Which statement best describes how the service desk relates to other practices?
ITIL 4 Foundation, objective 7. Seven ITIL practices in detail 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
Not correct It should resolve every contact itself, because escalating to other practices indicates a failure of the desk
Wrong, and it encourages the wrong behaviour. Escalating work that belongs elsewhere is correct practice; forcing the desk to resolve everything would either delay users or produce unsafe fixes.
Correct It relies on support from many other practices, and needs shared information and tooling so that contacts can be classified, owned and progressed
Correct. The desk depends on incident management, service request management, problem management, supplier management, configuration information and knowledge to do its job.
Not correct It directs the other practices, since incident management, problem management and change enablement all report into the service desk
Wrong. The desk coordinates and follows up on the contacts it captures, but it does not own or direct those practices. Practices are ways of working, not a reporting hierarchy with the desk at the top.
Not correct It replaces the need for problem management, because recurring calls reveal underlying causes directly
Wrong. Recurring calls are a valuable signal that feeds problem management, but analysing and removing causes is a distinct practice with its own techniques.
Why
The service desk sits at a junction. It needs support from the practices that actually resolve or fulfil what users bring, and it needs shared information — knowledge articles, configuration data, the change schedule — to classify and progress contacts intelligently. Treating escalation as failure, or treating the desk as self-sufficient, both break that design.
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