Would you buy a product or service that did not include some
type of warranty? If the manufacturer or
reseller does not explicitly set the expectations, then you will form them for
yourself. It is the same with the
customers of your IT services. Either IT
clearly sets the expectations, or end-users will develop them on their own. Best
practice tells us that during the negotiation and acceptance of Service Level
Agreements, IT commits that services not only meet business and customer
outcomes but also that they will meet requirements for availability, capacity,
continuity and security.
Ok… that is good.
Best practice tells us to include these so called “non-functional”
requirements early in the lifecycle of a service. In reality these warranty requirements are
often considered somewhat in the Strategy/Design stage but more often than we
would like to admit the majority of the work and effort for security and
availability are performed reactively in the Service Operation lifecycle stage.
The lifecycle of a service consists of activities performed
in Service Strategy, Service Design, Service Transition and Service Operation.
In each of these lifecycle stages there are many processes and activities. For example, Incident and Problem Management
processes are primarily performed in the Service Operation lifecycle stage.
Here is a simple test. Ask your team or
managers or IT practitioners this question:
In which of these lifecycle stages would you place the
“Capacity Management” and “Availability Management” processes or activities?
The answer that I get more frequently than not is that the
majority of activity for Capacity, Availability, Continuity and Security are
performed in “Service Operation”. No….
we don’t want this. These requirements and design activities
should be early on in the Strategy/Design stage. These requirements should be included along
with the functional requirements and with the same amount of rigor and emphasis
as the functional requirements for a service. Warranty requires that we, as service providers, agree to specified levels of availability, capacity, IT service continuity, and
Information Security. If 80% or more of the activity for warranty is
performed in Service Operation it is likely that the service provider is very reactive
and not able to meet the needs of changing business demands in
a timely or cost effective manner. These
organizations will sometimes break down from reactive mode to chaos where business
value and customer confidence take a hit.
Moving from common
practice to best practice presents many challenges. Best practice tells us that
care must be taken, however, not to set up standards or
documentation requirements that create excessive bureaucracy without
consistently returning better services to the business and/or customer. The
goal should be to put just enough definition, measurement and control of design
activities in place to successfully manage the work and improve results, but no
more.
For more information, education or certification in these areas
click here: “Plan, Protect and Optimize”
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