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ITIL® Intermediate CSI Introductory Tutorial

ITIL Intermediate - Continual Service Improvement (CSI) Tutorial

This is the introductory lesson on ITIL Intermediate Continual Service Improvement (CSI), which is a part of the ITIL Intermediate CSI Certification Course. The purpose of this training module and the associated exam and certificate is, respectively, to impart, test, and validate the knowledge on industry practices in service management as documented in the ITIL Continual Service Improvement publication

CSI Course Description

Continual Service Improvement (CSI) Certificate is a free-standing qualification but is also part of the ITIL Intermediate Lifecycle stream, and one of the modules that leads to the ITIL Expert Certificate in IT Service Management.

Let’s understand the objective of this tutorial in the next section.

Objective

The objective of the ITIL Intermediate CSI tutorial is to provide a complete management-level overview of continual service improvement, including all its related activities. Candidates can expect to gain competencies in the following upon successful completion of the education and examination components related to this certification. Following are the objectives of CSI tutorial:

  • Introduction to continual service improvement

  • Continual service improvement principles

  • Continual service improvement process

  • Continual service improvement methods and techniques

  • Organizing for continual service improvement

  • Technology considerations

  • Implementing continual service improvement

  • Challenges, critical success factors, and risks

We will discuss each topic in detail in the course outline. Let us now look at the candidates who can opt for this tutorial in the next section.

Target Candidate

The syllabus covers the management-level concepts and core information of the activities and techniques within continual service improvement, but not specific details about each of the supporting processes. The main target group for the ITIL Intermediate Qualification: Continual Service Improvement includes, but is not restricted to:

  • Chief information officers (CIOs)

  • Chief technology officers (CTOs)

  • Managers

  • Supervisory staff

  • Team leaders

  • Service designers

  • IT architects

  • IT planners

  • IT consultants

  • IT audit managers and

  • IT security managers

Apart from the candidates specified in the previous section, professionals in the following roles can also take up this tutorial. They are:

  • ITSM trainers involved in the ongoing management, coordination, and integration of design activities within the service lifecycle.

  • Individuals who require a detailed understanding of the ITIL continual service improvement stage of the ITIL service lifecycle and how it may be implemented to enhance the quality of IT service provision within an organization.

  • IT professionals working within, or about to enter, a continual service environment and requiring an understanding of the concepts, processes, functions, and activities involved.

  • Individuals who have attained the ITIL Foundation Certificate in IT Service Management and wish to advance to higher level ITIL certifications.

  • Individuals seeking the ITIL Expert Certificate in IT Service Management for which this qualification can be one of the prerequisite modules.

  • Individuals seeking progress toward the ITIL Master Certificate in IT Service Management for which the ITIL Expert is a prerequisite.

Let us look at the exam prerequisites in the next section.

Exam Prerequisites

To be eligible for the ITIL Intermediate: Continual Service Improvement qualification, candidates shall fulfill the following requirements:

  • At least 21 contact hours (hours of instruction, excluding breaks, with an Accredited Training Organization (ATO) or an accredited e-learning solution) for this syllabus, as part of a formal approved training course/scheme.

  • A basic IT literacy and around 2 years IT experience are highly desirable.

  • Hold the ITIL Foundation Certificate in IT Service Management (or other appropriate earlier ITIL and bridge qualifications).

  • It is also recommended that students should complete at least 21 hours of personal study by reviewing the syllabus and the ITIL Continual Service Improvement publication in preparation for the examination, specifically, Service management as a practice.

ITIL® 2011 CSI Exam Format

ITIL 2011 Continual Service Improvement Exam consists of Eight (8) Multiple Choice Questions, which will be Scenario-based, gradient scored questions. Each question will have 4 possible answer options, one of which is worth 5 marks, one which is worth 3 marks, one which is worth 1 mark and one which is a distracter and achieves no marks.

The duration of the exam is 90 Minutes. As a Prerequisite, you need to have an ITIL 2011 Foundation Certificate OR ITIL V2 Foundation Certificate plus Bridge Certificate AND Completion of an accredited course from an ITIL Accredited Training Provider. It is a supervised exam and closed book. You need to acquire a minimum Pass Score of 28 right answers out of 40 questions or score 70% in the exam.

Course Outline

This Tutorial consists of 9 learning units including the introductory lesson. Let’s look at the other learning units in the table shown below:

Lesson No

Chapter Name

What You’ll Learn

Lesson 1

Introduction to Continual Service Improvement

In this chapter, you’ll be able to:

  • Understand the concepts in the field of Continual Service Improvement

  • Understand the CSI terms and core concepts.

  • Describe the purpose, objectives, and scope of CSI

  • Explain the value to the business of adopting and implementing CSI

  • Explain the context of CSI in the ITIL®service lifecycle, the approach to CSI, including key interfaces, and inputs and outputs

Lesson 2

Continual Service Improvement Principles

In this chapter, you’ll be able to understand:

  • How the success of CSI depends on the understanding change in the organization and having clear accountability

  • How service level management and knowledge management influence and support CSI

  • How the complete Deming Cycle works, and how it can be applied to a real-world example

  • How CSI can make effective use of the various aspects of service measurement

  • What situations require the use of frameworks and models, and examples of how each type can be used to achieve improvement

Lesson 3

Continual Service Improvement Processes

In this chapter, you’ll be able to:

  • Understand the interpretation and analysis of improvement principles, techniques, and relationships, and their application to ensure continual service improvement.

  • Explain the seven-step improvement process and how each step can be applied and the benefits produced

  • Describe how CSI integrates with the other stages in the ITIL® service lifecycle

  • Describe how other processes play key roles in the seven-step improvement process

Lesson 4

Organizing for Continual Service Improvement

In this chapter, you’ll be able to:

  • Understand when to use assessments, what to assess and how a gap analysis can provide insight into the areas that have room for improvement

  • Explain how to use benchmarking, service measurement, metrics, service reporting, including balanced scorecard and SWOT, to support CSI

  • Describe how to create a return on investment, establish a business case and measure the benefits achieved

  • Explain how techniques within availability management, capacity management, IT service continuity management and problem management can be used by CSI

Lesson 5

Organizing for Continual Service Improvement

In this chapter, you’ll be able to:

  • Understand the  interpretation and analysis of improvement principles, techniques and relationships, and their application to ensure continual service improvement

  • Explain the role of the CSI manager, and the roles of service owner, process owner, process manager and process practitioner in the context of CSI and how they can be positioned within an organization

  • Describe how to design, implement and populate a RACI (responsible, accountable, consulted, informed) diagram as well as how to use it to support CSI

Lesson 6

Technology Consideration

In this chapter, you’ll be able to:

  • Understand the interpretation and analysis of improvement principles, techniques, and relationships, and their application to ensure continual service improvement.

  • Explain the technology and tools required and how these would be implemented and managed to support CSI activities such as performance, project and portfolio management, as well as service measurement and business intelligence reporting

Lesson 7

Implement Continual Service Improvement

In this chapter, you’ll be able to:

  • Understand the interpretation and analysis of improvement principles, techniques, and relationships, and their application to ensure continual service improvement.

  • CSI implementation: strategy, planning, governance, communication, project management, operation, as well as how to deal with cultural and organizational change

Lesson 8

Challenges, Critical Success Factor and Risks

In this chapter, you’ll be able to:

  • Understand the interpretation and analysis of improvement principles, techniques, and relationships, and their application to ensure continual service improvement.

  • The challenges and risks such as staffing, funding, management, etc., which can be related to CSI and the details of how each challenge can be addressed

  • The critical success factors related to CSI as well as how to measure and monitor them

  Wish to know more about ITIL Intermediate CSI? Consider taking a look at our Course Preview!

Conclusion

This marks the end of our introductory lesson. Let’s do a quick recap of what we learned so far. In this lesson, we learned about what is ITIL, ITIL intermediate, Definition of Service lifecycle and capability. We also got some information about the ITIL intermediate Examination format itself and looked at the prerequisite of taking up the examination.

Finally, we covered the objective, eligible candidates, and syllabus of CSI and foundation basics. Hope you have a clear view of how the tutorial works.

The next lesson talks about Introduction to Continual Service Improvement.

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  • PMP, PMI, PMBOK, CAPM, PgMP, PfMP, ACP, PBA, RMP, SP, and OPM3 are registered marks of the Project Management Institute, Inc.

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