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Chapter 3 ■ ITIL Service Lifecycle
Service operations entails maintenance and making sure the services are running
as per the plan—status quo is achieved. Under service operations, there is no new
development, no deployments, and only maintenance. Some maintenance activities
could include health checks, fixing issues when they arise, and ensuring recurring
activities are scheduled and run as planned. This will be discussed in detail in Chapter X.
Drawing on the previous example, the mall owner takes possession of the mall,
rents out the shops, and sets the ball in motion for it to run smoothly. For it to be
operationalized, he needs to hire people who can manage various areas of the mall and
employees who can carry out day-to-day tasks, like cleaning, security, marketing, etc. He
also needs to set up daily/weekly/monthly/yearly activities to ensure required activities
to keep the mall functioning. Examples could be monthly generator checks, security
audits, four-hour restroom janitorial services, etc. You get the drift?
By looking at this simple example, you can easily see the activities that are needed
in operations. The operations phase in IT service management is a lot more complicated
and requires plenty of minds to work out various aspects of it.
3.1.5 Continual Service Improvement
The final phase in ITIL is continual service improvement. While I call it the final phase,
it does not necessarily come into play after the service operations phase. If you look at
Figure 3-1 closely, you will observe that this phase encircles all of the other four phases.
There is meaning to this. This phase takes input from any of the other phases to carry out
its process activities. You can also say that it does not fit in the lifecycle phases as it does
not roll once the previous phase has completed its delivery. But remember that this is
the phase that keeps the ball rolling, the service breathing. You will learn more about this
later in this book.
I strongly believe that if something does not grow, it is as good as dead. This is true
with our careers, bank accounts, or anything else you might think of, except of course our
waists! This concept applies to services too; if they do not improve over time, IT services
wither away and something else takes its place. The objective of the continual service
improvement (CSI) phase is to identify and implement improvements across the four
lifecycle phases; be it improvements in strategies, designs, transition, or operations, CSI is
there to help. It is also the smallest phase of all the phases in ITIL.
In keeping with the example, in the fully functional mall, you might have thought
that general maintenances should be sufficient for upkeep and ongoing operations. It
may be good for a brief period but not for long. Competition heats up with other malls
competing with it in terms of amenities, parking availability, and aesthetics, among
others. If our mall does not improve in due time, customers are going to lose interest,
and sales will start to dwindle. So, to keep up with the growing demands, the mall owner
must find ways to make the mall exciting for shopkeepers as well as for customers,
perhaps providing space underground for a public transit station, valet parking for certain
customers, free high-speed Internet for customers, and installation of moving walkways.
These improvements need not happen overnight, it can be a process set over days and
months. But the important thing is to keep improving the mall on a regular basis.
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