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ITILSC-SOA – ITIL Service Capability Service Offerings and Agreements

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Showing 1–3 of 5 questions

Question 1

Scenario

The IT organization of a manufacturing company is carrying out an annual review of its service portfolio. There is limited budget available for the next year and some projects may be delayed or cancelled. The company has control of most of its IT services, however some are mandated by the company's corporate owners.

The following services are under review:

Service 1: Web ordering service. This is a new service that will enable the company to fulfill its strategy to sell products on-line and increase its customer base by 20%. Only high-level business requirements have been established so far but. if the project goes ahead, the system will be provided by a supplier using standard applications and technology. A business case has been created which shows the ratio of value-to-cost to be much greater than one.

Service 2: Sales office service. The service has grown from a number of separate applications that have been combined into one suite. The technical solution for each application is similar but some use different versions of the same operating system. The applications themselves provide the required utility and support their business outcomes well. There is some overlap in functionality across the set of applications contained in the service suite.

Service 3: Finance reporting service. The service is used by the finance department to create statutory reports to fulfill legal obligations. The service is hosted on a legacy system. The cost of supporting the service is increasing gradually and the return obtained from the service is decreasing. Eventually the service will be replaced by the new enterprise resource planning (ERP) service. It is projected that, over the next two years, the ratio of value-to-cost will drop to less than one.

Service 4: This is a new ERP service that is being implemented across all companies in the corporate group. It will eventually replace many existing services including the finance reporting service. The service has been approved and chartered, and has a current status of "design". A large number of assets have been allocated to this project. As this service is mandated by the corporate owners, no further decision is required.

Refer to Scenario:

As part of the service portfolio management team you have been asked to recommend whether investments should be made in these services in the next year.

Which of the following options is the BEST set of decisions to make for the services?

Select an option, then click Submit answer.

  • ○

    Service 1 - invest. Charter the service and set up a service design project
    Service 2 - replace. Set up project to replace the set of applications with a single application designed to support the business outcomes
    Service 3 - retire. Mark the service for retirement and set up a retirement project. This will make best use of resources and ensure that information is migrated to the ERP service.
  • ○

    Service 1 - promote to the service catalogue, project
    Service 2 - retain. Keep the service and support
    Service 3 - delay decision. It is likely that this project will use assets that will be allocated review. Allocate resources to the transition stage of the it in its current form service will be retired, but not yet. The retirement elsewhere this year. Reconsider at next annual
  • ○

    Service 1 - invest. Charter the service and set up a service design project
    Service 2 - rationalize. Set up a project to identify the best way of retaining the support of the business outcomes but eliminating the duplication of functionality and supporting components Service 3 - delay decision. It is likely that this service will be retired, but not yet. The retirement project will use assets that will be allocated elsewhere this year. Reconsider at next annual review.
  • ○

    Service 1 - promote to the service catalogue. Allocate resources to the transition stage of the project
    Service 2 – re-factor. Set up project to redesign the applications to concentrate on the core functionality of the service Service 3 - retain. As the service is needed to fulfill legal and statutory compliance it should be retained.
Question 2

Scenario

A clothing manufacturer has made a decision to supplement factory-based retail outlets by opening a series of stores at out-of-town shopping malls.

The internal IT organization provides support to many mission-critical business systems for both the manufacturing and retail operations. It must increase its portfolio of services and service options to meet the planned new expansion. Typically, the business is subject to seasonal patterns of demand, which recently have begun to exceed the capability of some of the IT services. This has led to periods of poor performance of some of the critical systems and therefore to degraded service quality. In periods of minimal demand, there is a surplus of capacity and performance is optimal.

There is concern that the additional business demand from the new stores will exacerbate these service performance issues.

The board of directors, made up of representatives from each business unit, has asked for a review of the business supply and demand issues currently being faced by the IT organization. Many service management processes have been implemented including service portfolio management and capacity management. However, IT does not have a demand management process.

Additionally, performance levels on many of the supporting services have remained unchanged for the past 3 years, even though some may now be less relevant to the overall performance of the critical services.

Refer to the Scenario.

The review of the supply and demand issues concluded that the implementation of a demand management process could help the IT organization address the issues. Which one of the following options provides the BEST solution to both the problems currently being faced and those related to the proposed expansion?

Select an option, then click Submit answer.

  • ○

    The service portfolio should be reviewed and an analysis carried out of each business unit’s requirements in order to understand their patterns of business activity (PBA) and corresponding usage of the IT services.
    Differentiated service offerings should be developed to match PBA; this will make better use of available IT resources. Supporting service performance targets should be amended to reflect these changes.
    Work with business relationship management and capacity management to develop long term plans to meet the extra demand resulting from the company’s expansion plans.
  • ○

    An analysis should be carried out of each business unit’s patterns of business activity (PBA), and appropriate services for each business unit selected from the service catalogue. In conjunction with the finance department, a revised cost model should be introduced to allow for the fluctuation in usage and costs. Differential charging should be introduced to address the issues of service quality.
  • ○

    The service portfolio should be reviewed and an analysis carried out of each business unit’s requirements to understand their current usage of the IT services and where seasonal variations lead to fluctuations in usage.
    Discussions should take place with the business units to impose limits within specific time periods for each business unit’s usage of IT services.
    Work with business relationship management and capacity management to develop long term plans to meet the extra demand resulting from the company’s expansion plans.
  • ○

    The service portfolio should be reviewed and the business unit’s cumulative service usage should be reviewed, monitored and analyzed.
    Work with the business to develop short-term measures to manage demand for the IT services, such as delayed or batch processing of retail transactions.
    Service levels should be reviewed to take into account changes to supporting service performance targets and, where applicable, agreements should be updated through change management.
Question 3

Scenario

A commercial IT services company has been successful for many years. Its key strategic differentiator has been the provision of new services to meet customers’ needs in very short lead times. Recently profits have dipped, forcing senior management to take a look at the lifecycle costs of providing the IT services to their external customers.

The organization has had a service catalogue containing customer and supporting views for some time. It is an essential source of information about the IT services and is used by both the business relationship managers and the IT services teams. Services are designed internally but often transitioned and operated in partnership with other suppliers.

For each service, the service catalogue currently contains:

A description of the service

Summary of the service level targets

The level of support and support details

Details of the supporting services and components

Details of services obtained from suppliers

When sales leads are obtained from potential new customers, the requirements are compared with services in the service catalogue and, if no matching service can be found, a project is set up to quickly develop a new service. In the past this has been justified as meeting the needs of the customers, and full business cases were not developed.

A senior service manager has suggested introducing a service portfolio management process and needs to get the support of the IT management team. The management team wishes to know what extra information would be included in a service portfolio over and above what is already in the service catalogue and what value it would be to them.

The company is looking to restrict investment in new resources. Therefore, only a few projects can be authorized in the next budget cycle.

Refer to the Scenario.

Which one of the following sets of statements BEST describes the elements that a service portfolio contains in addition to the elements in a service catalogue, and describes the additional value service portfolio management would bring to the IT services company in resolving their current issues?

Select an option, then click Submit answer.

  • ○

    The service portfolio will include: resource allocation; support terms and conditions; ordering and request procedures; the value proposition; offerings and packages.
    The service portfolio will show where additional resources will be required to operate new services.
    Service portfolio management will enable the organization to rationalize existing services to optimize the use of resources.
  • ○

    The service portfolio will include: business cases; risks; business outcomes supported; cost and pricing.
    The service portfolio will show the proportion of resources acquired from key suppliers so that the cost of new services can be accurately estimated.
    Creating a service portfolio that includes services in the service pipeline, as well as those in the service catalogue, will enable new services currently being developed to be included in service offerings. This increased visibility of new services extends the range available for new opportunities.
  • ○

    The service portfolio will include: ordering and request procedures; service level targets; support terms and conditions; details of services obtained from suppliers.
    The service portfolio will show the resources and capabilities that are needed to improve the services in the service catalogue.
    Service portfolio management will enable the organization to expand the service catalogue to include details of service requests and standard changes, providing a valuable self-help portal to users.
  • ○

    The service portfolio will include: business cases; risks; investment priorities; value propositions.
    The service portfolio will show where resources are used across all stages of the service lifecycle both within the provider and where they have been acquired from suppliers. Service portfolio management will improve the organization’s ability to compare potential investments and make sound decisions.