Within the guiding principle 'optimize and automate', what does automation mean?
ITIL 4 Foundation, objective 2. The ITIL guiding principles medium
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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
Correct Using technology to perform a step, or a series of steps, consistently and with limited or no human intervention
Correct. Automation in this principle is the use of technology to carry out steps reliably without needing a person to perform them.
Not correct Any use of information technology in the delivery of a service
Far too broad. Almost every modern service uses technology; automation specifically means removing the need for human intervention in a step.
Not correct Replacing staff with technology so that headcount and cost are reduced
Headcount reduction is a possible consequence, not the definition. The principle presents automation as a way to free people for work that needs human judgement and interaction.
Not correct Coordinating several practices so that they operate as a single value stream
That describes integrating practices into value streams, which belongs to the service value chain and to 'think and work holistically', not to the definition of automation.
Why
'Optimize and automate' pairs two ideas, and automation is the second: technology performing steps consistently and repeatedly without human intervention. The point is not to remove people but to stop spending human attention on work a machine does more reliably, and to do so only after the way of working has been optimized.
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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- 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 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