A manager argues that since the service desk logs and resolves incidents, the organisation does not need a separate incident management practice. Why is this reasoning wrong?
ITIL 4 Foundation, objective 7. Seven ITIL practices in detail hard
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The options
Correct The service desk is a point of contact that captures and coordinates demand, while incident management is the practice that governs how incidents are resolved wherever they are handled
Correct. The desk is where much incident work is initiated and coordinated; incident management defines how incidents are diagnosed, prioritised, escalated and resolved, including by teams the user never contacts.
Not correct The service desk handles only service requests, and never touches incidents
Wrong. Capturing demand for incident resolution is explicitly part of the desk's purpose, and desks resolve many incidents at first contact.
Not correct Incident management covers only major incidents, so routine desk work falls outside it entirely
Wrong. Major incidents follow a separate, faster procedure, but they are one category within incident management — the practice governs incidents of every priority, including those the desk closes at first contact.
Not correct The service desk exists only to escalate work, and is not permitted to resolve anything itself
Wrong. Modern service desks resolve a large share of contacts at first line using knowledge, tooling and automation; escalation is one option, not their only function.
Why
The two are related but not interchangeable. The service desk is an organisational point of contact and a demand-capture function that shapes the user's experience; incident management is the practice that defines how incidents are handled end to end, including by specialist teams working far from the desk. Collapsing one into the other loses either the user-experience focus or the resolution discipline.
Where this comes from
- Cited
- ITIL 4 syllabus clause 7
Practise this
Reading one question is not practice. The trainer will draw a short set from objective 7 and space the ones you get wrong.
More questions on this objective
- Which statement best describes what the incident management practice is intended to achieve? machine-checked
- How is an incident defined in ITIL? machine-checked
- Several incidents are open at once and the support team must decide which to work on first. On what basis should the order be decided? machine-checked
- A difficult incident is worked on by pulling several specialists from different teams into the same session at the same time; once it becomes clear who is best placed to continue, the others step away. What is this technique called? machine-checked
- Why does an organisation define a separate procedure for major incidents rather than handling them exactly like all other incidents? machine-checked
- A support team routinely fixes incidents by phone and updates the incident record only with the word 'fixed'. What is the most significant consequence of this? machine-checked