The Service Design (SD) volume[6] provides good-practice guidance on the design of IT services, processes, and other aspects of the service management effort. Significantly, design within ITIL is understood to encompass all elements relevant to technology service delivery, rather than focusing solely on design of the technology itself. As such, service design addresses how a planned service solution interacts with the larger business and technical environments, service management systems required to support the service, processes which interact with the service, technology, and architecture required to support the service, and the supply chain required to support the planned service. Within ITIL, design work for an IT service is aggregated into a single Service Design Package (SDP). Service design packages, along with other information about services, are managed within the service catalogues.

he centre and origin point of the ITIL Service Lifecycle, the ITIL Service Strategy (SS) volume,[5] provides guidance on clarification and prioritization of service-provider investments in services. More generally, Service Strategy focuses on helping IT organizations improve and develop over the long term. In both cases, Service Strategy relies largely upon a market-driven approach. The Service Strategy lifecycle stage is often considered as the core of the service lifecycle. In Service Strategy stage, the strategic approach for the whole lifecycle is identified to provide values to the customers through IT service management. Key topics covered include service value definition, business-case development, service assets, market analysis, and service provider types. List of covered processes: