Candidates can expect to gain competence in the following areas upon successful completion of the education and examination components related to this certification:

• The value to the business of OSA activities
• How OSA activities support the service lifecycle
• Optimising service operation performance
• How the processes in OSA interact with other service lifecycle processes
• How to use the OSA processes, activities and functions to achieve operational excellence
• How to measure OSA
• The importance of IT security and its contributions to OSA
• Understanding the technology and implementation considerations surrounding OSA
• The challenges, critical success factors (CSFs) and risks associated with OSA
• Specific emphasis on the service operation lifecycle processes and roles included in:
  • Event management, which defines any detectable or discernible occurrence that has significance for the management of the IT infrastructure or the delivery of an IT service
  • Incident management, which has the capability to bring services back to normal operations as soon as possible and according to agreed service levels
  • Request fulfilment, which fulfils a request providing quick and effective access to standard services which business staff can use to improve their productivity or the quality of business services and products
  • Problem management, which prevents problems and resulting incidents from happening, eliminating recurring incidents and minimising the impact of incidents that cannot be prevented
  • Access management, which grants authorised users the right to use a service while preventing access to non-authorised users.
• Operational activities of processes covered in other lifecycle stages such as:
  • Change management
  • Service asset and configuration management
  • Release and deployment management
  • Capacity management
  • Availability management
  • Knowledge management
  • Financial management for IT services
  • IT service continuity management.
• Organising for service operation which describes roles and functions to be performed within the service operation and support such as service desk, technical management, IT operations management and application management.