Free Practice Questions for ITIL ITIL-4-Foundation Exam

Partners and suppliers are one of the four dimensions of service management that influence the effectiveness and efficiency of service delivery1. This dimension covers the relationships that an organization has with other organizations that are involved in the design, development, deployment, delivery, support, and improvement of services2. This dimension also includes the contracts, agreements, and policies that govern these relationships3. References: ITIL Foundation - ITIL 4 Edition, page 8; ITIL® 4 – A Pocket Guide, page 19; ITIL® 4 Practice Guide: Partner and Supplier Management, page 7.

It is important to understand the difference in these terms not just for clarity, but because outputs are much easier to measure than outcomes.

Outputs are nearly always quantitative, with data available to show whether these have been delivered. Outputs are easy to report on and to validate. There is no grey area.

Outcomes are more challenging to verify because they are both qualitative and quantitative. Whether your outcomes have been achieved will rely, to a great extent, on the perception of the people who receive the service. Perceptions are not easy to measure or report on, but it is essential you find a way to do so.

https://www.bmc.com/blogs/outcomes-vs-outputs/

Organizations maximize co-creation of value with their customers by facilitating the outcomes they want to achieve. The four dimensions of service management have shown that a holistic approach is the best way for an organization to:

Achieve its goals in delivering quality and cost effective services

Meet the needs of its customers

Satisfy the requirements of its stakeholders

https://www.bmc.com/blogs/itil-service-value-system/

A service relationship is defined as the cooperation between a service provider and service consumer. Service relationships are established between two or more organizations to co-create value. An organization can play the role of provider or consumer interchangeably, depending on the situation.

https://www.bmc.com/blogs/itil-key-concepts-service-management/#:~:text=and%20stakeholder%20management.-,Service%20Relationships,interchangeably%2C%20depending%20on%20the%20situation.

An SLA is defined as a documented agreement between a service provider and a customer that identifies both services required and the expected level of service.

SLAs are used to measure the performance of services from the customer’s point of view, and it is important that they are agreed in the wider business context.

Some of the key requirements for successful SLAs include:

They must be related to a defined ‘service’ in the service catalogue. Individual metrics without a specified service context are unhelpful.

They should relate to defined outcomes and not simply operational metrics. This can be achieved with balanced bundles of metrics, such as customer satisfaction and key business outcomes.

They should reflect an ‘agreement’: an engagement and discussion between the service provider and the service consumer. It is important to involve all stakeholders, including partners, sponsors, users, and customers.

They must be simply written and easy to understand and use for all parties.

https://www.bmc.com/blogs/itil-service-level-management/#:~:text=Service%20Level%20Agreements%20(SLAs) &text=Some%20of%20the%20key%20requirements,and%20not%20simply%20operational%20metrics.

This is one of the most important questions for continual improvement. This question helps to define measurable targets for the IT service provider that will help to reach the vision of the company in the long-term. At this stage, we look at the identified key performance indicators from the previous step and determine what values we want to target for each of these indicators. This decision must be made with the business’s vision in mind, but also with a sense of what is practically possible.

https://blog.masterofproject.com/continual-improvement-model/

In ITIL 4, the IT asset management practice is concerned with managing IT assets so that their value is maximized, and financial, legal, and operational risks are controlled. An IT asset is defined as any financially valuable component that can contribute to the delivery of a service.

The purpose of IT asset management includes:

Making sure IT assets are used effectively

Ensuring that IT assets are accounted for and controlled

Supporting decision-making about purchase, re-use, retirement, and disposal of IT assets

This matches option B exactly:

“Supporting decision-making about purchase, re-use, retirement, and disposal of assets.”

Why the other options are not correct:

A. Moving assets to live or other environments for testing or stagingThis is part of deployment management, whose purpose is to move new or changed components to live or test environments.

C. Making new and changed assets available for useThis relates more to release management and deployment management — getting releases into use and making them available to customers and users.

D. Providing information on how assets are configured and the relationships between themThis is the core of service configuration management, which focuses on configuration items, their attributes, and relationships in configuration records (often stored in a CMDB or CMIS).

Therefore, B is correct because it reflects the core decision-support and lifecycle focus of IT asset management.

References (ITIL 4 Foundation):

ITIL® Foundation: ITIL 4 Edition – Practice guide overview, IT Asset Management (purpose and definition of IT assets)

ITIL® Foundation: ITIL 4 Edition – Summary of the 15 ITIL practices

Sponsor: A person who authorizes budget for service consumption; e.g., the Finance Manager

https://www.bmc.com/blogs/itil-key-concepts-service-management/#:~:text=Sponsor%3A%20A%20person%20who%20authorizes,%3B%20e.g.%2C%20the%20Finance%20Manager.

A change that must be implemented as soon as possible without strictly following the standard process e.g. to resolve an incident or implement a security patch.

The process for assessment and authorization is expedited to ensure quick implementation, so scheduling and documentation is not a priority.

The change authority may be separate from what is standard or normal practice, typically smaller in number but with greater capacity to expedite approval.

https://www.bmc.com/blogs/itil-change-enablement/

In ITIL 4, value is defined as the perceived benefits, usefulness, and importance of something. Applied to services, this means that the value of a service is not just about cost savings or technical features, but how stakeholders perceive the benefits, the usefulness, and the importance they receive from using the service. This aligns directly with option A, which reflects the ITIL wording about benefits, usefulness, and importance as perceived by stakeholders.

The other options reflect different ITIL key terms:

Option B focuses only on financial benefit. While financial impact is part of value, ITIL 4 makes clear that value is broader and based on perception, not just money.

Option C describes an output: ITIL defines an output as a tangible or intangible deliverable produced by an activity.

Option D describes an outcome: ITIL defines an outcome as a result for a stakeholder enabled by one or more outputs.

Because value is specifically about perceived benefits, usefulness, and importance, the correct answer is A.