Service Transition

8. Implementing Service Transition

Figure 8.1 Steps to improving Service Transition processes

Implementing Service Transition in a Greenfield situation, i.e. a starting point where no Service Transition exists at all, would only be likely if a new service provider is being established. Therefore the task for most service provider organizations will be one of service improvement, a matter of assessing their current approach to the Service Transition processes and establishing the most effective and efficient improvements to make, prioritized according to the business benefit that can be achieved. Considerable guidance on this topic is contained within the ITIL Continual Service Improvement publication, but the cycle will be as illustrated in Figure 8.1.

Introducing new or improved ST processes will be a significant organizational change and an introduction of improved services delivered by the service provider. From that context, much of the guidance in this publication on delivering new or changed services is directly applicable to introducing Service Transition itself. Doing so is, in itself, a Service Transition exercise, since it is changing the services delivered by the service provider.

8.1 STAGES OF INTRODUCING SERVICE TRANSITION

The stages of introducing Service Transition will match that of other services, requiring a justification for their introduction (strategic considerations), designing of the Service Transition components and then their introduction to the organization (transitioning) before they can run in normal mode (operations).

8.1.1 Justifying Service Transition

Service Transition is a key contributor to the service provider's ability to deliver quality services to the business. They are the delivery mechanism between the work of design, and the day-to-day care delivered by operations. However, the Service Transition processes are not always visible to the customers, and this can make financial justification difficult. When setting up Service Transition, attention needs to be paid to ways of quantifying and measuring the benefits, typically as a balance between impact to the business (negative and positive) and cost (in terms of money/staff resources) and in terms of what would be prevented by applying resource to any specific transition, such as diverting staff resources or delaying implementation.

Gathering of evidence on the cost of current inadequate Service Transition is a valid and useful exercise, addressing such issues as:

Cost of failed changes
Extra cost of actual transition compared with budgeted costs
Errors found in live running that could have been detected during test transition.

8.1.2 Designing Service Transition

Design of the Service Transition processes and how they fit within an organization are addressed throughout this publication. Useful factors to consider when designing Service Transition are described below.

8.1.2.1 Applicable Standards And Policies

Consider how agreed policies, standards and legislation will constrain the design of Service Transition. Considerations might include requirements for independence and visible accountability, such as are commonly found controlling financial sector companies or within legislation such as Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX).

8.1.2.2 Relationships

Other internal support services
In many situations Service Transition must work together with other areas that are transitioning other elements of a business change, such as HR, facilities management, telecoms, production control, education and training. The processes will be designed to facilitate these relationships.

The aim should be to ensure that ownership for each component of the overall service package is defined and subsequently management responsibility is clear.

Programme and project management
Major transitions may be managed as programmes or projects, and Service Transition will deliver their role within the appropriate umbrella. Clear areas of delineation and collaboration between programmes, projects and Service Transition will be required, and these need to be set out and agreed within the organization. To ensure appropriate transition is delivered, Service Transition staff will be involved in agreeing key programme and project milestones and timelines and ST should be set up to adopt this role. For example if a project is due to deliver a major release at the end of the month, ST must provide sufficient and timely resources to baseline and release the service package, at the agreed time and according to agreed quality levels.

To be effective, Service Transition needs to take a broader view across projects, combining transitions and releases to make the best use of available resources.

Service Transition will set up and maintain (working through CSI) an approach to dealing with an ongoing influx of tasks (Service Transitions) that must be delivered, scheduling, combining and sharing resources as appropriate. The strategy should seek to establish this role for ST together with the delegated authority and escalation channels that enable it to deliver.

Internal development teams and external suppliers
Communication channels will need to deal with defects, risks and issues discovered during the transition process, e.g. errors found during testing. Channels to both internal teams and external suppliers will need to be identified and maintained.

Customers/users
Communication with customers and users is important to ensure that the transitioned service will remain focused on current business requirements. The requirements at actual transition may evolve from the needs identified at design stage and communication channels with the customer will be the source of identifying those changes. Effective communication will benefit from an agreed strategic stakeholder contact map (see paragraph 5.3.2). In many circumstances this communication will be routed through service or account management or SLM, but these channels need to be identified and designed into the Service Transition processes also.

Other stakeholders
Other stakeholders will need to interface with ST, and these should be identified for all foreseeable circumstances, including in disaster recovery scenarios, and so liaison with ITSCM should be catered for. Other possible considerations might include:

IT, e.g. networks, IT security, data management
Outside of IT but within the organization, e.g. facilities management, HR, physical security
Outside of the organization, e.g. landlords, police and regulatory bodies.

8.1.2.3 Budget And Resources

The tasks required to deliver Service Transition should deliver an overall net benefit to the organization (or they should be revisited and revised) but nonetheless they do require funding, and the ST strategy should address the source and control of financial provision.

Funding Approach
A mechanism for controlling the funding of the transition infrastructure must be established, including:

Testing environments - In many organizations testing groups (including specialist testing aspects such as usability testing) are not under the direct control of transition. The relationship and authority to engage and allocate resources needs to be established, understood, maintained and managed.
SCM and Service Knowledge Management Systems - These will specifically require funding for the technology and skills essential to their effectiveness.

The costing of transition objectives must be an integral part of design. This applies whatever the funding mechanism may be, and will involve serviced transition and customers working with design. Typically the transition options will be costed and a business risk-based decision reached.

Resources
Similarly to the options and issues faced when considering funding, supply and control of other resources will need to be addressed within the ST strategy such as:

Staff, for example the allocation of project resource to transition activities
Central infrastructure, e.g.:
Central test data, compromise between broadly applicable and re-usable against focused on individual services/features
Network resources for distribution of software, documentation and for testing of networked elements of services to be transitioned.

Test environment management is a major item of expenditure and a significant resource element in many organizations. Under-funding and/or under-resourcing here (either through lack of numbers or lack of requisite skills) can cause very expensive errors and problems in supporting live services, and have severe detrimental effects on an organization's overall business capability.

8.1.3 Introducing Service Transition

Experience shows that it is not advisable to attempt to retrofit a new transition's practices onto projects under way; the benefits from the improved (and still unproven) practices are unlikely to outweigh the disruption caused by changing horses in midstream. If a particular transition is especially problematical, and it may be relevant to force a change of attitude, then an exception could be justified.

One technique that has worked in organizations is capturing 'in flight' initiatives and bringing them into line with the new approach. This involves adjusting projects currently going through design/transition and adjusting their planning to fit in with the new procedures, typically at acceptance test/go live stage. For this to be successful, conversion strategies form 'old transition routes' to the new procedures should be considered, designed (and tested where possible) as part of the design responsibility.

8.1.4 Cultural Change Aspects

Even formalization of mostly existing procedures will deliver cultural change; if implementing Service Transition into an organization means installing formal processes that were not there before the cultural change is significant. Experience shows that staff working in Change Management, and even those evangelizing change among others, are potentially as resistant to change in their own areas as anyone else. While it important to focus on gaining the support of Service Transition staff working directly in Service Transition it is equally important that those supporting, and being supported by, Service Transition understand why the changes to procedures are being made, the benefits to themselves and to the organization and their changed roles. The cultural change programme should address all stakeholders and should continue throughout and after transition, to ensure the changed attitudes are firmly embedded and not seen as a fashion accessory that can be dispensed with after the initial high profile has faded.

Considerably more information on cultural change can be found in Chapter 5.

8.1.5 Risk And Value

As with all transitions, decisions around transitioning the transition service should not be made without adequate understanding of the expected risks and benefits. In this specific situation the risks might include:

Alienation of support staff
Excessive costs to the business
Unacceptable delays to business benefits.

The risks and beneficial values require a baseline of the current situation, if the changes are to be measurable. Measures of the added value from Service Transition might include:

Customer and user satisfaction
Reduced incident and failure rates for transitioned services
Reduced cost of transitioning.