C) Organizational structures of Service desk function
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1) Local Service Desk - co-located with users in the
office, efficient but expensive, need more coordination
among different service desks within the organization.
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2) Centralized Service Desk - economy of scale, better
coordination, knowledge and mind sharing, no direct physical
interaction with users.
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3) Virtual Service Desk - physically separated service
desks linked together with a common system to log issues
and communications, allocation of calls based on workload.
-
4) Follow the Sun - similar to virtual service desk,
allocation of calls based on time of day for 24-hour support,
great for global organization.
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5) Specialized Service Desk Groups - need to specify
the type of incidents on the user side to reach the support
staff to allow faster resolution
8.2 The Technical Management Function
A) Role of Technical management function
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1) Manage the IT infrastructure.
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2) Provide enough skilled supporting staff for the whole
lifecycle from strategy to operation and service improvement.
-
3) Guide and support operations staff members
B) Objectives of Technical management function
-
1) Well designed and highly resilient, cost-effective
technical topology.
-
2) Use of technical skills to maintain the technical
infrastructure in optimum condition.
-
3) Swift use of technical skills to speedily diagnose
and resolve any technical failures
8.3 Application Management Function
A) Role of Application management function
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1) Manage the IT applications
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22) Ensures that the knowledge required to design, test,
manage and improve IT services is identified, developed
and refined.
-
3) Carry out training needs analysis and provide the
training to technical and operation staff
B) Objectives of Application management function
-
1) Identify requirements for applications (utility and
warranty)
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2) Design, assist in deployment and support applications.
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3) Identify and implement improvements
C) Differences between application management function and
application development
-
1) Application development is concerned with the one-time
set of activities to design and construct application solutions.
Whereas, application management function is concerned about
the lifetime of the application.
-
2) Application development focuses only on utility. Whereas,
application management function focuses on both utility
and warranty.
-
3) Application development focuses on software development.
Whereas, application management function focuses on operation
and improvement.
-
4) In application development staff is typically rewarded
for creativity and for completing one project so that they
can move on to the next project. Whereas, in application
management staff are typically rewarded for consistency
and for preventing unexpected events and unauthorized functionality.
-
5) In application development, most development work
is done in projects where the focus is on delivering specific
units of work to specification, on time and within budget.
Whereas, in application management most work is done as
part of repeatable, ongoing processes.
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6) Management is needed for applications developed externally
8.4 The IT Operations Management
Function
A) Role of IT operations management function
-
1) Carry out day-to-day activities for the delivery of
the services to ensure SLA is met - i.e. provide quality
service in an efficient and cost effective manner.
-
2) Technical and Application Management Functions define
the activities to be carried out by Operations Management
Function.
B) Objectives of IT operations management function
-
1) Responsible for the day to day running of the IT infrastructure.
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2) As per performance standards created in service design.
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3) Maintaining the "status quo" to achieve infrastructure
stability.
-
4) Identifying opportunities to improve operational performance
and save costs.
-
5) Initial diagnosis and resolution of operational incidents
C) IT operations Control : IT operations control oversees
execution and monitoring of operational activities and events
in the IT infrastructure with the help of an operations bridge
or network operations center.
D) Facilities Management : Facilities management refers to
the management of the physical IT environment, typically a data
center or computer rooms and recovery sites together with all
the power and cooling equipment. Facilities management also
includes the coordination of large-scale consolidation projects,
e.g. data center consolidation or server consolidation projects.
