Understanding ITIL Service Transition Process | ITIL Tutorial

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What is ITIL Service Transition Process Module?

Service Transition (ST) is the Third Process group of ITIL Service Management Lifecycle under ITIL Service Management Framework.

As defined, the ITIL Service Transition process module provides best-practice guidance on the delivery of new or modified services, required by a business, into the live/operational environment.

As described in ITIL v3, Service Transition processes typically cover the aspects of IT Project Management, rather than Business as Usual (BAU) or Business Operations.

This stage manages the transition of new or changed services from service design phase to service operation phase. It ensures all changes to the service management processes are carried out in a coordinated way.

ITIL Service Transition Objective:

The primary objective of ITIL Service Transition stage is to develop and improve the capabilities used for deploying new or modified IT services into operation.

The Service Transition (in ITIL V3) has some other objectives as well, such as to ensure that new and changed services meet customer requirements and implemented with minimal effect on existing IT infrastructure services or business processes.

This stage also makes sure that changes to services and service management processes are carried out in a coordinated way.

ITIL Service Transition Purpose & Goals:

Service Transition (ST) stage is applicable to organizations involved in adopting new services or upgrading their existing services.

The Goals of ITIL Service Transition are:

Provide guidance for the developing and improving the capabilities for transitioning new and changed services into the live environment.
Improve a Service Provider’s ability to handle high volumes of change and releases across its customer base.
Handling any change, such as change of supplier, change service capabilities, or even service retirements.
Helps to a create a blueprint for developing a modular approach to service installation (common repeatable build and installation mechanisms). Which ultimately helps in faster & efficient deployment of releases to the test or production environments.

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.

Important Terminologies and Definitions:

Below lists some of the important terminologies we required to know before we proceed deep into the ITIL Service Transition Processes:

CI (Configuration Item):

CIs (Configuration Items) are mainly hardware or software items and are categorized by their attributes (recorded in the CI’s Configuration Record/Database) and their relationships to other CIs.

CMDB:

Configuration Management Database is the core record repository to track & maintain every attribute of all the CI’s.
Also, it tracks the inter-relationship between all the CI’s. It is the core requirement for implementing a proper change management.

Change:

Change is the addition, modification or removal of anything that may have an effect on IT services.
The scope of change includes changes to any processes, process flow, tools, metrics, and documentation, as well as changes to IT services and other CI’s.

Release:

A collection of authorized Changes to an IT Service. It is generally denoted by version numbers of applications, services or items.

ITIL Service Transition Processes:

According to official ITIL v3 Documents, there are Seven Well-Defined processes under ITIL Service Transition module. Below are the objectives and descriptions of them, followed by a diagram illustrating the Service Transition Process Flow:

1) Transition Planning and Support (Project Management):

This process deals with management and control of transition plans. This process is used to plan and coordinate the resources to deploy a major Release within the estimated cost, time and quality benchmarks. It does all the project management related tasks.

2) Change Management:

This process controls the lifecycle of all Changes. It enables the organization to implement beneficial changes, with minimum disruption to IT services. It is complemented by change evaluation process to prevent unauthorized changes to be made.

3) Change Evaluation:

Used to evaluate major Changes, such as 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 of their lifecycle.

This process is called upon by change management process time by time to validate the authorization of proposed changes.

4) Service Asset and Configuration Management:

Responsible for maintaining information and relationships between Configuration Items, required for delivering IT service.

5) Release and Deployment Management:

Used to plan, schedule and control the movement of releases to test and live environments. The primary goal of Release and Deployment Management is to ensure that the integrity of the operational environment is protected and that the correct components are released.

6) Service Validation and Testing:

Responsible for validating that deployed Releases and the resulting services meet customer expectations, and to ensure that IT operation is able to support the new service.

7) Knowledge Management:

Used to gather, analyze, store and share knowledge and/or information within an organization. The primary objective of Knowledge Management is to improve efficiency by reducing the need for rediscovering knowledge.