ITIL and Service Lifecycle Stages

ITIL identifies five stages in a service lifecycle.

Here they are :

1. Service Strategy (SS)
2. Service Design (SD)
3. Service Transition (ST)
4. Service Operation (SO)
5. Continual Service Improvement (CSI)

Visually these stages can be stacked like this:

Strategy forms the core part of service lifecycle and is all about making the informed decisions on what kind of value we expect from service. Design, Transition & Operation bring the vision to reality. Design is all about creating blueprint and how it should look like once operational. Transition addresses the challenges of handover from development to operations team. Operations provides guidance on how to ensure that service keeps delivering value without interruption. Continual Service Improvement is kind of feedback loop to ensure that there is continuous focus on improving every part of service lifecycle.

We will deep dive into each of these stages in next few posts.