A programme has been running for eleven months with no deliverable released, because the team intends to hand over the complete solution in one go. Which guiding principle is being ignored?
ITIL 4 Foundation, objective 2. The ITIL guiding principles medium
Machine-checked — no person has signed for it. This question was read against the source cited below by an automated pass, which found no contradiction. That is a weaker claim than it sounds: the same kind of process wrote the question, so it can confirm its own mistake.
Treat it as a good draft rather than as settled fact, and read the source below before you rely on it. It is not used in mock exams here — only questions a person has signed for are.
How these questions are written — where each question comes from, what the verification ledger records, and what happens when one is found wrong.
The options
Not correct Start where you are
This concerns assessing and reusing the current state at the outset. Nothing in the scenario says the team discarded existing assets.
Not correct Focus on value
Plausible, since value is delayed, but the specific fault described is the all-at-once delivery structure, which is precisely what iterative progress with feedback addresses.
Not correct Collaborate and promote visibility
This concerns involving the right stakeholders and making work and its status visible. The scenario describes delivery sequencing, not who is involved or what is hidden.
Correct Progress iteratively with feedback
Correct. The principle says not to attempt everything at once; organize work into smaller pieces that are completed in a timely way, each producing feedback that shapes the next.
Why
'Progress iteratively with feedback' rejects the single big-bang delivery. Work is divided into manageable iterations that are executed and completed in a timely manner, with feedback sought before, during and after each one so that the next iteration can be adjusted. Eleven months without a deliverable removes every chance to learn and correct.
Where this comes from
- Cited
- ITIL 4 syllabus clause 2
Practise this
Reading one question is not practice. The trainer will draw a short set from objective 2 and space the ones you get wrong.
More questions on this objective
- A team has been asked to replace an ageing service desk tool. Before designing anything, the team inventories the existing tool's integrations, workflows and data, and finds that several components work well and can be carried forward. Which guiding principle is the team applying? machine-checked
- An organization decides to introduce robotic process automation for its user access request handling. Its ITIL adviser insists that the approval steps are first reviewed and the redundant ones removed. What is the reasoning behind this advice? machine-checked
- A manager plans a service improvement using only the monthly summary reports produced by the supplier, and does not observe how the service actually runs. Which guiding principle most directly cautions against this? machine-checked
- During an improvement review, a team finds that a weekly reconciliation report is produced, circulated and archived, but no one uses it for any decision. Which guiding principle states directly that an activity like this should be eliminated? machine-checked
- A change to a payment service is planned by the application team alone. When deployed, it breaks a downstream reporting service and leaves the support team without updated documentation. Which guiding principle would most likely have prevented this? machine-checked
- Two teams each maintain their own private backlog and status spreadsheet. Work is regularly duplicated and urgent items are deprioritized because leadership cannot see them. Which guiding principle addresses this situation? machine-checked