Purpose and Scope of the Lifecycle Activities

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Activity	Group	Purpose	Commonly confused with
Discover	Bring it into being	Understand the environment, demand, and opportunities to establish what is needed or could be improved	Design, which specifies the solution
Design	Bring it into being	Turn the understood need into a specification meeting utility, warranty, user experience, and sustainability	Build, which creates and tests the components
Acquire	Bring it into being	Obtain and allocate the components, goods, and resources needed, in-house or from suppliers	Build, which assembles and tests them
Build	Bring it into being	Create, integrate, configure, and test the components so they meet their specification	Transition, which deploys them into production
Transition	Move it into live use	Move new or changed services safely into production and validate readiness for live use	Deliver (ongoing) and operate (keeping it running)
Operate	Keep it valuable once live	Manage and maintain the live service and its components to agreed performance levels	Deliver, which routes value to users
Deliver	Keep it valuable once live	Make the running service and its value available to users on an ongoing basis	Transition, the one-time deployment
Support	Keep it valuable once live	Handle issues, incidents, questions, and requests, restoring normal operation	Transition (deploying) and operate (running)

Cheat sheet

The purpose of 'discover' is to understand the environment, demand, and opportunities
The purpose of 'design' is to design products, services, and their components to meet requirements
Discover establishes what is needed; design shapes the solution before anything is acquired or built
The purpose of 'acquire' is to obtain and allocate the resources and components a product or service needs
The purpose of 'build' is to create, integrate, and test the product or service components
Acquire brings in the resources; build assembles and tests them into a working product or service
The purpose of 'transition' is to move new or changed products and services safely into live use
Transition covers releasing and deploying a change and confirming it is ready for live use
Transition bridges creating a product or service and running it
The purpose of 'operate' is to keep a live product or service and its components running to agreed levels
The purpose of 'deliver' is to make the running service and its value available to users on an ongoing basis
Version 5 splits the older single 'operation' stage into operate and deliver
The purpose of 'support' is to handle issues and requests on a live service and restore normal operation
Support acts on an already-live product or service and does not create, build, or deploy it
Support works with operate and deliver to keep a live service valuable, and its feedback can trigger earlier activities

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Cheat sheet