An organization improves its application deployment tooling but ignores the training, roles and supplier contracts that surround it, and the expected benefit does not materialize. Which guiding principle was not applied?
ITIL 4 Foundation, objective 2. The ITIL guiding principles medium
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The options
Not correct Optimize and automate
Tooling was indeed improved, so this principle was partly served. The failure was ignoring everything around the technology, which is the holistic view.
Correct Think and work holistically
Correct. The principle requires the four dimensions of service management, including people, partners and ways of working, to be considered together rather than optimizing technology alone.
Not correct Focus on value
Value was not realized, but that is the symptom. The cause was treating one dimension in isolation from the others.
Not correct Keep it simple and practical
Nothing suggests unnecessary complexity was introduced; the problem is an incomplete scope, which this principle does not address.
Why
'Think and work holistically' means an integrated approach to the management of services, taking account of all four dimensions: organizations and people, information and technology, partners and suppliers, and value streams and processes. Improving one dimension while leaving the others untouched typically fails to deliver the intended outcome.
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
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- 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? 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