Published: April 25, 2008

Position of the Deploy SMF Within the MOF IT Service Lifecycle

The MOF IT service lifecycle encompasses all of the activities and processes involved in managing an IT service: its conception, development, operation, maintenance, and—ultimately—its retirement. MOF organizes these activities and processes into Service Management Functions (SMFs), which are grouped together in lifecycle phases. Each SMF is anchored within a lifecycle phase and contains a unique set of goals and outcomes supporting the objectives of that phase. The SMFs can be used as stand-alone sets of processes, but it is when SMFs are used together that they are most effective in ensuring service delivery at the desired quality and risk levels.

The Deploy SMF belongs to the Deliver Phase of the MOF IT service lifecycle. The following figure shows the place of the Deploy SMF within the Deliver Phase, as well as the location of the Deliver Phase within the IT service lifecycle.

Figure 1. Position of the Deploy SMF within the IT service lifecycle

Before you use this SMF, you may want to read the following MOF 4.0 guidance to learn more about the MOF IT service lifecycle and the Deliver Phase:

• MOF Overview
• Deliver Phase Overview

Why Use the Deploy SMF?

This SMF should be useful for anyone who is involved with releasing a stable IT service solution into the production environment, including stabilizing the solution in the production environment and transferring responsibility for the solution from the project team to the Operations and Support teams.

It addresses how to do the following:

• Deploy core IT service solution components.
• Deploy sites.
• Stabilize deployment.
• Review the Deployment Complete Milestone.