Phase in the lifecycle of a service. Continuous service improvement ensures that services are aligned with changing business needs by identifying and implementing improvements to the IT services that support business processes. The performance of the IT service provider is continuously measured and improvements are made to processes, services and infrastructure to increase their efficiency, effectiveness and profitability. Continuous Service Improvement includes the seven-step improvement process. While this process is associated with continuous service improvement, most processes have activities performed in several phases of the service lifecycle. (Source ITIL 2011)