Service Transition: How do you know it's 'service-ready'?

With the mainstream arrival of ITIL V3, Service Transition has become a core discipline, but does the formalisation of this process increase costs and complexity?

Service Transition provides guidance and process activities for the transition of services in the operational business environment. It covers the broader, long-term change management role, release and deployment practices, so that risks, benefits, delivery mechanisms and the support of ongoing operational services are considered.

With the mainstream arrival of ITIL V3 (Information Technology Infrastructure Library version 3), Service Transition has become a core discipline. A smooth and successful transition into the production environment is a fundamental objective and requirement of any project, but does the formalisation of this process increase costs and complexity? Or does the enhanced confidence in a reduction of new service incidents and failures more than justify the investment in Service Transition? How do the interfaces and dependencies between other roles and functions such as quality and change management play out? And, if Service Transition is to be embraced by an existing team, what is the best way to add value, rather than overburden?

The 'Service Transition: How do you know it's 'service-ready'?' workshop aimed to investigate such issues. Sharing real-life experiences and first-hand knowledge of Forum members, this workshop consisted of two case study presentations followed by a series of structured discussions.

This workshop was conceived and organised by the Corporate IT Forum and attended by 31 members from 29 prominent organisations with IT estates of varying size and consistency. Attending member organisations represent a wide cross section of industry sectors including banking & financial services, charity, county council, defence, energy food, media, pharmaceutical, retail, travel and utilities.