ITIL Lifecycle: Service Transition

The Service Transition (ST) module is one of the qualifications within the ITIL Service Lifecycle work stream. This module focuses on the process and practice elements and management techniques required to build, test and implement products and services. It also demonstrates how service transition can apply to other stages of the IT Service life cycle and can underpin decisions during the Strategy and Operations phases.

ITIL service transition helps plan and manage the change of state of a service in its life cycle. Managing risk for new, changed and retired services protects the product environment. This helps the business deliver value to itself and its customers.

Service Transition ensures that changed or new service can fulfill the needs of customers and will meet business expectations as agreed in the SERVICE STRATEGY and SERVICE DESIGN stages.

The Transition Stage manages the overall care of the transition phase of the organization from one status to another, while still delivering the capacities for service operation and recurring service improvement. The primary target of the Transition stage is to plan and efficiently deal with the changes while also controlling the risks and setting up knowledge for decision support.

This ITIL lifecycle covers the practices in managing changes, managing service asset and configuration, managing the release and deployment, evaluation of changes, and managing knowledge and placing them in the applied content in service management.

Without enough or proper knowledge, SERVICE TRANSITION can never be effective.

During service transition, the following organizational elements need support:

• Service Strategy
• People
• Process
• Technology
• Suppliers of the service
• Organizational culture
• Governance
• Risk

The ability to provide a quality process or service significantly depends on the capacity of the people involved to respond to the circumstance and that will completely depend on their perception of the situation, benefits, and consequences. The knowledge within the area of Service Transition includes expectations on the performance, time frame and available resources, acceptable risk levels, and identified stake holders.

The relevance and quality of the knowledge depends on the accessibility and significance of basic data available for stakeholders. There are three main functions of managing the knowledge process:

• Disseminate ideas, perspectives, and practices
• Make certain that important information are available all throughout the process
• Enhance efficiency by lessening the need to rediscover knowledge

Another important area of Service Transition is the Release and Deployment Management

. This is a set of different key points and strategies such as building and testing the Release, designing the Release, designing the Deployment Process, deploying the Release, sharing information with Change Management and informing the Change Management about the deployment of the Release.

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The whole process of Release and Deployment is connected with Service Validation and Testing, Service Evaluation, and Change Management. The final Release requires a go signal from the Change Advisory Board to initiate the production. This area also ensures that customers have the knowledge and skills to use the service and that the persons involved are fully informed about the levels of service and the product warranties. It is also regarded as the essence of the Service Transition process.

Another important aspect of Service Transition is Service Asset and Configuration Management or SACM. Its purpose is to ensure that the assets needed to provide the services are well regulated, and to ensure that accurate and reliable data about these assets are accessible if they are needed. This data is also composed of particulars such as the connection between assets and how these assets are customized for the management.

The nature of transition is essentially CHANGE, and the most critical aspect in Transition is to manage the change, or formally known as Change Management. This is the process that ensures that the changes that are occurring in the organization are supervised for the entire stages. This is a strategic method to make certain that the changes are done efficiently and effectively. The change may range from basic changes in the process to critical aspects such as changes in the policies or major strategies. Therefore, Change Management is a critical term and process in the Service Transition.

ITIL Related Articles:

ITIL – Service Management As A Practice

ITIL Lifecycle : Continual Service Improvement (CSI)