P.M. Articles, PM Knowledge Base

ITIL Service Transition and Processes

Service Transition Lifecycle

Purpose

  • Ensure that new, modified or retired services meet the expectations of the business

Objective

  • Plan and Manage changes efficiently and effectively
  • Manage risk related to new, changed or retired services (There is always risk)
  • Set performance expectations
  • Ensure changes create their intended value
  • Ensure knowledge transfer

Scope

  • Managing the complexity of change
  • Allowing for innovation while minimizing risk
  • Introducing new services
  • Providing a means to change existing services
  • Retiring undeeded services
  • Transferring Services to and from external service providers

Value

  • Enables estimation of cost, timing, resource, requirements and risk
  • Results in higher volumes of successful change
  • Enables sharing of transition assets and encourages reuse
  • Reduces delays from unexpected interactions
  • Reduces effort spent on managing test and pilot environments
  • Improves service expectations for all stakeholders

Processes

Service Transition processes covered by the ITIL Foundation

  • Transition planning and support
  • Service asset and configuration management
  • Change Management
  • Release and Deployment Management
  • Knowledge Management

Processes not covered by ITIL Foundation

  • Service validation and testing
  • Change evaluation

 

Service Transition Processes

Service Transition Process 1: Transition Planning and Support

Purpose

  • Provide overall planning for service transitions
  • Coordinate the resources that service transitions require

Objectives

  • Plan and coordinate transition resources
  • Establish new or changed services into supported environments
  • Establish new tools and technology
  • Ensure adoption of reusable processes
  • Provide clear and comprehensive plans
  • Identify, manage, and control risk
  • Monitor and improve the performance of service transition practices

Scope

  • Maintain policies and standards for service transition
  • Guide each major change through service transition processes
  • Coordinate multiple transitions
  • Prioritize conflicting requirements
  • Ensure service transition is coordinated with program and project management

 

Service Transition Process 2: Service Asset and configuration management

Purpose

  • Ensure assets required to deliver services are properly controlled
  • Ensure accurate and reliable information about service assts exists and is available when and where it is needed
  • Understand the relationship between service assts

Objectives

  • Ensure that assets are identified, controlled and managed
  • Identify, control, record, report and audit configuration items
  • Account for and protect the integrity of configuration items
  • Ensure the integrity of configurations required to control services
  • Maintain accurate configuration information
  • Support other service management processes

Scope

  • Manages the complete lifecycle of configuration items
  • Identifies, baselines, and maintains all configuration items
  • Interfaces with other service management processes
  • Interfaces with external service providers.

Basic Concepts

  • Configuration Items (Cis)
    • Any service asset or component that needs to be managed in order to deliver a service
    • Under the control of change management
    • Examples
      • Service lifecycle CI’s
      • Service Cis
      • Organization Cis
      • Intern/External/Interface Cis
    • Benefits of grouping items into a single CI must outweigh the effort to maintain it. Example: Desktop that includes laptop, monitor, keyboard etc.
  • Configuration Management System
    • The CMS is part of the SKMS
    • Configuration records are stored in CMDBs in the CMS
    • Some Cis (SLAs and Release Plans) are stored in the SKMIS
    • Other Cis (users and servers) are usually outside of the SKMIS
  • Definitive Media Library
    • Secure storage space for all media configuration items
    • Copies of perchased software, copies or software that was developed onsite
    • License information
    • Master copies of controlled documentation
    • Is part of the SKMIS

 

Service Transition Process 4: Change Management

Purpose

  • Control the lifecycle of all change
  • Enable beneficial changes
  • Minimize the discruption associated with changes

Objectives

  • Respond to changing business requirements
  • Maximize value while reducing disruption
  • Respond to business and IT requests for change
  • Ensure that changes are recorded and evaluated
  • Ensure that authorized changes are prioritized, planned, tested, implemented, documented, and reviewed in a controlled manner
  • Ensure that all changes are recorded in the CMS
  • Optimize overall business risk

Scope

  • Service solutions for new or changed services
  • Management information systems and tools
  • The service portfolio
  • Technology and management architectures
  • Service management processes
  • Measurement systems, methods and metrics
  • Out of Scope
    • Organizationally defined
    • Changes to business operations and policies
    • Some operational level changes

Basic Concepts

  • Change Proposal
  • Change
  • Types of Change
    • Standard: pre-authorized accepted procedure that are low risk and relatively common)
    • Normal: Non-emergency and not standard)
    • Emergency: Must be implemented in response to a disruption in service or a potential disruption to services.
  • CAB: Change Advisory Board – A group of people that advises the change manager in the assessment, prioritization, and scheduling of changes.
  • ECAB: Emergency Change Advisory Board – A subset of the change advisory board who make decisions about high-impact emergency changes.
  • Remediation Planning: Actions taken to recover after a failed change or release

Activities

  • Create and Record Request for Change
  • Review RFC
  • Assess and Evaluate the Change
  • Authorize Change Build and Test
  • Coordinate Change Build and Test
  • Authorize Change Deployment
  • Coordinate Change Deployment
  • Review and Close Change Record

Interfaces

  • Service Strategy
    • Service Portfolio Management
  • Service Design
    • IT Service Continuity Management
    • Capacity and demand management
    • Information security management
  • Service Transition
    • Service and configuration management
  • Service Operation
    • Problem Management
  • Continual Service Improvement

 

Service Transition Process 5: Release and Deployment Management

Purpose

  • Plan, Schedule, and control the build, test and deployment of releases
  • Deliver new functionality required by the business
  • Protect the integrity of existing services

Objectives

  • Define and agree release and deployment plans with customers
  • Create and test release packages
  • Ensure the integrity of release packages
  • Deploy release packages to the live environment
  • Ensure that all release packages can be tracked through their lifecycle
  • Ensure organization and stakeholder change are managed during deployment
  • Ensure required knowledge and skills are transferred to users, customers, and operation functions

Scope

  • All processes, systems and functions to package, build, test and deploy a release into live use as specified in the SDP
  • All configuration items required to implement a release
    • Physical assets
    • Virtual assets
    • Applications and software
    • User and staff training
    • Services, including contracts and agreements
  • Out of Scope
    • Authorization of changes

Basic Concepts

  • Release Policy
    • Unique identification of releases
  • Roles and responsibilities at each stage of the release
  • Requirement to use software assets from the DML
  • Expected frequency for each type of release
  • Approach for accepting and grouping changes into releases
  • How the configuration baseline is captured
  • Exit and entry criteria
  • Criteria to exit early life support

Activities

  • Authorize release plan
  • Authorize build and test
  • Authorize check-in to DML (Definitive Media Library)
  • Authorize deployment/transfer/retirement
  • Post implementation review

Service Transition Process 5: Knowledge Management

Purpose

  • Share perspectives, ideas, experience and information
  • Ensure information assets are available in the right place at the right time
  • Enable informed decision making
  • Reduce the need to rediscover knowledge

Objectives

  • Improve the quality of management decision making
  • Ensure reliable and secure knowledge is available throughout the lifecycle
  • Maintain an SKMIS (Service Knowledge Management System)
  • Gather, analyze, store and maintain knowledge.

Scope:

The entire SKMIS

Basic Concepts