IT Operations Management

Skills Inventory

Maintenance Schedules

Technical documentation

Technical Management documentation

Technical Management is involved in drafting and maintaining several document s as part of other processes (e.g. Capacity Planning, Change Management, Problem Management, etc.). These documents are discussed in some detail in the relevant process descriptions.

However, there are some documents that are specific to the Technical Management groups or teams who will document management and control for documents relating to the technology under their control. Technical Management documentation includes the following.

The sourcing and maintenance of technical documentation for all CIs is the responsibility of Technical Management. These include:

• Technical manuals
• Management and administration manuals
• User manuals for CIs. These will typically exclude application user manuals, which are maintained by Application Management.

These schedules are drawn up and agreed during the Service Design phase related to Availability and Capacity Management, but they are essentially the property of the various Technical Management departments, groups or teams. This is because they have the technical expertise for specific technologies and are most likely to know what is needed to keep them in working order.

For more details on the definition of Maintenance Schedules and Service Maintenance Objective s, refer to the ITIL Service Design publication.

A Skills Inventory is a system or tool that identifies the skills required to deliver and support IT service s and also the individuals who possess those skills. Skills Inventories are most effective if they are aligned with processes, architecture s and performance standard s.

In addition, Skills Inventories should identify the training available to cultivate each skill should existing staff leave the organization.

Skills Inventories can also be used as part of the Service Portfolio to assess whether a new service can be delivered with existing staff and skill sets, or whether an investment needs to be made in new staff or training. Skills Inventories can therefore contribute significantly to Capacity Planning.

The definition and maintenance of Skills Inventories requires a good interface with Human Resource processes and tools in the organization.

In business, the term ‘ Operations Management ’ is used to mean the department, group or team of people responsible for performing the organization’s day-to-day operational activities – such as running the production line in a manufacturing environment or managing the distribution centres and fleet movements within a logistics organization.

Operations Management generally has the following characteristics:

• There is work to ensure that a device, system or process is actually running or working (as opposed to strategy or planning)
• This is where plan s are turned into actions
• The focus is on daily or shorter-term activities, although it should be noted that these activities will generally be performed and repeated over a relatively long period (as opposed to one-off project type activities)
• These activities are executed by specialized technical staff, who often have to undergo technical training to learn how to perform each activity
• There is a focus on building repeatable, consistent actions that – if repeated frequently enough at the right level of quality – will ensure the success of the operation
• This is where the actual value of the organization is delivered and measured
• There is a dependency on investment in equipment or human resources or both
• The value generated, must exceed the cost of the investment and all other organizational overhead s (such as management and marketing costs) if the business is to succeed.

In a similar way, IT Operations Management can be defined as the function responsible for the ongoing management and maintenance of an organization’s IT Infrastructure to ensure delivery of the agreed level of IT service s to the business.

IT Operations can be defined as the set of activities involved in the day-to-day running of the IT Infrastructure for the purpose of delivering IT services at agreed levels to meet stated business objective s.

Дата добавления: 2014-12-23