A director proposes decommissioning the entire existing service management toolset and processes on day one of a transformation, on the grounds that a clean slate avoids inherited bad habits. Which guiding principle argues against this, and why?
ITIL 4 Foundation, objective 2. The ITIL guiding principles hard
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The options
Not correct Focus on value, because the cost of rebuilding always exceeds the value the new toolset would create
'Focus on value' is about linking work to value for the service consumer and other stakeholders, not a cost-benefit rule about rebuilds. A rebuild can create value; the objection here is that the current state was never assessed.
Not correct Keep it simple and practical, because a clean slate always produces more steps than it removes
A rebuild is not automatically more complex, and this principle is about the number of steps in a way of working, not about whether to retain existing assets.
Correct Start where you are, because the current state should be assessed first so that anything already delivering value is retained rather than rebuilt
Correct. The principle explicitly cautions against starting over; existing services, processes, people and tools should be examined and reused where they support the target state.
Not correct Think and work holistically, because a clean slate would fail to account for all four dimensions of service management
A holistic view would indeed be needed when designing the replacement, but the principle that speaks directly to not throwing away what already exists, and to assessing the current state first, is 'start where you are'.
Why
'Start where you are' says that services and methods already in place should be measured and assessed directly, because they usually contain elements that can be reused to reach the desired state. Discarding everything wastes value that already exists and destroys the baseline needed to judge whether the change improved anything.
Where this comes from
- Cited
- ITIL 4 syllabus clause 2
- What it says
- Start where you are: do not start over without first assessing what is already available and reusable.
Practise this
Reading one question is not practice. The trainer will draw a set from objective 2 and space the ones you get wrong.