ITIL Service Transition

The role of ITIL Service Transition is to move services and service changes into operational use. ITIL Service Transition also introduces the service knowledge management system (SKMS) which has the ability to support organizational learning and assist in increasing the effectiveness and efficiency of all stages of the service life-cycle. This provides benefits to people with the knowledge and experience of others, helps to support decision-making and improve the management of services.

source: Tutorials Point

Objective and Scope of ITIL Service Transition

The key objectives of service transition are to:

• Plan and manage service changes efficiently and effectively
• Manage risks relating to new, changed or retired services
• Successfully deploy service releases into supported environments
• Set correct expectations on the performance and use of new or changed services
• Ensure that service changes create the expected business value
• Provide good-quality knowledge and information about services and service assets.

In order to achieve these objectives, there are many things that need to happen during the service transition lifecycle stage. These include:

• Planning and managing the capacity and resources required to manage service transitions
• Implementing a rigorous framework for evaluating service capabilities and risk profiles before new or changed services are deployed
• Establishing and maintaining the integrity of service assets
• Providing efficient repeatable mechanisms for building, testing and deploying services and releases
• Ensuring that services can be managed, operated and supported in accordance with constraints specified during the service design stage of the service lifecycle.

Some activities of all service transition processes may be carried out during the service design stage of the service lifecycle – for example, design of a release package or planning of a service transition.

The scope of Service Transition includes: Managing the complexity associated with changes to services and service management processes

• Allowing for innovation while minimizing the unintended consequences of change
• Introducing new services
• Changes to existing services, e.g. expansion, reduction, change of supplier, acquisition or disposal of sections of user base or suppliers, change of requirements or skills availability
• Decommissioning and discontinuation of services, applications or other service components
• Transferring services to and from other service providers.

Guidance on transferring the control of services includes transfer in the following circumstances:

• Out to a new supplier, e.g. outsourcing
• From one supplier to another
• Back in from a supplier, e.g. insourcing
• Moving to a partnership or co-sourcing arrangement (e.g. partial outsourcing of some processes)
• Multiple suppliers, e.g. co-sourcing or multi-sourcing
• Joint venture
• Down-sizing, up-sizing (right-sizing) and off-shoring
• Merger and acquisition

In reality, circumstances generate a combination of several of the above options at any one time and in any one situation. And if that was not enough, the scope also includes:

• The transition of changes in the service provider’s service management capabilities that will impact on the ways of working being:
• The organization
  • People
  • Projects
  • Third parties involved in service management

ITIL Service Transition Processes

Service Transition builds and deploys new or modified services. The ITIL service lifecycle stage of Service Transition (see figure below) includes the following main processes:

• Change Management: Process Objective: To control the lifecycle of all Changes. The primary objective of Change Management is to enable beneficial Changes to be made, with minimum disruption to IT services.
• Change Evaluation: Process Objective: To assess major Changes, like the introduction of a new service or a substantial change to an existing service, before those Changes are allowed to proceed to the next phase in their lifecycle.
• Project Management (Transition Planning and Support): Process Objective: To plan and coordinate the resources to deploy a major Release within the predicted cost, time and quality estimates.
• Application Development: Process Objective: To make available applications and systems which provide the required functionality for IT services. This process includes the development and maintenance of custom applications as well as the customization of products from software vendors.
• Release and Deployment Management: Process Objective: To plan, schedule and control the movement of releases to test and live environments. The primary goal of Release Management is to ensure that the integrity of the live environment is protected and that the correct components are released.
• Service Validation and Testing: Process Objective: To ensure that deployed Releases and the resulting services meet customer expectations, and to verify that IT operations is able to support the new service.
• Service Asset and Configuration Management: Process Objective: To maintain information about Configuration Items required to deliver an IT service, including their relationships.
• Knowledge Management: Process Objective: To gather, analyze, store and share knowledge and information within an organization. The primary purpose of Knowledge Management is to improve efficiency by reducing the need to rediscover knowledge.

ITIL Service Transition Benefits and Key Aspects

According to ITIL V3, Service Transition process has several aspects & benefits as discussed below:

• Quick & efficient adaptability to new requirements.
• Transition management of mergers, de-mergers, acquisitions and transfer of services.
• Increasing success rate of changes and releases for the business
• More precise predictions of service levels and warranties for new and changed service.
• Increasing the compliance with business and governance requirements during a change.
• Reducing deviation of actual plans & budgets against the original estimated values.
• Increasing productivity of business customer & staffs.
• Leads to timely discontinuation or changes to maintenance contracts for software and hardware when components are decommissioned.
• Understanding and assessing the risk levels during and after a change.

ITIL Service Transition Roles & Responsibilities:

Below are the Roles responsible defined under Service Transition (ITIL V3) module:

• Project Manager
• Change Manager
• Change Advisory Board (CAB)
• Emergency Change Advisory Board (ECAB)
• Configuration Manager
• Release Manager
• Test Manager
• Knowledge Manager
• Application Developer