ITIL4-CDS Create, Deliver and Support Practice Question
A company is experiencing high 'Work in Progress' (WIP) levels, leading to long lead times for new features. Which action is the most effective way to address this issue?
⚠ Common exam trap
A common mistake is selecting options that increase team headcount or pressure people to multitask faster, failing to recognize that restricting work in progress is the key to improving flow.
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Enforcing strict WIP limits to prevent multitasking.
High WIP is a primary cause of delay and inefficiency in service delivery. By setting explicit WIP limits, teams are forced to focus on finishing current tasks rather than starting new ones. This improves flow, reduces context switching, and uncovers bottlenecks in the value stream. By limiting WIP, the organization fosters a focus on throughput and value delivery, effectively managing the capacity of the team to produce results rather than just keeping people busy.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Hiring more staff to increase the team's capacity to start tasks.
Why it's wrong here
Hiring more people often increases communication overhead and complexity without solving the underlying workflow issues. Focusing on finishing what is already started is a more effective way to improve lead times than simply increasing the number of people working on an already congested, inefficient pipeline.
- ✓
Enforcing strict WIP limits to prevent multitasking.
Why this is correct
WIP limits are essential for improving lead times and flow. By limiting the number of active tasks, teams reduce context switching and concentrate on completion, which directly addresses the root cause of long cycle times and helps identify where the work is getting stuck in the system.
- ✗
Extending the duration of development sprints to allow for more work.
Why it's wrong here
Extending sprint durations usually exacerbates the problem by allowing more work to pile up without being delivered. Short, focused iterations are preferred in agile frameworks to maintain transparency and ensure that value is delivered incrementally, rather than trying to cram more work into a longer, slower cycle.
- ✗
Assigning more tasks to each team member to ensure full utilization.
Why it's wrong here
Maximizing individual utilization often leads to bottlenecks and increased wait times. True optimization comes from focusing on the flow of the entire system, not the utilization of individuals. Overloading team members with tasks actually slows down the delivery of value by increasing the amount of work in progress.
About these practice questions
This ITIL4-CDS question is part of Courseiva's 155-question bank — original exam-style content with full explanations and wrong-answer analysis, never real exam questions or exam dumps. Learn why practice questions differ from exam dumps →
JA
Written and reviewed by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
Last reviewed September 2026 · checked against the official PeopleCert/AXELOS exam blueprint
This ITIL4-CDS practice question is part of Courseiva's free PeopleCert/AXELOS certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the ITIL4-CDS exam.