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The Best of Service Transition, Part 2

Transition Planning and Support
Originally Published on February 28, 2012

I am often asked on how to manage transition.  Most organizations find that there are a lot of moving parts.  What happens here effects all stake holders and if expectations aren’t set correctly the reputation of the IT organization can often be at risk and that it can be difficult to meet the changing needs of the business in a cost effective and timely manner.  In order for us to be able to effectively meet these challenges we should start with the big picture process of Transition Planning and Support:
  • The purpose and objective of the transition planning and support process is to provide overall planning for service transitions and to coordinate the resources that are required.  It does that with the following activities:
  • Plan and coordinate resources to deliver the requirements of service strategy that have been translated in service design and insure they are effectively delivered in service operation.
  • Coordinate actions across projects, suppliers, service teams and time constraints.
  • Establish services within predicted costs, quality and time estimates.
  • Ensure all teams adopt a common framework of standard, reusable, integrated planning and support practices.
  • Provide clear and comprehensive plans that align business change projects with IT service transition plans.
  • Manage and control risks.
  • Report on issues, risks and any deviations to stakeholders.
  • Carry out CSI on service transition activities.
The scope should include:
  • Maintaining standards, policies and models.
  • Provide guidance for each major change or new service.
  • Coordinate resources to enable multiple transition projects to bemanaged at the same time
  • Prioritize conflicting requirements for limited resources.
  • Plan and budget for future requirements.
  • Coordinate with program and project management.
  • Carry out CSI of planning and support activities
By having effective transition planning and support, we can greatly improve the service provider’s ability to handle the ever changing needs of the business.  We can increase the effectiveness of being able to deliver high volumes of changes and releases across all projects and programs.  There by increasing the value of the service that we are delivering to our customers.

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