ITIL4F ITIL Guiding Principles Practice Question
An IT team decides to reduce the number of steps in a change approval process to speed up delivery. Which guiding principle are they applying?
⚠ Common exam trap
Watch out — candidates often confuse 'reducing steps' with 'automation' (Option B), but the question explicitly states they are reducing the number of steps, not automating the existing ones, which is a key distinction in ITIL 4's guidance on simplification before automation.
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
✓
Keep it simple and practical
By reducing the number of steps in a change approval process, the team is eliminating unnecessary complexity and bureaucracy. This directly aligns with the 'Keep it simple and practical' guiding principle, which advocates for minimizing process overhead to achieve outcomes efficiently. The focus is on streamlining the workflow itself, not on automation or iterative feedback.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Progress iteratively with feedback
Why it's wrong here
The 'Progress iteratively with feedback' principle advocates for breaking down work into smaller, manageable iterations, delivering value incrementally, and gathering feedback at each stage to ensure continuous learning and adaptation. While reducing steps might make an iteration simpler, this principle's core focus is on the iterative *method* of delivery and the feedback loops that drive continuous improvement, rather than the initial simplification of the process design itself.
- ✗
Optimise and automate
Why it's wrong here
The 'Optimise and automate' principle focuses on maximizing value and efficiency by eliminating waste and leveraging technology to automate repetitive tasks wherever possible. While reducing steps can be a form of optimization, this principle primarily emphasizes the use of automation to streamline processes and reduce manual effort, which is distinct from merely simplifying a process's design by removing steps without necessarily automating them.
- ✗
Start where you are
Why it's wrong here
The 'Start where you are' principle emphasizes assessing the current state of services, processes, and resources to understand what exists and can be leveraged, rather than discarding everything and starting anew. Reducing steps in a change process involves actively modifying and improving an existing process, which goes beyond merely acknowledging and utilizing the current baseline; it's an act of deliberate change and improvement, not just an assessment.
- ✓
Keep it simple and practical
Why this is correct
The 'Keep it simple and practical' principle advocates for eliminating anything that does not contribute to value creation, focusing on the minimum necessary steps to achieve the desired outcome. Reducing the number of steps in a change process directly aligns with this by removing unnecessary complexity, bureaucracy, and waste, ensuring the process remains efficient, effective, and easy to understand and execute for all stakeholders.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This ITIL4F practice question is part of Courseiva's free PeopleCert 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 ITIL4F exam.