8.1 Service Desk Function
A) Role of Service desk function
1) Handles incidents, escalates incidents to problem management staff, manages service requests and answers questions.
2) Provides an interface for other activities such as customer change requests, maintenance contracts, software licenses, SLM, service asset and configuration management, availability management, financial management for IT services, and IT service continuity management.
B) Objectives of Service desk function
1) Logging all relevant incident/service request details, and allocating categorization and prioritization codes.
2) Providing first line investigation and diagnosis.
3) Resolving those incidents/service requests that do not need escalating across IT.
4) Escalating incidents/service requests that the service desk cannot resolve within agreed timescales.
5) Closing all resolved incidents, service requests and other calls.
6) Conducting customer/user satisfaction call backs/surveys as agreed.
7) Communication with users – keeping them informed of incident progress, notifying them of impending changes or agreed outages, etc.
8) Updating the configuration management system under the direction and approval of configuration management if so agreed
C) Organizational structures of Service desk function
1) Local Service Desk – co-located with users in the office, efficient but expensive, need more coordination among different service desks within the organization.
2) Centralized Service Desk – economy of scale, better coordination, knowledge and mind sharing, no direct physical interaction with users.
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.
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
1) Manage the IT infrastructure.
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
1) Manage the IT applications
2) 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)
2) Design, assist in deployment and support applications.
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.
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.
2) As per performance standards created in service design.
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.Copyright © Anand Software and Training Private Limited.