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125.0 Support Processes |
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As we have seen before, most support teams perform a
variety of work, including bug-fixes, answering user questions and
responding to all sorts of emergencies. Since they know the applications
well, most support teams also implement enhancements to the existing
applications. Since the support teams have so much going on, how does each
team member decide which ones are most important? Even though everything is
important, it is possible to put together a prioritization process. The
following process is based on the sense of urgency involved in the work and
the impact of the work to the client organization. |
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It makes sense that true support work has priority on a
support team. However, there are different types of support work and
different levels of urgency. Use the following prioritization process to
make sure the most critical work gets done first.
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Keep
applications running and stable. This is the highest priority work.
This includes fixing applications that are down or fixing severe problems
with applications producing incorrect results. If there were problems with
multiple applications at the same time, the priority would go to the
applications that were more critical to the business. For instance, the
Accounts Receivable application is probably more critical than a sales
forecast report. The sales forecast report is needed for internal use, but
the Accounts Receivable application is needed to help generate customer
payments. The Accounts Receivable application probably always has users
working on the system as well. If the Accounts Receivable system is down,
there may be clients that are idle as well until the application comes up
again.
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Provide
client support (assisting users). These items are required for the
business clients to get their job done. This category includes answering
questions, researching application logic, validating data, etc. In many
instances, these questions have to do with understanding why application
information looks like it does. For instance, you may have a report that
should show that certain financial transactions are in balance. If the
report comes out showing that the transactions are out of balance, the
client is obviously going to ask why. There may be information available
that will allow the client to determine the answer themselves. However, in
many cases, these questions end up going to the support team for
investigation. These types of requests are important because there may be
some underlying system problem that needs to be addressed, and the
business may not be able to run its processes without the situation being
resolved and a satisfactory answer being found. In addition, this category
includes special requests from the client. For instance, you may be asked
to run a special job that only runs on request, or you may have to run a
special query to ensure the integrity of certain data fields.
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Normal
discretionary work. This includes all changes and enhancements that
can be scheduled and prioritized. This work includes problems or bugs that
are nuisances, but should be fixed at some point. This also includes all
enhancement requests for changes in current functionality. The business
client can prioritize this work based on what is most important to them.
For the most part, normal enhancements are worked on based on the time
available after the first three priorities are taken care of. In some
teams, the staffing is at a level where many enhancements can be
performed. On other teams, there are very few enhancements made because
the team is staffed at a level where only priorities one through three can
be handled.
Another category of work is support overhead. This work
does not need to be prioritized, but it is a part of the workload that must
just be worked in as required. This includes time reporting, status
reporting, workload planning, administration, etc. This work is not
prioritized since the business client would likely think that it is not as
important as their work. However, these activities are required by the IT
organization and need to be completed as necessary.
Much, but not all of the work associated with the
Application Support Group will come from clients using some type of support
process. The following is a good example of the concepts around a process
for receiving customer requests and ultimately resolving the request.
Premium Content for Licensed Users
The remainder of the section
describes various support processes. This content is available
for SupportStep licensed users.
Details on the support process
are in the following sections.
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