Understanding Service Transition

During this lifecycle stage, you will explore the management and control of the infrastructure and service management processes.

The Purpose of Service Transition

Each stage of the lifecycle has a distinct purpose, and the purpose of service transition is to ensure that the services that have been agreed on and designed through the stages of strategy and design are now delivered effectively into operation.

Any new, modified, or retired service should be transitioned in accordance with the plans and documents that have been prepared to meet the expectations of the business. This is true if the service has been designed by the internal service provider or sourced from outside the organization. The efforts that have been made during the previous lifecycle stages—negotiating with customers to understand their needs and requirements and the agreements that have been put in place—all need to be considered when introducing a new service or a change to an existing service. It is in this stage that we are setting the expectation of the business, because this is the stage where we will test the new service for its ability to perform as required.

Think about this in terms of a project or implementation in which you have had some involvement. What were the things that went well during the handover to operational staff? What went badly and caused issues in support or customer experience? It is during transition that we address these issues and put in place measureable, repeatable activities that will enable a smooth handover into operations.

Transition is an important lifecycle stage, because it ensures that the business receives the services as agreed and that they can be used as intended. Ensuring the proper use of services is critical in achieving customer satisfaction; if your customer does not understand how the service is intended to work, they may find fault with something that it was never intended to perform.

This lifecycle stage is concerned with the experience for the customer and user and also for the support staff. All the stakeholders who will be receiving the new service or change to the existing services need to be considered as part of the transition planning. If a service is to be retired, the same careful and considered approach should be adopted so that the retirement of the service is seamless, particularly if there is a replacement service being implemented at the same time.

The Objectives of Service Transition

The objectives of this stage are to do the following:

• Plan and manage changes to services, the introduction of new services, or the retirement of services efficiently and effectively
• Manage risk associated with new, modified, or retired services being transitioned
• Successfully deploy releases into the live environment
• Set the expectations for the performance and use of the new or modified services
• Ensure that the changes to the services deliver the anticipated and required business value
• Provide relevant and good-quality knowledge and information about the services and service assets

So that we can achieve these objectives, a number of activities and processes have to take place as part of the service transition stage. It will be important to ensure that there are adequate plans made for the resourcing requirements for the transition, including providing the capacity that will be necessary for managing successful change. As part of the preparation for deployment, there needs to be a framework for risk assessment and evaluation of the required capabilities so that deployment can be managed efficiently and effectively.

During any transition, it will be necessary to ensure the integrity of the service assets. This is important throughout the whole lifecycle but becomes critical when introducing new services or changing existing services, because the management of changes to the service assets will introduce additional risks to the overall operation of the portfolio of services.

One of the key aspects of managing transition is ensuring that there is a well-organized manner of delivering the required outcomes, in an efficient and effective way. This requires you to have repeatable mechanisms for all of the activities that need to be carried out as part of this lifecycle stage. This includes the build, testing, and deployment of service releases, so as part of the transition, we have processes that allow for measureable management of these activities.

Finally, we have to ensure that the outcomes identified in the service design stage are delivered effectively into operation. This will include ensuring that the service can be managed, operated, and supported according to the constraints specified as part of service design. It is important to ensure, as part of this final activity, that users and support staff are adequately trained in the new or changed service or system. This will ensure that the new or changed service can be used at the time of deployment.

The Scope of Service Transition

The service transition stage provides guidance on the development and improvement of the capabilities required to deliver new services into the live environment. This covers the planning, build, test, evaluation, implementation, and deployment of new services or changes to existing services. It also provides information and guidance on the transition of services between service providers (internal and external) and the retirement of services that are no longer required. The guidance covers the relationship between strategy, design, and transition so that the requirements from service strategy, which are then developed in service design, may be successfully realized for operational use, while minimizing the risk and disruption of making changes.

The service transition lifecycle stage provides guidance on management and how transitions should work between all types of service providers, no matter what the situation. This includes introducing new technologies, working with suppliers and partners, and managing working practices.

So, the scope of service transition covers all aspects of introducing new services to the operational environment. It will have a close association with project management activity and may adopt a project management approach to the coordination of the activities.

The Value of Service Transition to the Business

Service transition offers value by providing guidance on how to adopt and implement standard and consistent approaches while delivering changes to services. Taking a consistent approach will enable projects to predict the risks, resources, spend, and timescales for delivery more accurately, which will result in the ability to manage higher volumes of change.

Because there will be a consistent approach to planning, the transition processes will be easier for stakeholders in the activities to follow, and there will be fewer issues with clashes of project resource requirements, such as two separate teams requiring access to the same testing environments. By working in this way, you will also be able to reduce the effort spent on managing test and pilot environments. This will also enable reuse of systems and service assets, because a planned approach will enable you to see where reuse can be achieved.

Other benefits include increased confidence on the part of the recipients of any changes, because there is clear planned communication, and expectations are correctly set for all stakeholders, including customers, users, suppliers, partners, and projects.

In addition, the overall management of the transition enables control of the assets and costs associated with transitions. So, the value to the business is realized in the successful transition of new or changed services within budget and according to the specifications set out in strategy and developed in design.

We are probably all familiar with the project that gets delivered into operation with minimal information, warning, or preparation. It used to be a common occurrence, and the consequent impact to the operational environment in terms of rework and additional effort required to begin supporting the project would often have significant additional cost implications.

The transition stage is there to ensure that this no longer happens. Taking the output from the service design stage, the service design package (SDP) transition is responsible for ensuring the seamless delivery of new or changed services into the live operational environment.

The next chapters will examine the processes in the service transition stage, which enable your services to be transitioned successfully, with the exception of change management which is detailed below.