Every service has a life
A college adds a new student login service. It is planned, built, launched, run for years and then improved. Skip a step and it goes wrong. Plan badly, and it is unsafe from day one.
ITIL names five stages in that life.
Key words
| Word | What it means |
|---|---|
| ITIL | A set of good practice for running IT services. The name is short for Information Technology Infrastructure Library. |
| Service lifecycle | The stages a service goes through from idea to improvement. |
| Fit for purpose | The service does what the business needs it to do. |
| Fit for use | The service works well when people use it. |
| Transition | Moving a service from being built to being live. |
| Live environment | The real system that people use every day. |
| Continual improvement | Always looking for a better way to work. |
| Business objective | A goal the business wants to reach. |
The cells students fill in are left blank in this preview.
By the end of this lesson
Note
I can name the five stages of the ITIL service lifecycle and say what each one does.
Starter: what you already know
Have a go
Starter: what you already know
3 questionsYour answers are marked here and are not kept. A college account keeps every student’s marks.
Stages 1 and 2: strategy and design
Service strategy lines up the service with business objectives. It makes sure the service is fit for purpose and fit for use.
Service design plans the service and everything that supports it, before it goes live. Design looks at four things: people, processes, products and partners.
Stages 3 and 4: transition and operation
Service transition builds and launches the service. Any change is handled in a joined-up way, not one by one.
Service operation is the daily work. It meets requests, solves failures, fixes problems and does routine jobs.
Stage 5: continual improvement
Continual service improvement keeps making IT processes and services better. It asks two questions. Is it effective? Is it efficient?
It uses what operation learned. Then the cycle starts again, with new goals.
Check: the five stages
Have a go
Check: the five stages
4 questionsYour answers are marked here and are not kept. A college account keeps every student’s marks.