8.1FUNCTIONS
A function is a logical concept that refers to the people and automated measures that execute a defined process, an activity or a combination of processes or activities. The service operation functions are needed to manage the ‘steady state’ operational IT environment.
The service desk function is described in Chapter 7.
Technical and application management can be organized in any combination and number of departments. The second-level groupings in Figure 8.1 are examples of typical groups of activities performed by technical management and are not a suggested organizational structure.
IT operations management may be a single central organization, or some activities and staff that may be provided by distributed or specialized departments (as illustrated in Figure 8.1) by overlapping with technical and application management functions.
8.2TECHNICAL MANAGEMENT
Technical management provides detailed technical skills and resources to support the ongoing operation of the IT infrastructure. It also plays an important role in the design, testing, release and improvement of IT services. It refers to the groups, departments and teams that provide technical expertise and overall management of the IT infrastructure.
Technical management fulfils a dual role:
- Responsible for the technical knowledge and expertise relating to the management of the IT infrastructure, ensuring the knowledge required to design, build, transition, operate and improve the technology is identified, developed and refined
- Providing the resources required to support the ITSM lifecycle, ensuring the technical resources are effectively trained and deployed to design, build, transition, operate and improve the technology.
By performing these two roles, technical management ensures that the organization has access to the right level of human resources to manage the technology and that there is the correct balance between the skill level, utilization and cost of these resources. This is especially true with regard to expensive specialist staff required for tactical, project and problem resolution activities. For larger organizations, specialist staff can be shared from central pools so that they are well utilized, provide economy of scale to the organization and minimize the need to hire contractors.
Technical management also provides guidance to IT operations on how best to carry out the ongoing operational management of technology. This is carried out partly during the service design process, and also through day-to-day communications with IT operations management.
8.2.2Objectives (SO 6.4.2)
The objectives of technical management are to help plan, implement and maintain a stable infrastructure supporting the organization’s business processes through:
- Well-designed, highly resilient and cost-effective infrastructure
- The use of technical skills to maintain the technical infrastructure in optimum condition
- The use of technical skills to speedily diagnose and resolve any technical failures.
8.2.3Activities (SO 6.4.3)
There are two types of activity that technical management is involved in:
- Activities that are generic to the technical management function as a whole, discussed in this section
- A set of discrete activities and processes, which are performed by all three functions of technical, application and IT operations management (covered in section 8.3.3), plus technology management activities such as mainframe, server, middleware, network, desktop, internet, storage or archive, database and directory services management.
The key technical management activities include:
- Identifying the knowledge and expertise required, the skills that exist in the organization as well as those skills that need to be developed, and initiating training programmes to develop and refine the appropriate skills
- Participating in the definition of standards and technology architectures, the design and creation of new services to meet the standards required, and taking part in enhancement and operational projects
- Assisting with risk assessment, identifying critical services and system dependencies and defining and implementing countermeasures
- Designing and performing tests for the functionality, performance and manageability of IT services
- Managing vendors and contracts
- Defining and managing event management standards and tools, and also monitoring and responding to many categories of events
- Assisting incident and problem management
- Assisting with evaluation and building of changes and the deployment of releases
- Assisting continual service improvement processes in identifying opportunities for improvement and evaluating alternative solutions
- Defining and assisting with the operational activities performed as part of IT operations management.
8.3IT OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT
IT operations management is the function responsible for the ongoing management and maintenance of an organization’s IT infrastructure to ensure delivery of the agreed level of service to the business.
8.3.1Role (SO 6.5.1)
IT operations management has two main areas of responsibility:
- Performing the activities and meeting the performance standards defined during service design and tested during service transition. The primary role of IT operations management is to maintain a stable infrastructure and consistency of IT service
- Supporting the ability of the business to meet its objectives; this depends on the output and reliability of the day-to-day IT operations. IT operations adds value to the business as a part of the overall value network.
IT operations must maintain a balance between these activities and roles. This requires:
- An understanding among all staff of how technology and technology performance affect the delivery of IT services
- An understanding of the relative importance and impact of the services
- Processes, procedures and manuals
- A clearly defined set of achievement metrics for reporting
- A cost strategy for balancing the requirements of different business units with cost savings through the optimization of technology
- A value-based strategy for return on investment rather than a cost-based one.
8.3.2Objectives (SO 6.5.2)
The objectives of IT operations management include:
- Maintenance of the status quo to ensure that the organization’s day-to-day processes and activities are stable
- Regular monitoring and improvement to achieve higher-quality service at reduced costs, while maintaining stability
- Rapid application of operational skills to diagnose and resolve IT operation failures.
Some technical and applications management groups or teams manage and execute their own operational activities, whereas others delegate these activities to a dedicated IT operations function.
The main activities involved within IT operations are:
- Operations control Oversees the execution and management of the IT infrastructure operational events and activities. This can be accomplished using an operations bridge or network operations centre. As well as performing routine tasks, operations control also performs specific tasks:
- Console management Defining central observation and monitoring capability, then using the consoles for monitoring and control activities
- Job scheduling Management of routine batch jobs, scripts and schedules
- Backup and restore On behalf of all users, customers, teams and technology
- Print and output management For the collation and distribution of all centralized printing and electronic output
- Maintenance activities On behalf of all teams and departments
- Facilities management Manages the physical environments, data centre, computer rooms and recovery sites, including all power and cooling equipment.
Application management is responsible for managing applications throughout their lifecycle. This function supports and maintains operational applications and also plays an important role in the design, testing and improvement of applications that form part of IT services.
8.4.1Role (SO 6.6.1)
Application management is to applications what technical management is to the IT infrastructure. It plays a role in all applications, whether purchased or developed in-house. It contributes to the key decision on whether to buy an application or to build it (covered in ITIL Service Design, Chapter 3).
Once this decision has been made, application management plays a dual role:
- Custodian of technical knowledge and expertise related to managing applications, ensuring that the knowledge required to design, test, manage and improve IT services is identified, developed and refined
- Provider of the resources to support the ITSM lifecycle, ensuring that resources are effectively trained and deployed to design, build, transition, operate and improve the technology required to deliver and support IT services.
By performing these two roles, application management is able to ensure that the organization has access to the correct type and level of human resources to manage applications and so meet business objectives. Application management is also responsible for maintaining a balance between the skill level and the cost of these resources.
In addition to these two high-level roles, application management also performs the following specific roles:
- Providing guidance to IT operations about how best to carry out the ongoing operational management of applications. This role is partly carried out during the service design process, but also through day-to-day communications with IT operations management
- Integrating the application management lifecycle into the ITSM lifecycle. The objectives and activities that enable application management to play these roles effectively are outlined in sections 8.4.2 and 8.4.3.
8.4.2Objectives (SO 6.6.2)
The objectives of application management are to:
- Support the organization’s business processes by helping identify functional and manageability requirements for application software
- Assist in the design and deployment of applications and the ongoing support and improvement of those applications.
These objectives are achieved through:
- Applications that are well-designed, resilient and cost-effective
- Ensuring that the necessary functionality is available to achieve the required business outcomes
- Organization of adequate technical skills to maintain operational applications in optimum condition
- Swift use of technical skills to rapidly diagnose and resolve any technical failures that do occur.
Most application management teams or departments are dedicated to specific applications or sets of applications, but undertake some common activities including:
- Identifying the knowledge and expertise required to manage and operate applications in the delivery of IT services, and initiating training programmes to develop and refine the skills
- Designing and delivering end-user training, either by application development or application management groups, or by a third party. Application management is responsible for ensuring that training is conducted as appropriate
- Defining standards for the design of new architectures, participating in the design and building of new services, contributing to the design of the technical architecture and performance standards for IT services
- Designing and performing tests for the functionality, performance and manageability of IT services, designing applications to meet the levels of service required by the business, including modelling and workload forecasting
- Assisting in risk assessment, identifying critical service and system dependencies and defining and implementing countermeasures
- Managing suppliers of specific applications within the service level management and supplier management processes
- Participating in definition of event management standards and the instrumentation of applications for the generation of meaningful events
- Supporting problem management in validating and maintaining the known error database (KEDB) with application development teams
- Evaluating changes (many changes are built by application management teams) and driving release management for their applications
- Participating in defining the operational activities performed as part of IT operations management. Application management may perform the operational activities as part of an organization’s IT operations management function.
Application management teams or departments are needed for all key applications. The role varies depending on the applications being supported, but generic responsibilities include:
- Third-level support for incidents related to the application
- Involvement in operation-testing plans and deployment issues
- Application bug tracking and patch management (coding fixes for in-house code, transports and/or patches for third-party code)
- Involvement in application operability and supportability issues such as error code design, error messaging, event management hooks
- Application sizing and performance; volumetrics and load testing etc. in support of capacity and availability management processes
- Involvement in developing release policies
- Identification of enhancements to existing software, for both functionality and manageability.