ITIL® V3 Intermediate Lifecycle Stream:
SERVICE TRANSITION CERTIFICATE
SCENARIO BOOKLET
Scenario One
A small University in Canada has started their ITIL journey. The IT organization has twenty-three employees and some of
these employees are university students. They have successfully implemented Incident Management and have started
development of a Change Management Process. The University has also started a review process to choose an IT Service
Management tool suite to support their ITIL implementation.
As part of its growth strategy, the University has made decisions to expand its’ current course offerings, focus more on IT
related courses and also expand its ability to deliver courses online. These strategic decisions will require that IT improve its
ability to support the University’s course offerings.
A new Chief Information Officer (CIO) has been hired to help support the business strategy and ensure that IT can enable the
desired outcomes. In order to do this, the CIO has a goal of implementing more ITIL processes within the next twelve months.
Besides Change Management, he feels that with the major business changes the University will be implementing in the next
twenty-four months, there will need to be consideration given to implementing all of Service Transition.
As a consultant, the CIO has asked you to provide him a list of critical success factors and risks associated with implementing
Service Transition within the University.
Scenario Two
KNB is a leading bank in a small but financially rich country. Fifty years of successful operation has previously focused almost
exclusively on the domestic market, with considerable success.
As a deliberate and core part of its expansion policy, the bank has recently acquired several small banks in other countries.
The business strategy is to bring KNB’s own established banking practices to new markets; operating in multiple countries,
time zones and currencies. The smaller acquired banks do not have sophisticated IT facilities and processes so the intention is
to roll the KNB’s current IT processes across the newly expanded banking infrastructure.
The new organisation will have some elements that are different from the traditional role. While this presents a business
opportunity, it introduces IT and service management challenges. One challenge is the increasing scale of monetary transfer
between currencies. New systems to support the higher level of monetary exchange and dealing in foreign currencies will need
to be designed and transitioned. This needs to be done quickly and effectively because the ability to deliver these services is
essential if KNB is to recruit new customers from their target group – those who work and travel across monetary borders.
A new service is to be developed and implemented as quickly as possible, which will support:




Accounts held in foreign currencies
Rapid transfer of funds between currencies
Amalgamation of customer assets in diverse currencies for reporting to customer and to support risk assessment e.g.
for loan applications
Use of bank debit cards across a wider monetary range
Traditionally IT applications are developed by an in-house team. The application team works closely with IT Operations, who
support them with technical equipment. IT Operations also manage the dedicated test environment, which is similar to the live
environment. IT Operations schedule and work with Development in software and build testing.
The new service, Inter-Monetary Transfer (IMT) is to be developed under an accelerated design, development and release
regime. KNB is concerned that, the service is currently being developed to support an existing requirement that may well
© OGC’s Official Accreditor: - The APM Group Limited 2009
The Swirl logo™ is a Trade Mark of the Office of Government Commerce
ITIL® is a Registered Trade Mark of the Office of Government Commerce in the United Kingdom and other countries
@BCL@6004FAA2
This document must not be reproduced without express permission from The APM Group Ltd.
Page 1 of 4
change as the new bank acquisitions progress. Therefore, testing and assurance will be key to making sure of the IMT’s
eventual usefulness and relevance to the bank.
Success for the bank will rest heavily on the profitable expansion, and this will be delivered only if the new IMT service delivers
functionally in the time frame required. Accordingly a role has been created, for six months to work with the project team and to
be responsible for testing and verification of the service.
Scenario Three
Approximately three months ago, two Manufacturing organizations merged to form one company providing services across the
globe.
The newly formed company now provides goods to fifty countries worldwide. They have multiple locations in North America,
consisting of six Distribution centers, several manufacturing plants and two headquarter buildings where the main IT
Departments are located alongside the data centers.
Both organizations have worked on adopting ITIL best practices and have the following departments:









Service Desk
Change Management
Business Continuity
Asset Management
Application Development and Support
Infrastructure Support
Service Level Management
IT Service Continuity
Release Management
One of the original organizations had received ISO/IEC 20000 accreditation just before the merger. The other also had mature
processes, but had not pursued accreditation.
The newly appointed IT Director is under extreme pressure to achieve the following two objectives and to provide regular
progress reports to the Executive Board.
The objectives are:
1. Merging the IT departments with resulting cost savings of 40% and no degradation in service quality
2. Improving continuity of key business services
Scenario Four
The NRC Center for Scientific Research is home to one of the world’s largest scientific instruments, the PAB (Particle
Accelerator Beam).
The PAB Data Sharing Service will provide scientists from all over the world with access to analyze data captured by the
Beam.
The NRC’s PAB will begin operations within one week and the scientists who operate the experimentation equipment are
concerned about the Data Sharing service being delivered as it is intended, due to other recent IT Service Transition issues at
the NRC center.
Recent projects implemented at the NRC center for the PAB control environment have seemed to be prematurely
implemented. Incident volumes have increased and to handle these increases the support knowledge has been given to Tier-1
Support by the design teams in a very haphazard way. Documentation has also not been delivered on time, and is usually
incomplete.
© OGC’s Official Accreditor: - The APM Group Limited 2009
@BCL@6004FAA2
This document must not be reproduced without express permission from The APM Group Ltd.
Page 2 of 4
Due to the size of the project, its reach across the globe and possible impact on the scientific community, the IT department is
experiencing a high degree of pressure to ensure the Data Sharing service is transitioned into Operations in a controlled
manner and its capabilities are established.
The NRC IT organization largely follows ITIL best practices and has recently undergone one of its annual IT process maturity
assessments. This latest assessment ranked the NRC IT organization’s overall Release and Deployment Management
process high, relative to its industry and size.
Scenario Five
A large European bank has decided to implement service management using ITIL guidelines. In the past they have followed a
general lifecycle approach, but have not implemented clearly defined processes, with different functions adopting different
ways of managing IT services, and no consistent approach to involving key stakeholders in different activities.
There is currently a new core banking application about to be transitioned into service. Unfortunately, there have been
significant lay-offs and re-structuring across the entire organization and there are several new stakeholders coming onboard
this project to represent different areas. This includes changes in project staff, business area sponsorship and other
managers.
The new stakeholders are all long-time employees of the bank and are familiar with the project requirements and its benefits.
With the staffing changes and general reduction in available resources, many stakeholders are filling in for roles their bosses or
subordinates previously covered in this project.
The Chief Information Officer (CIO) is particularly concerned about ensuring that the project continues towards a successful
transition into production. His fear is that the recent staff changes may have impacted the effective achievement of this
objective.
Scenario Six
A medium-sized business introduced formal ITIL Service Design Processes and after much success has moved on to Phase 2,
implementation of ITIL Change and Release & Deployment Management processes.
Six months after the second phase, the business finds that changes are taking too long to implement and are often not what
was originally agreed upon. Changes are frequently going over budget and the number of communications being sent out is
low and sometimes non-existent, on several occasions the business has gone ‘looking’ for status updates.
From the IT Department’s perspective, Change and Release & Deployment Management have improved the quality of services
delivered, including changes to those services. Changes are failing less and data shows that IT has, in fact, improved its
responsiveness to business requests by nearly 65%.
The Change and Release & Deployment Management processes have been designed to practice continual improvement and
are taking measures to address where the level of service quality is not sufficient. Meanwhile, IT has planned to move on to
Phase 3, implementation of the Service Transition Planning and Support process. Phase 3 will be a stepping stone to Phases
4 and 5 which include the remaining Service Transition Processes.
As the business is seeing very little value or return on the investment that has already been made they are unwilling to fund the
next phase of the project.
Scenario Seven
A mid-size bank based in the United States has experienced rapid growth due to recent mergers and acquisitions. The Bank
also has plans to increase their market share and this will mean that new services will have to be defined, developed and
implemented.
There is great concern within the Bank as recent application and infrastructure deployments have been less than successful.
There have been issues with the IT customers not getting what they thought they were going to get and there has also been a
lot of feedback that the performance of the recently rolled out applications are not meeting their needs.
© OGC’s Official Accreditor: - The APM Group Limited 2009
@BCL@6004FAA2
This document must not be reproduced without express permission from The APM Group Ltd.
Page 3 of 4
These issues have come to the attention of the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and he has expressed his concerns to the Chief
Information Officer (CIO). Expanding into new markets is very difficult. If they don’t get it right the first time, they are going to
experience extreme difficulties trying to capture additional market share, thus hindering the ability to increase revenue and
profit growth.
The CIO is aware that ITIL has been used as a framework to implement Incident Management and Problem Management and
is wondering if ITIL can also help address the concerns of the CEO. One of the major questions the CIO is asking is how can
IT ensure that new services can meet the defined business requirements.
Questions have been raised as to how the concepts of utility, warranty and service provider assets can support the delivery of
a service.
Scenario Eight
A large utility company has been working on maturing its Service Asset and Configuration Management process over the past
few months and has completed its Configuration Management Plan and target state process design.
One of the next initiatives involves a tool selection to support the establishment of a Configuration Management System
(CMS). As the Configuration Manager, you understand that this tool marketspace is not mature and will require careful
articulation of requirements and priorities in order to select the most appropriate CMS solution for the company’s needs.
There is already a robust collection of tools in use at the company, and you sense that there is growing confusion about what
the CMS technology requirements should be, relative to the discovery tools and Change Management tools already in use.
Four different teams have submitted contradictory recommendations for positioning what the CMS technology capabilities
should / should not address relative to other tools. You want to make sure that both the Configuration Management process
and tool concepts are understood across all the stakeholder groups before any further technology requirements are gathered.
© OGC’s Official Accreditor: - The APM Group Limited 2009
@BCL@6004FAA2
This document must not be reproduced without express permission from The APM Group Ltd.
Page 4 of 4