appropriate action to prevent these incidents from reoccurring.

16 .

What are the main steps involved in the problem management process?

The following are the steps involved in the problem management process :

* Workaround a solution for a problem

* Report a known error stats

* Problem resolution

* Problem closure

* Reviewing the problem

* Problem detection and logging

* Investigation of the actual reason
* Categorization of the problem and further prioritizing the problem

17 .

What is the use of event management in ITIL?

The primary use of event management is to check configuration items and services and make sure that they are continually observed. Besides, event management can also filter and categorize events, which eventually helps to find any particular actions.

18 .

What are the different service providers involved in the ITIL process?

The following are the different service providers involved in the ITIL process :

Internal Service Provider : ISP usually manages the internal business or an organization. It is a dedicated resource of the business unit that physically exists to fulfill the organization's needs.

External Service Provider : ESP usually deals with the management of an external organization. It means that ESP offers IT services and features to external customers and fulfill their needs. It is not limited to any market, business, or individual.

Shared Services Unit : SSU usually acts as an extension of ISPs. This type of provider is considered an autonomous unit within the organization.

19 .

What are the different knowledge management systems in ITIL?

The following are some main knowledge management systems :

* Definitive Media Library (DML)

* Capacity Management Information System (CMIS)

* Known Error Database (KEDB)

* Configuration Management Database (CMDB)

* Service Knowledge Management System (SKMS)

* Availability Management Information System (AMIS)

20 .

What is the significant difference between ITIL v2 and ITIL v3?

The significant differences between ITIL v2. Vs. ITIL v3 are :


ITIL v2	ITIL v3
It focuses on the product, the process, and the people	It focuses on a product, process, people, and partners
The version provides a process-oriented approach	The release provides a lifecycle-based approach
Security management is part of the assessment	Security management is a completely separate process
It focuses on the design and strategy of services	Equal attention to all processes
It has 10 processes and 2 functions	It has 26 processes and 4 functions

21 .

What is a Balanced ScoreCard (BSC)?

A Balanced ScoreCard is a strategic planning and management system that is used extensively in business, government, and nonprofit organizations worldwide. It is a part of ITIL 4 transformation that assesses an organization from four different perspectives to measure its health.

22 .

What best describes Continual Service Improvement (CSI)?

Continual Service Improvement (CSI) is best described as :

* Following the defined seven-step improvement process, including techniques and applications to ensure continual improvement

* Ensuring that there has been an incremental improvement in the quality and efficiency of services

* Discussing results with customers and measuring if the offered services have been satisfactory

* Continually defining Key Performance Indicators KPIs for effective and efficient change management

23 .

Define Operational Level Agreement (OLA).

Operational Level Agreement (OLA) is a contract, which emphasizes the different IT groups in a company and how they design their services to support SLAs.

24 .

What is Service Desk?

IT Service Desk forms the base of IT Service Management. It is the single point of contact between an IT team and the different users within an organization. Thus, if there is any interruption, incident, or alteration in the devices or software, the Service Desk intervenes. Service desks have a help desk or ticketing solution that allows the administrators to manage services based on the type of tickets generated.

The 4 dimensions of the Service Desk in the ITIL 4 version are :

Organizations and people – Includes the service management team that designs, operates, and changes service offerings.

Information and Technology – The service desk should have an information system to support it.

Value streams and processes – Built through workflows and procedures to best serve service requests and incidents

Partners and suppliers – Third parties involved, such as an outsourcing Service Desk.

25 .

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.

26 .

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.

27 .

Explain CSI in ITIL

CSI stans for 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.

28 .

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.

29 .

What is the main goal of Problem Management in ITIL?

Problem Management helps to execute the following functions :

* Recognize and mitigate recurring incidents

* Identify the root cause of these occurrences

* Prevention of the incident from reoccurring

30 .

Define service portfolio, service catalogue and service pipelines

It is not uncommon to get asked definitions in between the ITIL interview questions, therefore, to keep you prepared, here are the definitions

Service portfolio : a repository of all the information that is related to IT services in the organization

Service catalogue : contains the links of action services with the help of the service design packages.

Service pipeline : contains references of the services that have not been lived yet. These are generally plans which have been proposed or under development.

31 .

Differentiate between proactive and reactive problem management.

The main difference between proactive and reactive problem management is, proactive problem management prevents incidents from occurring by identifying potential problems and errors in the IT infrastructure whereas, reactive problem management recognizes and eliminates the root cause of incidents that are witnessed.

32 .

Differentiate between an incident and a problem.

An incident is referred to an event that leads to disturbances and disruptions in an IT service, and a problem is the underlying cause of these incidents.

33 .

What is the objective of Change Management in ITIL?

Change Management’s main objective is to manage change requests in an effective manner and with agility in order to minimize the risk and interruptions through establishing standardized procedures.

34 .

What is Post Implementation Review (PIR)?

Post Implementation Review (PIR) refers to the evaluation and analysis of the entire working process and solution. It is usually performed after the change request is put into effect to determine if the change and its implementation were successful.

35 .

Explain Capacity Managementâ€™s main objective and mention its sub-processes.

The main objective of Capacity Management is to ensure that the IT services are sized correctly in order to meet the service level targets in a cost effective manner. It includes three sub-processes :

* Business Capacity Management

* Service Capacity Management

* Component Capacity Management

36 .

Popular web-based service desk tools are :

* Oracle Service Cloud

* ServiceNow

* BMC

* Tivoli

* C-Desk

* OTRS Free

* CA service desk

* Bugzilla
* SolarWinds Web Help Desk
* Spiceworks Help Desk/Cloud Help Desk

37 .

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.

38 .

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.

39 .

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.

40 .

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.

41 .

Explain how Availability, Agreed Service Time, and Downtime are related.

Availability : It is the ability of an IT service or any of the other configuration items to perform its expected functions when required.

Agreed Service Time : It is the expected time during which the service is to be operational.

Downtime : It is the time during the agreed service time that your service isn’t operational.

42 .

Explain the difference between an End-User and a Customer.

End-user : A end-user is someone who directly receives or uses the product.

Customer : A customer is someone who defines the requirements of service and may or may not be able to choose between products or suppliers.

43 .

What is a Workaround?

A workaround is a temporary solution that resolves issues temporarily. In this case, the issue’s reason has not been identified. The time frame for a workaround isn’t usually defined and could range from a few seconds to many years.

44 .

What are some workaround or recovery options?

Recovery options are divided into three categories :

Fast recovery : This recovery takes place within 24 hours (hot standby).

Intermediate recovery : The recovery process is completed within 3 days (warm standby).

Gradual recovery : The recovery takes place in a matter of days/weeks, but always after 24 hours.

45 .

Explain the 7R's of Change Management?

Change Management in ITIL enables organizations to deploy changes without causing any downtime or any other disruption.

The 7 R’s are :

* Who RAISED the change?

* What is the REASON for the change?

* What RETURN will the change deliver?

* What RISKS are there if the change isn’t carried out?

* What are the RESOURCES required to perform the change?

* Who is RESPONSIBLE for this change?

* What is the RELATIONSHIP between this and other changes?

Moving forward in this article on ITIL Interview Questions, we’ll cover topics like emergency changes, change enablement, PDCA cycle, PIR, and so on.

46 .

Explain the plan-do-check-act (PDCA) cycle.

Businesses use the PDCA cycle for the control and continuous improvement of products and processes. The parts of the cycle are :

Plan : In this stage, the improvements are planned. Here the measure of success is measured. After performing gap analysis, it makes a plan to reduce the gap through improvements

Do : This stage involves the implementation of improvements. It is in this stage that we take steps to close the gaps determined in the previous phase

Check : This stage involves monitoring, measuring, and reviewing. The results obtained here are compared to the factors that make up success, discussed in the planning stage

Act : In this stage, the improvements identified are completely implemented

47 .

Name some knowledge management systems related to ITIL.

CMIS (Capacity Management Information System) : A Capacity Management Information System, or CMIS, collects information regarding IT infrastructure usage, capacity, and performance. The data is gathered in a consistent manner then stored in either a single or series of databases.

AMIS (Availability Management Information System) : The AMIS is a virtual repository of all Availability Management data and is usually stored in multiple physical locations.

KEDB (Known Error Database) : Known Errors are managed by the Problem Management process, with the details of each known error recorded in a Known Error Record, which is in turn stored in the Known Error Database (KEDB).

48 .

What type of information is stored in a CMDB?

CMDB contains contents that are intended to hold a collection of IT assets commonly referred to as configuration items (CI) as well as descriptive relationships between such assets.

49 .

What is a PIR?

PIR (Post Implementation Review) is an evaluation that takes place after a change or a project has been implemented. Once a change request is made, the review checks if the change and its implementation were successful. It is the analysis of the final working solution that evaluates whether project objectives were met, determines how effectively the project was run, and ensures that the organization gets the greatest benefit from the project

Post Implementation Review helps in answering questions like :

* Has the change solved the problem it aimed to address?

* Did the change impact the customers?

* Were resources allocated effectively through the process?

* Was the change implemented as per the budget?

50 .

What is CSF?

Critical Success Factor(CSF) refers to an element mandatory for the successful achievement of a task. It drives any company forward and meets the business goals through its strategy.

51 .

What is data leakage?

It refers to an unauthorized data transmission, either electronically or physically, from an organization to any external destination or recipient. The most common forms of data leakage are through web, email, and mobile data storage devices.

52 .

Which factors contribute to data leakage?

The most common factors leading to data leakage include :

* Corrupt hard-drive

* Human Error

* Inadequate security control for shared drives

* Malware

* Misuse

* Outdated data security

* Physical theft of data

* System misconfiguration

* Technology error

* Unprotected data back up

53 .

How to prevent data leakage?

Data leakage is a serious issue and thus there is a need to devise a proper strategy to tackle it. Data Loss Prevention (DLP) is a practice adopted by organizations to safeguard their data. Under this practice, users are not allowed to send confidential or sensitive information outside of the enterprise network. This requires businesses to distinguish the rules that classify confidential and sensitive information such that any user does not disclose it maliciously or even accidentally.

54 .

What is an XSS attack?

Cross-site Scripting (XSS) is another type of vulnerability that can be technically described as a client-side code injection attack. In this particular attack, an attacker injects malicious data into vulnerable websites. An attack happens when a user visits the web page, as malicious code is then executed. This attack is very harmful to web application users.

55 .

What are the different types of XSS attacks?

There are three types of XSS attacks :

* Non-Persistent XSS attack : Here the data injected by an attacker is reflected in the response and has a link with the XSS vector

* Persistent XSS attack : The most harmful type of attack, where the script executes automatically the moment a user opens the page

* Document Object Model (DOM)-based XSS attack : An advanced type of XSS attack which happens when a web application writes data to the DOM without any sanitization

56 .

What are the objectives of the IT Service Continuity Management (ITSCM)?

The objectives of IT Service Continuity Management (ITSCM) are :

* To analyze the risks

* To assist with issues that are related to continuity and recovery

* Maintain a set of plans on IT service continuity and IT recovery

57 .

What are ITSCM and BCP?

ITSCM : IT Service Continuity Management is a practice that allows information security professionals to develop IT infrastructure recovery plans

BCP : Business Continuity Planning is the process by which a company creates a prevention and recovery system from potential threats.

58 .

What is Service Validation and Testing? Name its process activities.

Service Validation and Testing refers to the testing of services during the Service Transition phase. It ensures that the newly implemented or modified IT service meets its design specification as well as the business needs. It can be applied throughout the service lifecycle to assure the quality of any aspect of service.

The process activities of Service Validation and Testing are :

* Validation and test management

* Test planning and designing

* Verifying the test plans and designs

* Preparing the test environment

* Performing the tests

* Evaluating the exit criteria and report

* Test clean up and closure

59 .

What are strategic/tactical/operational level changes?

The three levels where changes can be directed are explained below:

Strategic level change : It deals with the direction (business strategy) that a business is taking. A strategic level change is managed and carried out by senior managers.

Tactical changes : These changes refer to changes in the existing or new services that are required as a result of changing strategic direction. These changes are managed by middle management.

Operational changes : These changes are due to operational level changes in process and usually are driven by technology or service changes. They are managed by operation staff.