ITIL4F ITIL Guiding Principles Practice Question
A company is implementing a new ticketing system. The project team decides to use a large rollout after months of development, but later discovers many issues that could have been caught early. Which principle was NOT followed?
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
✓
Progress iteratively with feedback
'Progress iteratively with feedback' advises against big-bang approaches and encourages timeboxed iterations with continuous feedback. The team ignored this by not iterating.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
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Focus on value
Why it's wrong here
While delivering value is the ultimate goal of any service, the failure here wasn't necessarily a misidentification of what constitutes value for the company. Instead, the chosen big-bang rollout approach inherently increased the risk of not realizing that value due to a lack of intermediate validation and adjustment. The problem stemmed from the method of delivery, which jeopardized the successful realization of the intended value, rather than a fundamental misunderstanding of the value itself.
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Optimise and automate
Why it's wrong here
The principle of 'Optimise and automate' primarily concerns improving the efficiency and effectiveness of processes and services, often through streamlining or technological enablement. In this scenario, the failure was rooted in the strategy for introducing the new system, specifically the high-risk big-bang deployment, rather than a missed opportunity to optimize the system's internal operations or automate specific tasks within it. The rollout approach itself was the critical flaw, not a lack of optimization efforts on the system's functions.
- ✓
Progress iteratively with feedback
Why this is correct
The company's use of a big-bang approach directly violated the 'Progress iteratively with feedback' principle. This principle advocates for breaking down work into smaller, manageable iterations, allowing for continuous learning, adaptation, and course correction based on stakeholder feedback at each stage. A big-bang deployment bypasses these crucial feedback loops, significantly increasing the risk of encountering unforeseen issues late in the process, leading to widespread failure when the entire system is launched simultaneously.
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Keep it simple and practical
Why it's wrong here
While the big-bang approach might appear 'simple' in its initial conceptualization of a single, large deployment, it is often highly impractical due to the immense complexity and risk involved in managing a simultaneous, company-wide launch without intermediate validation. However, the primary failure was not necessarily a violation of simplicity in the design of the ticketing system itself or its underlying processes. Instead, the issue was with the high-risk methodology of implementation, which failed to account for the practical need for incremental progress and feedback.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
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