Transition Planning and Support

Let’s begin by looking at the transition planning and support process, which is a key process for the service transition lifecycle stage. Setting up the transition and how it will be managed is crucial for the successful release of your new service into the operational environment. It is a very detailed area of the lifecycle and covers the interface between service transition, project management, and business engagement. It is here that you are looking at the resources and capabilities required to deliver your service design into the live environment, in the service operation lifecycle stage.

In the Foundation exam syllabus, this process is covered only by the requirement to understand the purpose, scope, and objectives of the process. More information about this process is available in the Lifecycle core publication of Service Transition, and further education on the process can be found in the ITIL qualification scheme.

The Purpose of Transition Planning and Support

The purpose of transition planning and support is as the title of the process suggests: to plan the transition activities. But of course, that is very simplistic, and there are more things to consider.

The need to plan transition activity should be clear, because there are so many disparate activities that need to be undertaken. Think about the different processes that exist in this lifecycle stage—everything from managing change through release and deployment, service validation and testing, and change evaluation all the way to managing service assets and configuration items. The key purpose of the transition planning and support process is to coordinate the required resources that will be employed during the transition.

When carrying out a transition, it may be necessary to engage with the technical and application management functions to obtain the necessary resources for managing the activity and ensuring that all aspects of the transition are carried out by staff with the relevant capabilities.

There will be considerations regarding the impact of utilizing existing operational staff to help in the transition, and this needs to be managed appropriately to minimize service impact.

It is important to remember that during a transition, it is not only the IT staff members who will need to engage in the activities; you also need to have support and involvement from the business and user community. They will need to be included in the testing of the transition to ensure that the requirements specified in strategy and the solutions developed in design are delivered successfully to meet the requirements of the business.

So, in transition planning and support, there needs to be a careful assessment of the resources and capabilities across all of the stakeholders, as well as appropriate scheduling of the transition planned to ensure that these are available when they are needed.

The Objectives of Transition Planning and Support

The objectives of the transition planning and support process are to do the following:

• Plan and coordinate the resources for the transition. It is important to plan this so that the requirements identified in service strategy, which were captured in service design, are effectively realized in service operation.
• Coordinate all of the various sources for the transitional activity. This may include projects and service teams but also includes suppliers if third-party engagement is involved in the transition.
• Meet the predicted budget, timeframe, and quality estimates as the new or changed service is established in the supported environment. Meeting the estimated cost, quality, and time allocation is an important factor for demonstrating the efficiency and effectiveness of the transitional activity and contributes to customer satisfaction.
• Establish the new requirements as specified in the service design stage for the management systems and tools that will be part of the new service in operation. This will include the service management tools, as well as the management and technology architectures as defined in the service solution. There may also be new requirements for service management processes for the new or changed services, as well as measures and metrics to be established in order to deliver the required results and service quality.
• Ensure that repeatable processes are adopted by all engaged in the transition. Developing a framework of reusable processes and systems that can improve the efficiency of future transitions is an important part of this process. It will mean that the coordination and planning will continue to improve over time, delivering long-term benefits to the overall operation.
• Provide clear and comprehensive plans for the transition. These will be made available to the business and project teams for alignment with their change plans. It is extremely important to ensure that business and project teams are aware of the IT service changes and plans so that the overall approach can be managed and aligned to meet the needs and expectations of the business in a realistic timeframe.
• Identify and manage risks, in accordance with the risk management framework adopted by the organization. This will include controlling risks, as well as mitigating them to minimize disruption and failure of the transition. It is important to identify risks and make the relevant stakeholders and decision makers aware of them so that appropriate actions can be taken to safeguard against failure and disruption in the transition.
• Monitor and improve the process of transition planning and support and the service transition lifecycle stage.

The Scope of Transition Planning and Support

The scope of service transition planning and support covers the following:

• The maintenance of the policies and standards that are to be applied throughout the transition. This is important to ensure that the repeatable activity is managed appropriately and that you maximize the use of models for an efficient approach.
• Providing guidance for each new service or major change through the transition processes.
• Ensuring that the resources and management required for multiple transitions to take place at the same time are available. It is unlikely that there will be only one change, project, or new service introduction taking place at any one time. Transition planning should recognize and coordinate the efforts required for this to happen successfully.
• Prioritizing the resources required for transition may be required because conflicts over usage may occur. An example of this would be the use of the test environment by multiple projects or changes.
• Planning for future transition requirements in terms of budget and resources. Consideration should be given to business requirements that are currently being handled in the design stage so that any additional resources can be ordered or allocated in a timely manner.
• Reviewing process activities for performance improvement opportunities.
• Ensuring the coordination of the transition and planning process with business program and project processes and the activities taking place in the service design lifecycle stage.

Transition planning and support should not cover the detailed plans for build, test, and deployment for individual changes or releases, because the processes of change management and release and deployment management will cover this. Its scope and purpose is at a higher level, ensuring the coordination of multiple activities toward the deployment of changes into the live operational environment.