SDI Incident Management & Problem-Solving 3 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: An analyst notices that five different users have logged the same Wi-Fi connectivity issue in the past two hours. What is the MOST appropriate next step?
- Close all five tickets as duplicates and ask users to resubmit
- Raise a major incident or problem record and link all related incident tickets (Correct answer)
- Ask each user to wait 24 hours and retest
- Escalate each ticket independently to a different resolver group
Correct answer: Raise a major incident or problem record and link all related incident tickets
Recurring incidents affecting multiple users should be linked under a single major incident or problem record to enable coordinated resolution.
Question 2: Which problem-solving technique involves asking 'Why?' repeatedly until the root cause of an issue is identified?
- Fishbone (Ishikawa) diagram
- 5 Whys analysis (Correct answer)
- Pareto analysis
- MoSCoW prioritization
Correct answer: 5 Whys analysis
The 5 Whys technique iteratively asks why a problem occurred, typically five times, to drill down to its root cause.
Question 3: A post-incident review (PIR) is PRIMARILY conducted to:
- Determine which analyst should be blamed for the outage
- Understand what went wrong, what was done well, and how to prevent recurrence (Correct answer)
- Calculate the financial cost of the incident for billing purposes
- Formally close the incident record in the ITSM system
Correct answer: Understand what went wrong, what was done well, and how to prevent recurrence
A PIR is a learning exercise focused on identifying improvement opportunities and preventing similar incidents in the future.
Question 4: In the SDI Service Desk framework, 'escalation' is categorized into two types. Which pair is CORRECT?
- Vertical and diagonal
- Functional and hierarchical (Correct answer)
- Internal and external
- Technical and managerial
Correct answer: Functional and hierarchical
Functional escalation passes the incident to a team with greater technical skill, while hierarchical escalation involves management for prioritization or authority.
Question 5: Which tool is MOST useful for identifying the most frequently occurring incident categories in order to prioritize improvement efforts?
- Gantt chart
- Pareto chart (80/20 analysis) (Correct answer)
- RACI matrix
- Service level agreement (SLA) document
Correct answer: Pareto chart (80/20 analysis)
A Pareto chart highlights the 20% of incident types that typically cause 80% of the volume, guiding prioritization of fix efforts.
Question 6: An SLA states that Priority 1 incidents must be resolved within 4 hours. After 3.5 hours, the incident is still open. What action should the service desk take?
- Wait for the resolver to finish without intervention
- Trigger an SLA breach warning and escalate immediately to management (Correct answer)
- Downgrade the incident priority to avoid an SLA breach record
- Close the incident and reopen it to reset the clock
Correct answer: Trigger an SLA breach warning and escalate immediately to management
Approaching SLA breach thresholds should trigger automatic warnings and prompt escalation to ensure the target is met or management is aware of the breach.
Question 7: Which of the following BEST describes 'impact' when classifying an incident?
- The urgency with which the user wants the issue fixed
- The effect the incident has on business operations, services, or the number of users affected (Correct answer)
- The technical severity of the fault in the infrastructure
- The time remaining before the SLA deadline is breached
Correct answer: The effect the incident has on business operations, services, or the number of users affected
Impact measures the breadth and depth of the business effect — how many users or critical processes are disrupted.
SDI Incident Management & Problem-Solving 3
An analyst notices that five different users have logged the same Wi-Fi connectivity issue in the past two hours.
What is the MOST appropriate next step?