ISO 20000 Certification Service Design and Transition 5 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: Under ISO 20000, if a service transition reveals that new roles and responsibilities are required to operate the service, what must the organization do?
- Outsource the service immediately
- Define and assign those roles before the service goes live (Correct answer)
- Document the gap and address it post-deployment
- Request an SLA extension from the customer
Correct answer: Define and assign those roles before the service goes live
ISO 20000 requires that roles and responsibilities for operating a new service be defined and assigned prior to go-live as part of the transition.
Question 2: Which statement best describes the scope of service design within an ISO 20000 SMS?
- Service design only applies to externally delivered services
- Service design covers new services, changed services, and retired services (Correct answer)
- Service design is limited to infrastructure components
- Service design is performed only when a new supplier is onboarded
Correct answer: Service design covers new services, changed services, and retired services
ISO 20000 service design applies across the full service lifecycle, including new services, significant changes to existing services, and services being retired.
Question 3: An organization's service design process identifies a dependency on a third-party API that has no SLA. Under ISO 20000, what must be done before the service is transitioned?
- Accept the risk and document it as a known issue post-launch
- Establish a formal agreement with the third-party supplier (Correct answer)
- Remove the dependency from the design entirely
- Issue a waiver approved by the service desk
Correct answer: Establish a formal agreement with the third-party supplier
ISO 20000 supplier management requirements mean that critical third-party dependencies must be covered by formal agreements before a service goes live.
Question 4: During service transition testing in an ISO 20000-compliant organization, which environment should be used to avoid risk to live services?
- The production environment with read-only access
- A dedicated test environment separate from production (Correct answer)
- The DR environment shared with backup operations
- Any available environment with spare capacity
Correct answer: A dedicated test environment separate from production
ISO 20000 requires that testing be conducted in an environment separate from production to prevent disruption to live services.
Question 5: When ISO 20000-1 refers to 'transition criteria,' what does this mean in practice?
- Financial thresholds that trigger a new service proposal
- Defined conditions that must be met before a service moves from one lifecycle stage to another (Correct answer)
- The number of incidents allowed before a service is re-designed
- Customer approval ratings required to maintain certification
Correct answer: Defined conditions that must be met before a service moves from one lifecycle stage to another
Transition criteria are defined conditions — such as test completion and stakeholder sign-off — that must be satisfied before a service advances to the next lifecycle stage.
Question 6: An ISO 20000 service design team is creating a continuity plan for a new service. Which aspect must be addressed during design, not after go-live?
- The exact wording of incident tickets
- Recovery time objectives and recovery point objectives for the service (Correct answer)
- Staff holiday schedules during the first month of operation
- The budget for the first year of service operation
Correct answer: Recovery time objectives and recovery point objectives for the service
Recovery time objectives (RTO) and recovery point objectives (RPO) are continuity requirements that must be designed into the service from the outset.
Question 7: Under ISO 20000, which of the following best describes a 'pilot' deployment in the context of service transition?
- A full production deployment to all users simultaneously
- A limited release to a subset of users to validate the service before full rollout (Correct answer)
- A simulation run entirely in a vendor's environment
- An emergency change deployed without testing
Correct answer: A limited release to a subset of users to validate the service before full rollout
A pilot deployment releases the service to a limited user group to validate real-world performance before committing to a full rollout, reducing transition risk.
ISO 20000 Certification Service Design and Transition 5
Under ISO 20000, if a service transition reveals that new roles and responsibilities are required to operate the service, what must the organization do?