ITIL4F ITIL Service Value System Practice Question
An IT team is reviewing a recurring incident pattern. They decide to find the root cause to prevent future occurrences. Which practice are they applying?
⚠ Common exam trap
Candidates often confuse the 'restoration of service' focus of Incident Management with the 'root cause analysis and prevention' focus of Problem Management, especially when the question mentions a 'recurring incident pattern' which might seem like an incident handling task.
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
✓
Problem Management
Problem Management (C) is the correct practice because it focuses on identifying the root cause of recurring incidents to prevent future occurrences. The IT team's decision to analyze a recurring incident pattern and find its root cause aligns directly with the proactive and reactive activities of Problem Management, which aims to minimize the impact of incidents and prevent them from happening again.
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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Incident Management
Why it's wrong here
This ITIL practice's primary objective is to restore normal service operation as quickly as possible, minimizing the business impact of unplanned interruptions. While it addresses individual incidents, its focus is on immediate resolution and workarounds rather than deep analytical investigation into underlying causes. It is a reactive process aimed at getting services back online, not preventing future occurrences of recurring patterns.
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Service Desk
Why it's wrong here
The Service Desk is an organizational function that serves as the single point of contact between the service provider and its users. While it plays a critical role in logging, categorizing, and escalating incidents, and providing initial support, its core responsibility is not to conduct extensive root cause analysis of recurring issues. It facilitates the incident lifecycle, but the analytical work for patterns is typically escalated to specialized practices.
- ✓
Problem Management
Why this is correct
This ITIL practice is precisely designed to reduce the likelihood and impact of incidents by identifying and resolving their underlying causes, known as problems. It proactively analyzes recurring incident patterns, trends, and historical data to diagnose root causes, develop effective workarounds, and recommend permanent solutions. Its goal is to prevent future incidents, thereby enhancing service stability and reliability.
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Change Enablement
Why it's wrong here
Change Enablement is the ITIL practice focused on maximizing the number of successful service and product changes by ensuring risks are properly assessed, authorized, and managed. While Problem Management often identifies solutions that require changes, and Change Enablement facilitates the implementation of those changes, this practice itself does not perform the initial analysis of recurring incident patterns to discover their root causes. Its scope is the controlled introduction of new or modified services.
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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.