The latest ITIL 2011 service transition guidance
ITIL® provides guidance on the provision of quality IT services, and on the processes needed to support them. The purpose of the service transition stage of the service lifecycle is to ensure that new, modified or retired services meet the expectations of the business as documented in the service strategy and service design stages of the lifecycle.
ITIL 2011 Service Transition provides guidance on:
- The development and improvement of capabilities for transitioning new and changed services into supported environments, including release planning, building, testing, evaluation and deployment;
- Service retirement and transfer of services between service providers;
- How to ensure the requirements from service strategy are effectively realised in in service operation while controlling the risks of failure and subsequent disruption;
- Managing the complexity associated with changes to services and service management processes;
- Allowing for innovation while minimising 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.
Summary of Updates
The concepts in ITIL 2011 have been updated for clarity and consistency, without affecting the overall message, ensuring every stage of the service lifecycle remains focused on the business case, and relates to all the companion process elements that follow. ITIL 2011 is fully aligned with MSP®, M_o_R®, PRINCE2® and P3O.
- The structure, content and relationships of the configuration management system (CMS) and service knowledge management system (SKMS) have been clarified to help the reader to understand these key concepts.
- There is new content explaining how a change proposal should be used.
- The evaluation process has been renamed change evaluation and the purpose and scope have been modified to help clarify when and how this process should be used.
- The service asset and configuration management process has additional content relating to asset management.
- There are improvements in the flow and integration of a number of processes, including change management, release and deployment management, and change evaluation.
It is recommended that ITIL 2011 Service Transition is used in conjunction with the other core ITIL publications.
Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- Foreword
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Service management as a practice
- Service transition principles
- Service transition processes
- Managing people through service transitions
- Organizing for service transition
- Technology considerations
- Implementing service transition
- Challenges, critical success factors and risks
- Afterword
- Appendix A: Description of asset types
- Appendix B: Risk assessment and management
- Appendix C: Related guidance
- Appendix D: Examples of inputs and outputs across the service lifecycle
- References and further reading
- Abbreviations and glossary
- Index
ITIL 2011 Service Transition is also available as part of the ITIL Lifecycle Publication Suite, a more cost-effective way of buying all five core ITIL® 2011 Manuals.
