Service Life Cycle
Manage the IT services from service introduction, through to deployment and operation, and to eventual decommissioning. Communicate any changes to the service catalogue.
Improvement Planning
Practices-Outcomes-Metrics (POM)
Representative POMs are described for Service Life Cycle at each level of maturity.
- 2Basic
- Practice
- Ensure communication takes place when significant service changes have occurred.
- Outcome
- Stakeholders are kept aware of key services changes.
- Metric
- % of service changes that are proactively communicated to stakeholders.
- Practice
- Define service life cycles, their governance, and decision rights.
- Outcome
- Service life cycle management activities can be allocated to various roles.
- Metric
- % of service life cycle management activities with formally assigned ownership.
- Practice
- Manage service introduction in an effective manner, and include a piloting and testing phase for large projects.
- Outcome
- Services are more stable when they are released.
- Metric
- % of service introductions that include a pilot and testing phase.
- Practice
- Identify key underutilized or redundant services to be decommissioned.
- Outcome
- Key underutilized or redundant services are no longer a drain on resources.
- Metrics
- % of service decommissioning opportunities that are identified by customer-facing processes.
- % of redundant services decommissioned.
- 3Intermediate
- Practice
- Proactively notify key stakeholders of changes to the service catalogue, in line with agreed service levels.
- Outcome
- Most stakeholders are consistently communicated with and are aware of upcoming changes to the service catalogue and the rationale behind the changes.
- Metric
- % of service changes that are proactively communicated to stakeholders.
- Practice
- Train staff on the service life cycle procedures such as change authorization and end-of-life processes, and on service interdependencies.
- Outcome
- Service life cycle procedures and interdependencies are understood and change impact analysis can be conducted.
- Metric
- % of staff trained in service life cycle procedures.
- Practices
- Introduce services according to business needs and as part of a formal release management process.
- Ensure a rollback procedure is set up and tested before a service is introduced.
- Outcome
- An effective process for introduction and rollback of changes exists.
- Metrics
- % of services introduced using formal release management procedures.
- % of attempted rollbacks that are successfully completed.
- Practices
- Establish well-defined decommissioning processes (including roles and responsibilities), and align decommissioning activities with business priorities.
- Assess the impact on all related services before a service is decommissioned, and identify and retire any redundant components.
- Outcomes
- Underutilized or redundant services and hardware are formally identified and decommissioned.
- Ownership of all related data, documentation, and system components, and arrangements for archiving, disposal, or transfer can be agreed.
- Metrics
- % of redundant services decommissioned.
- Cost savings resulting from service decommissioning.
- 4Advanced
- Practice
- Proactively communicate all service changes to all stakeholders — using targeted communication that identifies the improvements or other potential impacts the changes might have.
- Outcome
- All stakeholders are personally informed about pending service changes that might be of interest to them.
- Metric
- % of service changes that are proactively communicated to stakeholders.
- Practices
- Employ advanced service life cycle techniques to test state transitions.
- Include automation, scripting, and version control.
- Outcomes
- Advanced life cycle techniques allow state transitions to be tested before live system changes.
- Automation and scripting enable agility and result in a reduced number of errors.
- Version control allows changes to be reversed in many cases.
- Metrics
- % of attempted rollbacks that are successfully completed.
- % of requests that result from service changes.
- Practices
- Couple service introduction release management with wider organizational change management processes.
- Inform and train customers and IT staff before a service is changed or introduced.
- Outcome
- Service introduction causes minimal disruption to the business.
- Metrics
- % of services introduced using formal release management procedures.
- % of attempted rollbacks that are successfully completed.
- Mean time taken to introduce a service.
- % of requests that result from service introduction.
- Practices
- Extend decommissioning processes across the entire organization, with a focus on reusability of components and automated decommissioning when appropriate (e.g. virtualized servers).
- Encourage active engagement to identify and assess potential services to be decommissioned and clearly articulate the impact of decommissioning — both in terms of costs and service levels.
- Outcome
- Resource utilization is optimized and unnecessary redundancy is minimized.
- Metrics
- % of redundant services decommissioned.
- Cost savings resulting from service decommissioning.
- Cost savings resulting from component reuse.
- % of decommissioning activities that are automated.
- Total person-hours required to support decommissioning activities.
- 5Optimized
- Practice
- Continually review the service provisioning communication process using methods such as small group feedback forums, surveys, or inviting staff suggestions, and improve practices as appropriate.
- Outcome
- The service provisioning communication process, and resultant visibility of the service catalogue and changes to it, are maintained at a high standard and meet or exceed the targets set out in SLAs.
- Metric
- Satisfaction ratings in relation to stakeholder communications.
- Practice
- Look to industry best practice and emerging research concepts for continuous improvement opportunities in service provisioning life cycle management.
- Outcome
- Service disruptions are rare and are nearly always flagged ahead of the disruption.
- Metric
- # of (unnotified) service disruptions per month.
- Practice
- Align release management, including service introduction, with business needs and schedules.
- Outcomes
- Services are introduced into operation smoothly and disruption to the business is rare.
- Service introduction takes a lead in organizational capability improvement and is recognized (both internally and externally) as a key differentiator.
- Metrics
- Mean time taken to introduce a service.
- % of requests that result from service introduction.
- Amount of service time lost due to release activity.
- Resource costs per release.
- Practices
- Assess decommissioning of services and components as part of all change projects and programmes across the business ecosystem.
- Articulate the impact of decommissioning — both in terms of service improvement and cost.
- Outcomes
- Services that are not strategically valuable or operationally essential are effectively decommissioned.
- Service provisioning operation costs are optimized.
- Metrics
- Total cost of non-strategic services in the portfolio.
- % of redundant services decommissioned.
- Cost savings resulting from service decommissioning.
- Total person-hours required to support decommissioning activities.