ITIL Interview Questions

If you’re looking to take your career in ITIL analytics to the next level but wondering how to prepare yourself to crack the ITIL interview? Well, you have reached the right place.

Mindmajix has listed the most advanced ITIL interview questions and answers 2024 for both freshers and experienced professionals on this page. These are drafted by ITIL experts and they will help you to clear the ITIL interview and procure a dream career as an ITIL analyst.

We have categorized ITIL Interview Questions into 3 levels they are:

• Beginners
• Scenario-Based
• Experienced

Top Frequently Asked ITIL Interview Questions in 2024

1. What is ITIL?
2. Difference between ITIL and COBIT
3. Explain the benefits of ITIL
4. How an Incident Management System Works?
5. What is an SLA?
6. What is the objective of a Balanced Scorecard?
7. What is the Freeze period in ITIL?
8. How does a known error close?
9. Explain Work-around?
10. What is the Configuration baseline in ITIL?

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ITIL vs COBIT

The following are the major differences between ITIL vs COBIT:

Details	COBIT	ITIL
Purpose	Integration of IT	ITSM(Information Technology Service Management)
Latest Version	COBIT 5 - April 2012	ITIL V4 - 2019
Operations	To derive guidelines for organizational operations	To implement guidelines of an organization
Application	Process descriptions	Process implementations
Additional features	control objectives, management guidelines, maturity models	Service strategies, design, transitions, operation implementations

Basic ITIL Interview Questions for Beginners

1. What is ITIL^®?

Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) is a collection of comprehensive practices for IT Service Management (ITSM), which focuses on IT services alignment with the requirements of business needs.

It helps businesses to achieve their mission with the best way to plan, manage, and deliver.

2. ITIL V3 framework consists of which processes?

ITIL V3 organizes ITIL processes into five service lifecycle stages:

• Service strategy
• Service design
• Service transition
• Service operation
• Continual service improvement.

3. Explain the benefits of ITIL?

The major benefits of ITIL are listed below:

• Powerful alignment between the business and IT
• Improves customer satisfaction and service delivery
• Improved utilization of resources by lowering costs
• Comprehensive visibility of IT costs and assets
• Better administration of business risk and service disruption
• Supports constant business change for a stable service environment.

4. What are the benefits of implementing an ITIL service desk?

The main benefits of Service Desk implementation are:

• Increased first call resolution
• Improved tracking of service quality
• Improved recognition of trends and incidents
• Improved employee satisfaction
• Skill-based support
• Rapid restoration of service
• Improved incident response time
• Quick service restoration.

5. What processes are utilized by the Service Desk?

Workflow and procedures diagrams.

6. What are the objectives of Incident Management?

The main objectives of the incident management process are listed below:

• Assure that regulated methods and procedures are used for the prompt and efficient response, reporting of incidents, documentation, analysis, and ongoing management 
• Progress visibility and communication of incidents to IT support staff and business
• Improve the business perception of IT by resolving and reporting incidents when they occur 
• Align Incident Management activities and priorities accordingly
• Manage user satisfaction with the quality of IT services.

7. How an Incident Management System Works?

• Records incidents
• Lists them depending on their impact and urgency
• Authorizes the incident to the relevant responding personnel
• Resolution and recovery.

8. What are the stages of incident management in ITIL?

Incident Management is the process of managing the lifecycle of incidents that are reported. It consists of several steps that must be carried out to resolve and document the incidents. 

The following are the steps of the incident management process:

• Step 1: Incident identification
• Step 2: Incident logging
• Step 3: Incident categorization
• Step 4: Incident prioritization
• Step 5: Incident response
• Step 6: Initial diagnosis
• Step 7: Incident escalation
• Step 8: Resolution and recovery
• Step 9: Incident closure.

9. What is an SLA?

An SLA (Service Level Agreement) is a commitment between a service provider (internal or external) and the end-user. It represents the level of service assumed by the service provider.

10. Explain different types of SLA.

Service Level Agreements are defined into three types:

• A customer service level agreement exists between you and an external customer. 
• An internal service level agreement exists between you and an internal customer (such as another organization, site, or department).
• A vendor service level agreement exists between you and the vendor.

11. What is the purpose of Problem Management in ITIL?

• Identify and troubleshoot potentially recurring incidents
• Determine the root cause
• Take steps to prevent the incident from reoccurring.

12. What are the stages in the overall Problem Management Process? 

• Detect and log the problem
• Categorize and prioritize the problem
• Investigate and diagnose 
• Identify a workaround for the problem
• Raise a known error record
• Resolve the problem
• Close the problem
• Review the problem.

13. What is a Known Error?

A Known Error is a problem that has a recorded root cause and a workaround. 

A Known Error record contains the following:

• Status
• Error description
• Root cause
• Workaround.

Problem + RootCause + Workaround = Known Error

14. How does a known error close?

Known Error closes depending on the following conditions:

• When all the Request for Change (RFC) records are closed.
• The Known Error Details section must have information about a Root Cause, Solution, and Workaround before you can close the known error record.
• When a record is in the Error Closure phase.

15. What are the objectives of IT Service Continuity Management?

• Analyzing the risks.
• Testing back-out arrangements.
• Drawing up back-out scenarios.

16. What is the purpose of Configuration Management in ITIL?

The primary purpose of Configuration Management is to collect, store, manage, update, and verify data on IT assets and configurations in the enterprise.

17. What is a plan–do–check–act (PDSA) cycle and define its phases?

The PDSA cycle is a 4-step management method used for control and continuous improvement of a product/process in a business. It is also known as the Deming cycle/ circle/wheel.

The phases are categorized into:

• Plan: Recognizing and analyzing the problem
• Do: Developing and testing a solution to the problem
• Check: Checking how effective the test solution handles the problem, and analyzing whether it could be improved in any way
• Act: Implementing the improved solution effectively.

18. Explain the difference between a project and a process?

• A project has a finite lifespan.
• A process is continuous and has no end date.

19. Explain the responsibilities of an ITIL Service Desk?

• Log, categorize and prioritize incidents
• Investigate and diagnose 
• Incident resolution
• Handling of major incidents
• Incident management reporting.

20. What’s the difference between proactive and reactive problem management?

The major difference between reactive and proactive problem management is reactive problem management identifies and eliminates the root cause of known incidents, whereas proactive problem management prevents incidents by finding potential problems and errors in the IT infrastructure.

21. What’s the difference between an Incident and a Problem? 

• Incident: an incident is an event that leads to an unplanned interruption to an IT service.
• The problem: a problem is an underlying cause of one or more incidents.

22. What is the objective of ITIL Change Management?

The primary objective of change management is to minimize the risk and disruption in business operations by establishing standardized procedures in managing change requests in an agile and effective manner.

23. What is Post Implementation Review (PIR)?

Post Implementation Review (PIR) is an evaluation and analysis of the complete working solution. It will be performed after the change request is implemented to determine whether the change and its implementation request were successful.

24. What is the main objective of Capacity Management and what are its subprocesses?

The main objective of Capacity Management is to ensure the IT services and resources are right-sized to meet the service level targets for current and future business requirements in a cost-effective and timely manner.

Capacity Management comprises 3 sub-processes:

• Business Capacity Management
• Service Capacity Management
• Component Capacity Management.

25. What is an Operational-level agreement (OLA)?

An operational-level agreement (OLA) is a contract that describes how the various IT groups within a company design their processes and services to support a service-level agreement (SLA).

26. List the various knowledge management systems?

• Capacity Management Information System(CMIS): It is a collection of data regarding IT infrastructure usage, capacity, and performance that is gathered in a consistent manner and stored in either single or series databases. 
• Availability Management Information System (AMIS): It is a collection of the Availability Management data stored in various physical locations.
• Known Error Database (KEDB): It is a database that defines all the known issues within a system.
• Configuration Management Database (CMDB): It is a database used to store relevant information about software and hardware assets used in an organization and their relationships.
• Definitive Media Library (DML):  It is a secure logical library in which the definitive, authorized versions of all software media Configuration Items are stored and protected.
• Service Knowledge Management System (SKMS): It is the primary repository of the data, knowledge, and information that the IT organization required to administer the lifecycle of its services.

27. Explain the relation between Availability, Availability service time, and downtime?

Availability % = (Available service time - downtime)/Available service time.

28. Explain ISO/IEC 27002?

ISO/IEC 27002 is a code of best practices that delivers guidelines for organizational information security standards and information security management for implementing information security controls.

29. List the 7R’s of change management?

• Who RAISED the change?
• What is the REASON for the change?
• What RETURN will the change deliver?
• What RISKS are there if we do or do not carry out the change?
• What RESOURCES will be required to perform this change?
• Who is RESPONSIBLE for this change being performed?
• What RELATIONSHIPS are there between this and other changes?

ITIL Scenario-Based Interview Questions and Answers

30. What is the difference between customers and end-users? 

• An end-user or end customer is the direct recipient of a product or service.
• A customer is an entity that may or may not have the ability to choose from different products or suppliers.

31. What is the importance of an information security policy?

The importance of an Information security policy is protecting the information and data of the organization from security risks.

32. What is the objective of a Balanced Scorecard?

The objective of a Balanced Scorecard is to translate an organization’s mission and vision into actual actions. It is a strategic planning and management system used to find and improve various internal functions of an organization and their resulting outcomes.

33. What is the difference between service requests and incidents?

• Service Requests are formal requests from a user for some type of service or information.
• The incident is something that an unplanned interruption or reduction to an IT service.

34. What are the Service portfolio, Service Catalog, and service pipeline?

• The service portfolio is a complete listing of all the services provided by a service provider across the market and customers.
• Service Catalogue is the subset of the Service portfolio. Services ready to be offered to customers are listed in the service catalog.
• Service Pipeline refers to services under development.

35. What is the difference between Emergency Changes and Expedite / Urgent Changes? 

• Emergency changes are defined as the highest priority changes defined in an organization that needs to be implemented quickly.
• Expedited change is defined as a change that meets a critical business or legal requirement but is not related to restoring service.

36. Explain Change Advisory Board (CAB)?

Change Advisory Board (CAB) consists of an authoritative and representative group of people who assist the change management process with the authorization, assessment, prioritization, and scheduling of requested changes.

37. What is the Freeze period in ITIL?

It is a time period in the development process after which the rules for creating changes to the source code become more severe.

38. Which is a formal proposal for an alteration to some product or system?

Change Request.

39. Name two Service Management processes that use a risk analysis and management methodology?

Availability Management and IT Service Continuity Management.

[ Related Article: ITIL Service Management As a Practice ]

40. Name the ITIL models adopted by an organization?

• Microsoft MOF (Microsoft Operations Framework): It is a structured approach that supports customers in how to plan, develop, and operate services in a cost-effective and efficient manner.
• Hewlett-Packard (HP ITSM Reference Model): This model is used to present and describe various IT Management processes, business linkages, and inter-process relationships that IT requires to develop, deploy, and support services in the e-world.
• IBM (IT Process Model): This model is used to define common business services and processes across the enterprise. This software is a set of best practices to support core system renewal and integration projects.

41. List the common/work-around recovery options?

Recovery options are classified as:

• Manual workaround
• Reciprocal arrangements
• Gradual recovery
• Intermediate recovery
• Fast recovery
• Immediate recovery.

42. Who is primarily responsible for the categorization of a proposed change within an ITIL compliant Change Management process?

Change Manager.

43. When is a known error recognized?

When the cause of the problem is known.

44. Name examples of proactive problem management?

Trend analysis and pain value analysis.

45. What will be the first step while registering an incident?

Providing incident number.

ITIL Interview Questions For Experienced

46. what are the 4 P’s that facilitate effective Service Management in ITIL?

People, Processes, Products, and Partners.

47. Any item including service component or asset which is under the control of Configuration Management is known as what?

Configuration Item.

48. Who is responsible to maintain and protect the Known Error Database?

The Problem Manager is responsible to maintain and protect the Known Error Database and initiating the formal closure of all Problem records.

49. Explain Work-around?

A Workaround provides a temporary means of resolving an issue for which an underlying root cause has not yet been resolved.

50. What is the RACI model?

• Responsible: Person responsible to complete the assigned job.
• Accountable: Person accountable for the assigned task.
• Consulted: Defines who are consulted, persons, or group.
• Informed: People who are informed on the progress and ongoing task.

51. What is the Configuration baseline in ITIL?

A configuration baseline is a kind of a baseline that is particular to configuration management. It is used for a configuration, which has been formally agreed upon and managed by the change management process.