USMBOK™: Key Concepts

The Service Lifecycle

The Service Provider Organization's Circulatory System

A ‘lifecycle’ is a series of states or stages in the life of a resource, component, item or record representing its journey from inception to discontinuance.  Service management has the challenge of managing many disparate yet related components through their respective lifecycles and through the overall lifecycle of a service.

When the lifecycle concept is applied to an information system service it is known as the service lifecycle. In the case of a service the lifecycle represents the significant stages the service progresses through from when the first opportunity to provide the service was identified, to the retirement of the service.

The service lifecycle has two major lifecycle components: the service provision lifecycle, and operations lifecycle:

• Service Provision Lifecycle:
  • Opportunity
  • Require
  • Define
  • Plan
  • Concept
  • Approve
  • Design
  • Develop
  • Assure
  • Deploy
  • Commission;
• Operations Lifecycle:
  • Operate
  • Maintain
  • Revise
  • Retire.

The service lifecycle stages are consistent with those found within systems and application development lifecycles.