Application Management role

Application Management

Operations Schedule

Shift Schedules and Reports

Shift Schedules are documents that outline the exact activities that need to be carried out during the shift. They will also list all dependencies and activity sequences. There will probably be more than one Shift Schedule, where each team will have a version for its own system s. It is important that all schedules are coordinated before the start of the shift. This is usually done by a person who is specialized in Shift Scheduling, with the help of scheduling tools.

A Shift Schedule could consist of a number of routine items that are included in the SOP. In this case the items could simply be listed briefly with a reference to the section or page in the SOP.

Most Shift Schedules take the form of a checklist where operators can check off the item as it is completed, together with the time of completion. This makes it easy to see the progress of activities and also helps to identify any potential issues where jobs are taking too long.

Shift Reports are a form of Operations Log, but have the additional function s as follows:

• To record major event s and actions that occurred during the shift
• To form part of the handover between shift leaders
• To report any exceptions to Service Maintenance Objective s
• To identify any uncompleted activity that could result in degraded performance on any service during the next service hours.

The Operations Schedules are similar to Shift Schedules but cover all aspects of IT Operations at a high level. This schedule will include an overview of all planned changes, maintenance, routine jobs and additional work, together with information about upcoming business or vendor events. The Operations Schedule is used as the basis for the Daily Operations Meeting and is the master reference for all IT Operations managers to track progress and detect exceptions.

Application Management is responsible for managing application s throughout their lifecycle. The Application Management function is performed by any department, group or team involved in managing and supporting operational applications. Application Management also plays an important role in the design, testing and improvement of applications that form part of IT service s. As such, it may be involved in development project s, but is not usually the same as the Applications Development teams.

Application Management is to applications what Technical Management is to the IT Infrastructure. Application Management plays a role in all applications, whether purchased or developed in-house. One of the key decisions that they contribute to is the decision of whether to buy an application or build it (this is discussed in detail in the Service Design publication). Once that decision is made, Application Management will play a dual role:

• It is the custodian of technical knowledge and expertise related to managing applications. In this role Application Management, working together with Technical Management, ensures that the knowledge required to design, test, manage and improve IT services is identified, developed and refined.
• It provides the actual resource s to support the ITSM Lifecycle. In this role, Application Management ensures 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 right type and level of human resources to manage applications and thus to meet business objective s. This starts in Service Strategy and is expanded in Service Design, tested in Service Transition and refined in Continual Service Improvement (see other ITIL publications in this series).

Part of this role is to ensure a balance between the skill level and the cost of these resources.

In additional to these two high-level roles, Application Management also performs the following two 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 it is also a part of everyday communication with IT Operations Management as they seek to achieve stability and optimum performance.
• The integration of the Application Management Lifecycle into the ITSM Lifecycle. This is discussed below.

The objectives, activities and structures that enable Application Management to play these roles effectively are discussed below.

Дата добавления: 2014-12-23