Technology is changing how business interact with customers, staff and the outside world, and as such an effective IT management strategy is becoming something that cannot be ignored.

Ensuring staff within the organisation are aligned with the wider IT strategy is important, and that's why systems such as the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) exist.

Through an understanding of ITIL, a business can ensure that an effective IT strategy is in place, is constantly updated and can adapt to the changing needs of the business. As such, an intermediate certificate course such as ITIL Lifecycle should be considered by businesses.

Understanding the services

ITIL Lifecycle is broken down into five free-standing qualifications, but all are part of the larger ITIL Intermediate Lifecycle stream. By undertaking these courses, organisations can gain another of the levels required to reach ITIL Expert Certification.

Each of these multiple stages relies on various service principles, processes and roles – as well as performance measures. In addition to this, they're interdependent on each other for inputs and feedback. By constantly undertaking these performance measures and checks, services can be adapted to meet changing business demands.

As such, an understanding of ITIL offers a range of benefits for organisations, a comprehensive training course should become a primary consideration.

Strategy

In many ways, service strategy is core to the ITIL lifecycle. The focus of training lies on ensuring a strategy is defined and implemented correctly.

Service strategy principles are explored in depth here, as are the best ways to define services and market spaces. These aspects of the certification can help to ensure that businesses are in the best position to handle any costs and risks.

Design

Design is another key step for organisations, and the next phase from service improvement. Within this phase, an understanding is gained of management and control measures. Essentially, the focus shifts to actually concerting prior developed strategies into reality.

It's important to understand that service design isn't solely limited to new services, but actually any changes and improvements over the service lifecycle. These changes are commonly put in place in order to ensure consistent value for customers.

Regulation and standards changes can also be a significant factor. Through this phase of training, organisations will begin to understand the management and application of service design principles.

Transition

Following the completion of design and development activities, a period of service transition is enabled. The primary goal is to bridge the gap between projects and operations.

Candidates in this stage of the lifecycle will understand principles essential to service transition, such as how to organise service transition, and related activities surrounding communications, organisation change and commitment.

Operation

Service operation is one of the most important phases of the training, as it's often an on-going requirement of organisations and IT strategy management. The ITIL training here focuses on service operation principles, processes and common service operation activities.

In addition to this, candidates undertaking this training can also expect to develop an understanding of technology considerations and implementation considerations.

With the effective training garnered here, businesses are always ready to handle any major incidents that may affect the organisation.

Continual improvement

Though the continual service improvement phase, an organisation gains an understanding of improvement principles, processes, methods and techniques, as well as critical success factors and the associated risks.

Following the end of the course, staff will also understand what technology is necessary for continual service improvement.

It's important to consider the value that ITIL training can provide, especially due to the changing IT environment present in many companies. ITIL training can help to ensure organisations are ready to adapt to IT changes as required.