Which statement best describes the purpose of the problem management practice?
ITIL 4 Foundation, objective 6. Purpose and key terms of 15 ITIL practices medium
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The options
Not correct To align services and practices with changing business needs through ongoing improvement
That is continual improvement. It is broader than incident causes and is not limited to reducing incidents.
Not correct To minimize the negative impact of incidents by restoring normal service operation as quickly as possible
That is incident management. Its concern is speed of restoration for a live disruption, not eliminating the underlying cause.
Not correct To observe services systematically and respond to conditions that could lead to faults
That is monitoring and event management. It detects conditions; problem management analyses causes and manages known errors.
Correct To reduce the likelihood and impact of incidents by identifying their actual and potential causes and managing workarounds and known errors
Correct. All three elements of the stated purpose are present: reducing likelihood and impact, identifying actual and potential causes, and managing workarounds and known errors.
Why
The key contrast with incident management is the objective. Incident management optimizes for restoring service fast, which often means applying a workaround without ever knowing the cause. Problem management optimizes for fewer and smaller future incidents, which requires understanding the cause. Both may be active on the same outage at the same time.
Where this comes from
- Cited
- ITIL 4 syllabus clause 6
- What it says
- Problem management reduces the likelihood and impact of incidents by identifying actual and potential causes and managing workarounds and known errors.
Practise this
Reading one question is not practice. The trainer will draw a set from objective 6 and space the ones you get wrong.