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104.0 SupportStep Overview |
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SupportStep Summary
The purpose of the SupportStep Application Support
Framework™ is to showcase a common set of processes, best practices, and
templates that can be used to build and run the application support function
consistently throughout the company. SupportStep provides value to your
company in the following areas.
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Sets an
overall direction and destination that all support groups can strive to
achieve.
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Establishes
a common set of terms and a framework for thinking that can be used
consistently throughout the company. This helps facilitate communication
and reduces the chances for confusion.
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Provides a
set of management practices that can be used consistently to proactively
manage resources and align the work to ensure it supports business
initiatives.
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Creates a
common and consistent set of measurements for internal process
improvements and for external reporting to the clients.
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Facilitates
training and cross-training, since the knowledge and skills of how you do
support work is consistent from one area to another.
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Encourages
organizational horizontal planning across multiple groups since each
group is using common terms and a common support framework.
In many companies, the place to start evaluating your
support function is through a formal organizational definition. Depending on
the size of your company, the formal definition could be at the company,
division, department, group, or team level. This process helps you think
through and gain agreement on the fundamental nature of your organization.
Examples of the types of information that could be included in the
organizational definition would be mission, vision, strategy, and
principles. It is also important to define who your clients are.
Once you have the foundation provided by an
organization assessment, you can look at your support organization to
determine the best way for them to be managed and to operate effectively.
SupportStep helps to define a common business model that can be used as a
starting point. The various areas SupportStep covers include:
Definition
The content in this section is used in two instances.
The first is when you are putting together a support function for the first
time. The information in this section allows you to understand your
responsibilities and how the work you do aligns with the rest of the
company. However, most of the readers of SupportStep already have support
functions in place. If you have a support function already, you can still
use the Definition section to validate your work, your processes, your
clients, etc. In many cases, you will find that the things you do today are
perfectly fine. In some instances, you may discover that you want to
fundamentally change what you are doing and for whom you are doing it for.
Organizing for Basic Support
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This is where most of the direct, targeted content is
described. If you worked through the Definition Section, this is where you
would fill in most of the details needed to organize and run the support
function. This section is divided up into a number of sub-sections that are
used to document the details about your applications, your clients, your
team, and how you run and manage the support process. |
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Activities. Activities refer to work done for
clients or stakeholders that does not result in the creation of tangible
deliverables. Services provide value by fulfilling the needs of others
through people contact and interaction. SupportStep describes the types of
activities associated with the application support group, including
emergency response, major/minor error correction, environmental changes
and even simply answering questions from users.
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Applications. Support work implies that your group
is maintaining some specific set of products. SupportStep focuses on the
support of applications that your company uses to run their internal and
external business processes. These applications need to be understood and
inventoried, along with key information that is required for support.
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Clients. Providing services implies that you are
helping other people. SupportStep helps identify the clients and
stakeholders that your support team serves, as well as characteristics
about them. Clients and stakeholders include application business owners,
main user contacts, power users, and regular users. The support team
ensures that the applications are accurate and stable on behalf of clients
and stakeholders.
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Team. Most of the dynamics of the application
support organization revolves around the support team. SupportStep
describes the application support team, roles and responsibilities,
profiles, etc. Your management challenge is to structure your support team
so that all the applications have the proper level of coverage, all the
staff is challenged, and everyone has the right skills. For example, one
technique for a small team is for everyone to share all support
responsibilities. However, as the application inventory gets large, this
becomes difficult. For large teams, application specialists are usually
more effective. These specialists include application primary and backup
support roles, or designating a support dispatcher.
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Processes. This section of SupportStep defines some
of the basic processes used to run and manage the support organization.
Among the topics covered are prioritizing work; defining different levels
of support severity; and creating an escalation procedure.
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How to Measure. There are a number of potential
metrics that can be captured as a part of the application support process.
One is time reporting, which tracks time spent in many different aspects
of support, including fixing errors, answering questions, communication
with the client, cross training, etc. Other potential metrics include
support surveys and management surveys. These metrics can determine
customer satisfaction, time allocation, cost, quality of service, and much
more.
Management
SupportStep also provides guidance on how to manage the
support function. This includes how to allocate people, how to plan the
work, and how to validate that the actual work is aligned close to your
Business Plan.
Miscellaneous
All support organizations need to work through the
various subsections associated with the Definition section. There are other
specific activities that the support group may be responsible for. The
larger your organization is, the more applicable these advanced topics
become. This includes content in areas such as disaster recovery exercises
and software change management tools. In many support organizations, these
“advanced” topics may really just be a part of the normal expectations for
support/.
Related Topics
This section includes information on subjects that
might be of interest for people working on support functions, but that are
not directly related to support. For instance, many people on support teams
also perform enhancement requests. These enhancement requests are actually
small projects. However, they are managed with much less rigor and structure
than regular projects. This topic and others are explained more fully in
this section.
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