Early Life Support Originally Published on May 3, 2010 I have found, after doing a number of releases throughout my career, that a solid Early Life Support program (ELS) can really enhance the acceptance and support of any new or changed service. The ITIL Service Transition definition of ELS is the “Support provided for a new or changed IT service for a period of time after it is released." During ELS the IT Service Provider may review the KPIs, Service Levels and Monitoring Thresholds, and provide additional resources for Incident and Problem Management.   Although stakeholders have agreed to the entry and exit criteria in the Service Design stage, it may become necessary to finalize the performance targets and exit criteria after the build and testing of the service has been completed. This will help to clarify the deployment process and set the proper expectation of the operational resources that will perform the support after ELS has been completed. ELS ensures that ap

We continue our "Best of" blog services by moving into Service Transition Who is the Change Initiator? Originally Published on July 21, 2010 The “change initiator” is the individual or group that is requesting the change. Change initiators could be users, suppliers or IT staff – depending on the nature of the proposed change. It is the change initiator’s responsibility to justify the reasons for making the change.  However, since the change initiator may not understand all of the risks associated with a seemingly innocuous change, some type of impact assessment should occur.  The assessment could be very simple and quick - or extensive- based on the scope of the change and business processes that are potentially affected. The change authority (CAB, Steering Committee, local CABs, etc.) assesses the impact of the propose change and determines if the change is necessary or beneficial.  Impact could be negative or positive and should consider cost/benefit, resources r

I often get asked where change evaluation takes place.   Isn’t it part of change management?   It is a separate process however it is driven by change management and is triggered by the receipt of a request for evaluation from Change Management. Inputs come from several processes including the SDP and SAC from Design Coordination, change proposal from SPM, RFCs, change records and detailed change documentation from Change Management.   It holds discussions with stakeholders through SLM and BRM, testing results from service validation and testing to ensure that its members have a full understanding of the impact of any issues identified and that the proper risk assessments can be carried out against the overall changes and in particular the predicted performance, intended affects, unintended affects and actual performance once the service change has been implemented.    The purpose of change evaluation is to provide a uniform and structured means of determining the performance of a c

Organizations looking for help defining standard changes will find it in the Microsoft Operations Framework (MOF). A white paper Using Standard Changes to Improve Provisioning describes what standard changes are in relation to other changes as well as in relation to service requests; along with guidelines for establishing standard changes. The MOF Action Plan: Standard Changes offers a more succinct step-by-step look at how to create standard changes. There are a also a number of “MOF Reliability Workbooks” in the MOF Technical Library (e.g., Reliability Workbook for Active Directory® Certificate Services) that describe proposed standard changes for the given system or service presented in a checklist-like fashion that allows the proposed change to be verified as a standard change. The MOF Reliability Workbooks are Microsoft Excel spreadsheets that also look at things such as Monitoring Activities, Maintenance activities, and Health Risks. This and other tools such as an in

Rusty asked: I was looking for terms used for categorizing the impact of a change, I remember in Version 2 of ITIL that changes where categorized as Major, Significant, Minor and Standard is that no longer done? Or is the Imapct also defines as the priority High, Medium, and Low Rusty, I’m going to give you my answer in three parts. This information can also be found in Section 4.2 of your Service Transition Book.   In ITIL V3 changes are now categorized into three distinct types:   • Standard Change: Change to a service or infrastructure for which the approach has been pre-authorized by Change management that has an accepted and established procedure to provide a specific change requirement. It has a defined trigger, documented tasks and budgetary approval. The risk is low and well understood. • Normal Change: Change to a service or infrastructure for which the risk must be assessed and must go through the Change Advisory Board (CAB). These are Changes that happen either on

Paul recently asked; Hello, When browsing on the topic of Service Requests, I visited your site where a question was answered on the differences and similarities of Service Requests and Standard Changes. I was triggered by the following passage: "It is important to note that not all Service Requests are Standard Changes. Service Requests can include questions, queries, complaints and compliments. Similarly, not all Standard Changes are Service Requests. Standard Changes can include batch jobs, patches and other low risk changes that are not "requestable" by the user. Any Service Request or Standard Change that presents a higher risk may require reassessment and reclassification by Change Management." I am trying to think of a term that would differentiate the one from the other. Considering that there are Service Requests that may invoke a Standard Change, I can see two possibilities: it may be a Standard Change that can be requested by any end-user or it ma

Question: We currently track defects in a separate system than our ticket management system. With that said, my question is does anyone have suggestions and/or best practices on how to handle incidents when a defect is involved? Should the incident be closed since the defect is being worked on in another defect tracking system if it is noted in the incident ticket? I am considering creating an incident status of 'closed-unresolved' so the incident can still be reported on in our ticket management system but know it is being worked on/tracked in the defect system. With defects, it is possible that we may never work on them because they are very low priority and the impact is low to the user. However, in some cases a defect is being worked on. Should we create a problem ticket instead? Thanks, René W. Answer: René. In ITIL, the activity you are describing is handled by the Problem Management process. ITIL does not use the term “defect” but it does use the term “known error”

Sandy, if you have any more questions, just let me know! Standard Operations and Maintenance is really something that gets defined in the Service Level Agreement in consultation and negotiation with the customer. It is not really a determination made solely by IT or Operations. It is the customer or receiver of service that helps to establish whether an “outage” has occurred. Because we want to adhere to the terms and conditions set forth in the SLA we want strong controls in place. I think it is not a question as to whether the Change Management process will be used or not used. It is more a question of the degree of Change Management that will be used. A solid approach would be to establish a clear definition of a Service Change in the organization. ITIL says it is any “addition, modification or deletion of elements of the delivery of service” [paraphrased]. This is a broad definition and covers just about everything we do in IT. So, next we need to identify what we actually do in

I was having a discussion with a learner this morning about the difference between Service Requests and Standard Changes. This learner's organization publishes a list of standard services that users can request via a self-help tool. The Service Request will be routed to the Service Desk. The Service Desk will review the request. If appropriate, the Service Request may be fulfilled by applying a Standard Change that has been approved by Change Management. By definition, a Standard Change is a pre -approved, low risk change (such as a new hire) that can be fulfilled almost immediately. Standard Changes must be recorded, possibly as a Service Request. They do not require operational oversight by the CAB. It is important to note that not all Service Requests are Standard Changes. Service Requests can include questions, queries, complaints and compliments. Similarly, not all Standard Changes are Service Requests. Standard Changes can include batch jobs, patches and other low risk chang

I've been spending time within the Service Transition book. Did you know that ITIL V3 has a prescription for performing an impact analysis of a proposed change in the form of 7 "R" questions? Who RAISED the change? What is the REASON for the change? What is the RETURN required from the change? What are the RISKS involved in the change? What RESOURCES are required to deliver the change? Who is RESPONSIBLE for the build, test and implementation of the change? What is the RELATIONSHIP between this change and other changes? Frankly, I would add or clarify a couple of questions: What is the COST of the change?" (broken away from the Resources question) What is the TIMELINE for implementing the change? Other than that, I believe that these are meaningful and well-rounded questions, They can serve as a good foundation for a Request for Change template and informed Change Advisory Board discussions.