The ITIL V3 Lifecycle phases define a set of specialized organizational capabilities for providing value to customers in the form of services. The capabilities take the form of functions and processes that are used to manage services over their “lifecycle.” The value of each phase is elaborated below:
SERVICE STRATEGY VALUE
This phase allows an organization to understand the following:
- Services that will be provided
- Customers of the service
- Value of the services
- Cost/risk associated with delivering the service
- Capacity of the organization to deliver the service
SERVICE DESIGN VALUE
Service Design ensures that service organizations can deliver quality, cost-effective services and meet all of the business’ requirements for the planned services. It also provides the following benefits:
- Improved consistency of service
- Easier implementation of new or changed services
- Improved service alignment with business needs
- Improved IT governance
- Improved quality of service
SERVICE TRANSITION VALUE
Effective Service Transition adds value to the business by:
- Ensuring that all changes comply with business and governance requirements
- Using contingency plans to manage the level of risk during and after the service implementation (for example, service outage, service disruption)
- Improving the consistency and quality of the implementation process for new or changed services
SERVICE OPERATION VALUE
Each phase in the ITIL Service Lifecycle builds value for the business and culminates in the business value delivered by Service Operations. For example:
- In Service Strategy, the service is modeled
- In Service Design and Service Transition, the service is designed and developed, and the cost is predicted and validated
- In Service Operations, services are delivered and measured against agreed customer committments.
- In Continual Service Improvement, the measures for optimization are identified
CONTINUAL SERVICE IMPROVEMENT VALUE
With Continual Service Improvement, organizations can identify and implement improvements to IT services and realize many benefits, including:
- Better information about current services (and possibly about areas where change would bring increased benefits)
- Improved service reliability, stability, and availability
- Improved resource allocation and utilization
- Improved metrics and management reporting
- Clearer view of current and future IT service capability
- Better working relationships between customers and IT organization
- Enhanced customer satisfaction
