Created: 04 July 2022

ITIL Interview: Questions and Answers

Are you an ITIL expert and are looking for new opportunities? Take a look at the most common questions and answers for ITIL interview. 

Keyword(s): ITIL Interview

In order to do well during the interview, it is best to be well prepared or at least to know what to expect, so that the future employer does not surprise you with questions that you do not know the answers to and which will cause unnecessary stress.

Let's go through the questions and answers!

1. What is ITIL?

ITIL stands for Information Technology Infrastructure Library and it includes a set of guidelines that help software professionals with delivering best IT services. Therefore, professionals around the world use ITIL to increase the quality of their IT services.

2. Why is ITIL required?

ITIL is needed for several reasons, like:

1. Improving project delivery success;
2. Managing business and IT change;
3. Offering maximum value to your customers;
4. Enhancing resources and capabilities;
5. Providing reliable services;
6. Clearly defining roles;
7. Integrating business and service strategies;
8. Improving the relationship with your customers.

3. State the difference between ITIL and COBIT?

ITIL is used for Information Technology Service Management and has many features including designs, service strategies, operation implementations and transitions. COBIT is used to integrate information and technology. Its features include maturity models, control objectives and management guidelines. 

4. What is an Incident Management in ITIL?

ITIL Incident Management (IM) is the practice of restoring the services as quickly as possible after an incident. It is the most important component to detect and record the incident.

5. What are the advantages of ITIL?

The advantages of ITIL are mostly increasing customer satisfaction by creating a clear structure for an organisation and improving service quality. ITIL allows to improve all the decision-making processes and facilitate financial management.

6. What are the most important features of ITIL?

The most important features of ITIL are:

1. One language and terminology;
2. Related process and tasks with defined roles;
3. Focus on IT.

7. Mention the basic difference between "change requests" and a "service request"?

A change request is a proposal to make changes in a particular system or product. A service request is submitted by the user and is a request for IT service access and changing of standard.

8. What are the guiding principles in the Service Value System?

The guiding principles are:

1. Focus on value;
2. Start where you are;
3. Progress iteratively with feedback;
4. Collaborate and promote visibility;
5. Think and work holistically;
6. Keep it simple and practical;
7. Optimize and automate.

9. Explain the role of Service Operation in ITIL

Their role is to deliver and support IT services at a level that will be good for everyone involved in the process. They identify all the activities that need to be done. 

10. What are the measures of IT Service Management?

There are four measurement layers that enable managind and controlling outcomes, which are:

1. Progress: the progress of the current service operations;
2. Compliance: existing industry processes and market standards;
3. Effectiveness: the effectiveness of the service;
4. Efficiency: maintaining the workflow.

11. What are the types of SLAs?

1. Corporate SLAs cover the issues relevant to the organization. These are the same across the organization;
2. Customer SLAs refer to issues specific to the customers;
3. Service SLAs deal with issues relevant to a specific service (in relation to the customer) that can be covered. Applies to all customers that contract the same service.

12. What are the Service Portfolio, Service Catalog, and Service Pipeline?

1. The service portfolio is a repository of all the information related to the IT services in the organization;
2. The service catalog consists of links to active services with the help of their service design package;
3. The service pipeline includes references to services that are still not live yet. These plans could be proposed or under development.

13. What is a Service Request?

A service request is a request for IT service access, changing a standard, information, or advice. The service request usually covers things that have already been approved by company policy and don’t require any new additional permissions. 

14. What are the types of Service Providers?

1. Internal Service Providers: These represent the dedicated resources of a business unit and deal with organization management internally;
2. External Service Providers: These providers provide services to external customers. They handle specific and special scenarios based on market standards;
3. Shared Services: These are autonomous special units that act as internal service providers.

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

An end-user is someone who uses the product. A customer is someone who may be able to choose between products or suppliers

16. What is a Standard Change?

Standard change refers to a change that’s been implemented in the form of a service request. 

17. What is a Configuration Item?

A configuration item is a component that needs to be managed to deliver an IT service. It records information about these CIs into the configuration record, within the configuration management system. These items could be IT services, hardware, software, buildings, people, and other formal documentation. 

Let’s take a look at some more ITIL® Interview questions. 

18. What is a Warranty?

A warranty is an assurance provided by the service provider to their customers and stakeholders that their products or services meet the requirements they both agreed on. It focuses on how the service performs. It typically focuses on the service's availability, security, and capacity.

19. What is the Service Desk?

Service Desk is enables contact between the users and the service provider. Users can report any issues that they face, communicate their quaries and submit requests.

20. What are the responsibilities of a Service Desk?

• To ensure that it restores normal operations in the event of a disruption.
• To detail the steps to improve user awareness regarding IT issues and to encourage them to use IT services, components, and resources.
• To assist other IT Service Management processes and functions by escalating requests.

21. What is an IT asset?

An IT asset represents any component that’s financially valuable that eases the delivery of an IT product or service.

22. How does a known error close?

Known Error closes depending on the following conditions:

1. When all the Request for Change (RFC) records are closed;
2. The Known Error Details section must have information about a Root Cause, Solution, and Workaround before you can close the known error record;
3. When a record is in the Error Closure phase.

23. What is the objective of ITIL Change Management?

The objective of ITIL Change Management is minimizing risks in any business operations. It can be done by establishing procedures in a effective manner, using Agile approach. 

24. What is Post Implementation Review (PIR)?

Post Implementation Review (PIR) is an evaluation and analysis of the complete working solution. It will be performed after the change request is implemented to determine whether the change and its implementation request were successful.

25. What is an Operational-level agreement (OLA)?

An operational-level agreement (OLA) is a contract that describes how the various IT groups within a company design their processes and services to support service-level agreement (SLA).

26. List the various knowledge management systems?

1. Capacity Management Information System(CMIS): It is a collection of data regarding IT infrastructure usage, capacity, and performance that gathered in a consistent manner and stored in either single or series databases;
2. Availability Management Information System (AMIS): It is a collection of the Availability Management data and stored in various physical locations;
3. Known Error Database (KEDB): It is a database that defines all the known issues within a system;
4. Configuration Management Database (CMDB): It is a database used to store relevant information about software and hardware assets used in an organization and their relationships;
5. Definitive Media Library (DML): It is a secure logical library in which the definitive, authorized versions of all software media Configuration Items are stored and protected;
6. Service Knowledge Management System (SKMS): It is the primary repository of the data, knowledge, and information that the IT organization required to administer the lifecycle of its services.

27. What is Emergency Changes?

Emergency changes are changes that need to be done as soon as possible. In this case, there is no time for changes to be tested, and it makes certain decisions balancing risks and rewards.

28. What’s the difference between a Change Request and a Service Request?

A change request is a formal proposal of changes made by a service user or a stakeholder. A service request is a request for IT service access to change a standard, information, or advice. 

These are frequently asked questions during the ITIL interview. Being prepared for what may happen to you in an interview is the first step to success. If you want to train your ITIL skills, sign up for a course on our website.