The ITIL Service Lifecycle divides the ITIL service management framework into five distinct stages that assist business leaders in determining the ideal approach to designing, delivering, managing, and improving how IT is used within their organization. The ITIL Continual Service Improvement is the fifth and final stage in the ITIL Service Lifecycle, and focuses on frequently improving the organization’s IT processes and services.
The ITIL CSI Stage
The ITIL Continual Service Improvement stage concentrates on re-aligning IT services to changing business needs by identifying and implementing incremental or transformational service improvements for the organization. This stage works with the other four stages of the ITIL Service Lifecycle to align the services to the business needs. The ITIL CSI stage also aims to improve cost effectiveness by ensuring operational processes are efficient and meet the needs of the client.
The Seven-Step Process to Continual Service Improvement
It is critical for the ITIL Continual Service Improvement stage to be planned and scheduled as a routine business process with supporting activities, inputs, outputs, role definition, and reporting outcomes. The ITIL CSI stage typically employs a seven-step process to service improvement.
- Identify the strategy for improvement: This step involves establishing the objective and process necessary to deliver the desired result or meet a specific goal.
- Define what will be controlled and measured: This step includes specifying the targeted service improvement and establishing the output expectations.
- Gather the data: This step involves collecting the data once the service improvement is planned, executed, and then operationalized.
- Process the data: This step starts with preparing the data for analysis, and then charting the data in order to see trends over several service improvement cycles.
- Analyse the information and data: This step involves studying the actual results and comparing them to the expected results.
- Use and present the information: This step involves determining whether the applied service improvement has resulted in a better or worse client experience. This step also includes presenting the results to business decision makers in order to move to the next step or to continue testing and collecting data.
- Implement the service improvement: This step concludes the process flow by enacting the service improvement as the new standard baseline if the results meet or exceed the specific goal established at the onset of the service improvement process.
The ITIL Continual Service Improvement stage in the ITIL Service Lifecycle enables the organization to align IT services with business needs, as well as readily recognize improvement or change opportunities. Learn more about the other stages in the ITIL Service Lifecycle and how this framework supports business transformation:
- The ITIL Service Strategy stage is the first stage in the ITIL Service Lifecycle and guides the development of IT service management by understanding the organization’s objectives and customer needs.
- The ITIL Service Design stage is the second stage in the ITIL Service Lifecycle, and focuses on meeting customer needs by turning the organization’s service strategy into an executable plan for delivering business objectives.
- The ITIL Service Transition stage is the third stage in the ITIL Service Lifecycle, and focuses on building and deploying IT systems by improving the organization’s capabilities for introducing new services into supported environments.
- The ITIL Service Operation is the fourth stage in the ITIL Service Lifecycle, and focuses on ensuring IT systems run efficiently by effectively managing the organization’s services in the supported environments.
Thought Rock offers online ITIL Foundation certified training including comprehensive coverage of the ITIL Service Lifecycle framework. To inquire about Thought Rock’s ITIL v4 certification voucher and course bundle, we invite you to send us an email today at [email protected], or chat with us live anytime online, 24 hours a day.