Manuals

Design documentation

Use and Change Cases

Use and Change Case s are managed as part of the Service Design and Continual Service Improvement processes, but are maintained by Application Management. For purchased software, it is common for the team that develops the functional specifications to maintain the Use Case for that application.

• Use Cases document the intended use of the application with real-life scenarios to demonstrate its boundaries and its full functionality. Use Cases can also be used as modelling and sizing scenarios and for facilitating communication between users, Developers and Application Management staff.
• Change Cases use scenarios to predict the impact of potential changes to utilization, architecture or functionality, and project the impact of specific change scenarios. Change Cases are used to clarify scope and direction with the sponsor. Extra architecture and design work will be needed at this point to ensure the Change Case s can be met in the future at reasonable cost. The sponsor must be prepared to pay the extra cost. If not, the Change Cases should be reduced to what the sponsor is prepared to pay for. Change Cases are also used to evaluate the architecture. They influence the development process enabling the design of appropriate architectural features to minimize the impact of future changes.

For more information, refer to the ITIL Service Design and Continual Service Improvement publications.

This is not one specific document, but refers to any document produced by Application Development or Management staff that specifies how an application will be built. As these documents are generally owned and managed by the Development teams, this publication will not cover them in detail. However, to ensure successful operation, Application Management must ensure that design documentation contains:

• Sizing specification s
• Workload profiles and utilization forecasts
• Technical Architecture
• Data model s
• Coding standard s
• Performance standards
• Software Configuration Management definitions
• Environment definitions and building considerations (if appropriate).

For COTS applications, these documents take the form of Application Specification s that are used as input into the writing of RFPs. In these cases the documents are owned and managed by Application Management.

For more information on Design Documentation, refer to the ITIL Service Design publication.

Application Management is responsible for the management of manuals for all applications. Although these are normally developed by the Application Development teams or third party supplier s, Application Management is responsible for ensuring that the manuals are relevant to the operational version s of the applications.

Three types of manuals are generally maintained by Application Management:

• Design manuals contain information about the structure and architecture of the application. These are helpful for creating reports or defining event correlation rules. They could also help in diagnosing problem s.
• Administration or management manuals describe the activities required to maintain and operate the application at the levels of performance specified in the Design phase. These manuals will also provide detailed troubleshooting, Known Error and Fault descriptions, and step-by-step instructions for common maintenance tasks.
• User manuals describe the application functionality as it is used by an end- user. These manuals contain step-by-step instructions on how to use the application, as well as descriptions of what should typically be entered into certain fields, or what to do if there is an error.

Manuals and Standard Operating Procedure s

Manuals should not be seen as a replacement for SOPs, but as input into the SOPs.

SOPs should contain all aspects of applications that need to be managed as part of standard operations. If they are not extracted from the manuals, there is a high likelihood that they will be ignored or performed in a non-standard manner. Application Management should ensure that any such instructions are extracted from the manuals and inserted into separate SOP documentation for Operations. It is also responsible for ensuring that these instructions are updated with every change or new release of the software.

Дата добавления: 2014-12-23