ITIL4-CDS Create, Deliver and Support Practice Question
A team has implemented a 'CI/CD pipeline' but is experiencing a high volume of failed deployments due to environment configuration differences. Which practice should the team prioritize to address this?
⚠ Common exam trap
Candidates often suggest retraining staff or rewriting deployment scripts manually, failing to recognize infrastructure configuration drift as the root cause.
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
✓
Adopt Infrastructure as Code (IaC) to standardize environment definitions.
Infrastructure as Code (IaC) ensures that the environment is defined and provisioned consistently, eliminating the 'works on my machine' syndrome. In ITIL 4 CDS, managing configuration through version-controlled code is a fundamental practice for improving deployment reliability. By treating infrastructure like software, the team can automate the creation of stable, reproducible environments, leading to fewer deployment failures and higher overall service quality.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Mandate manual approval gates for all production deployments.
Why it's wrong here
Manual approval gates introduce delays and do not solve the root cause of environment configuration differences. While they might prevent a bad deployment from reaching production, they do not help the team identify or fix the inconsistencies between their development, testing, and production environments.
- ✗
Increase the frequency of deployment to ensure faster identification of errors.
Why it's wrong here
Increasing the frequency of deployments without resolving the underlying environment differences will only increase the volume of failures. Frequent deployment is a good practice, but only when the pipeline is stable and the environments are synchronized, otherwise it simply creates more noise and operational instability.
- ✓
Adopt Infrastructure as Code (IaC) to standardize environment definitions.
Why this is correct
IaC allows the team to define their infrastructure in code, ensuring that every deployment uses an identical, versioned configuration. This consistency removes environment drift and human error, which are the primary drivers of deployment failures, thereby stabilizing the delivery process and fulfilling core requirements for modern service management.
- ✗
Switch to a monolithic architecture to simplify configuration management.
Why it's wrong here
Moving to a monolith does not address environment configuration drift. Even in a monolithic system, discrepancies between servers or environments can occur. The issue is about deployment process and configuration management, not the architectural pattern of the application. Adopting IaC is the industry standard for this problem.
About these practice questions
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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.