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📄 Contents

  1. Management Reference Guide
  2. Table of Contents
  3. Introduction
  4. Strategic Management
  5. Establishing Goals, Objectives, and Strategies
  6. Aligning IT Goals with Corporate Business Goals
  7. Utilizing Effective Planning Techniques
  8. Developing Worthwhile Mission Statements
  9. Developing Worthwhile Vision Statements
  10. Instituting Practical Corporate Values
  11. Budgeting Considerations in an IT Environment
  12. Introduction to Conducting an Effective SWOT Analysis
  13. IT Governance and Disaster Recovery, Part One
  14. IT Governance and Disaster Recovery, Part Two
  15. Customer Management
  16. Identifying Key External Customers
  17. Identifying Key Internal Customers
  18. Negotiating with Customers and Suppliers—Part 1: An Introduction
  19. Negotiating With Customers and Suppliers—Part 2: Reaching Agreement
  20. Negotiating and Managing Realistic Customer Expectations
  21. Service Management
  22. Identifying Key Services for Business Users
  23. Service-Level Agreements That Really Work
  24. How IT Evolved into a Service Organization
  25. FAQs About Systems Management (SM)
  26. FAQs About Availability (AV)
  27. FAQs About Performance and Tuning (PT)
  28. FAQs About Service Desk (SD)
  29. FAQs About Change Management (CM)
  30. FAQs About Configuration Management (CF)
  31. FAQs About Capacity Planning (CP)
  32. FAQs About Network Management
  33. FAQs About Storage Management (SM)
  34. FAQs About Production Acceptance (PA)
  35. FAQs About Release Management (RM)
  36. FAQs About Disaster Recovery (DR)
  37. FAQs About Business Continuity (BC)
  38. FAQs About Security (SE)
  39. FAQs About Service Level Management (SL)
  40. FAQs About Financial Management (FN)
  41. FAQs About Problem Management (PM)
  42. FAQs About Facilities Management (FM)
  43. Process Management
  44. Developing Robust Processes
  45. Establishing Mutually Beneficial Process Metrics
  46. Change Management—Part 1
  47. Change Management—Part 2
  48. Change Management—Part 3
  49. Audit Reconnaissance: Releasing Resources Through the IT Audit
  50. Problem Management
  51. Problem Management–Part 2: Process Design
  52. Problem Management–Part 3: Process Implementation
  53. Business Continuity Emergency Communications Plan
  54. Capacity Planning – Part One: Why It is Seldom Done Well
  55. Capacity Planning – Part Two: Developing a Capacity Planning Process
  56. Capacity Planning — Part Three: Benefits and Helpful Tips
  57. Capacity Planning – Part Four: Hidden Upgrade Costs and
  58. Improving Business Process Management, Part 1
  59. Improving Business Process Management, Part 2
  60. 20 Major Elements of Facilities Management
  61. Major Physical Exposures Common to a Data Center
  62. Evaluating the Physical Environment
  63. Nightmare Incidents with Disaster Recovery Plans
  64. Developing a Robust Configuration Management Process
  65. Developing a Robust Configuration Management Process – Part Two
  66. Automating a Robust Infrastructure Process
  67. Improving High Availability — Part One: Definitions and Terms
  68. Improving High Availability — Part Two: Definitions and Terms
  69. Improving High Availability — Part Three: The Seven R's of High Availability
  70. Improving High Availability — Part Four: Assessing an Availability Process
  71. Methods for Brainstorming and Prioritizing Requirements
  72. Introduction to Disk Storage Management — Part One
  73. Storage Management—Part Two: Performance
  74. Storage Management—Part Three: Reliability
  75. Storage Management—Part Four: Recoverability
  76. Twelve Traits of World-Class Infrastructures — Part One
  77. Twelve Traits of World-Class Infrastructures — Part Two
  78. Meeting Today's Cooling Challenges of Data Centers
  79. Strategic Security, Part One: Assessment
  80. Strategic Security, Part Two: Development
  81. Strategic Security, Part Three: Implementation
  82. Strategic Security, Part Four: ITIL Implications
  83. Production Acceptance Part One – Definition and Benefits
  84. Production Acceptance Part Two – Initial Steps
  85. Production Acceptance Part Three – Middle Steps
  86. Production Acceptance Part Four – Ongoing Steps
  87. Case Study: Planning a Service Desk Part One – Objectives
  88. Case Study: Planning a Service Desk Part Two – SWOT
  89. Case Study: Implementing an ITIL Service Desk – Part One
  90. Case Study: Implementing a Service Desk Part Two – Tool Selection
  91. Ethics, Scandals and Legislation
  92. Outsourcing in Response to Legislation
  93. Supplier Management
  94. Identifying Key External Suppliers
  95. Identifying Key Internal Suppliers
  96. Integrating the Four Key Elements of Good Customer Service
  97. Enhancing the Customer/Supplier Matrix
  98. Voice Over IP, Part One — What VoIP Is, and Is Not
  99. Voice Over IP, Part Two — Benefits, Cost Savings and Features of VoIP
  100. Application Management
  101. Production Acceptance
  102. Distinguishing New Applications from New Versions of Existing Applications
  103. Assessing a Production Acceptance Process
  104. Effective Use of a Software Development Life Cycle
  105. The Role of Project Management in SDLC— Part 2
  106. Communication in Project Management – Part One: Barriers to Effective Communication
  107. Communication in Project Management – Part Two: Examples of Effective Communication
  108. Safeguarding Personal Information in the Workplace: A Case Study
  109. Combating the Year-end Budget Blitz—Part 1: Building a Manageable Schedule
  110. Combating the Year-end Budget Blitz—Part 2: Tracking and Reporting Availability
  111. References
  112. Developing an ITIL Feasibility Analysis
  113. Organization and Personnel Management
  114. Optimizing IT Organizational Structures
  115. Factors That Influence Restructuring Decisions
  116. Alternative Locations for the Help Desk
  117. Alternative Locations for Database Administration
  118. Alternative Locations for Network Operations
  119. Alternative Locations for Web Design
  120. Alternative Locations for Risk Management
  121. Alternative Locations for Systems Management
  122. Practical Tips To Retaining Key Personnel
  123. Benefits and Drawbacks of Using IT Consultants and Contractors
  124. Deciding Between the Use of Contractors versus Consultants
  125. Managing Employee Skill Sets and Skill Levels
  126. Assessing Skill Levels of Current Onboard Staff
  127. Recruiting Infrastructure Staff from the Outside
  128. Selecting the Most Qualified Candidate
  129. 7 Tips for Managing the Use of Mobile Devices
  130. Useful Websites for IT Managers
  131. References
  132. Automating Robust Processes
  133. Evaluating Process Documentation — Part One: Quality and Value
  134. Evaluating Process Documentation — Part Two: Benefits and Use of a Quality-Value Matrix
  135. When Should You Integrate or Segregate Service Desks?
  136. Five Instructive Ideas for Interviewing
  137. Eight Surefire Tips to Use When Being Interviewed
  138. 12 Helpful Hints To Make Meetings More Productive
  139. Eight Uncommon Tips To Improve Your Writing
  140. Ten Helpful Tips To Improve Fire Drills
  141. Sorting Out Today’s Various Training Options
  142. Business Ethics and Corporate Scandals – Part 1
  143. Business Ethics and Corporate Scandals – Part 2
  144. 12 Tips for More Effective Emails
  145. Management Communication: Back to the Basics, Part One
  146. Management Communication: Back to the Basics, Part Two
  147. Management Communication: Back to the Basics, Part Three
  148. Asset Management
  149. Managing Hardware Inventories
  150. Introduction to Hardware Inventories
  151. Processes To Manage Hardware Inventories
  152. Use of a Hardware Inventory Database
  153. References
  154. Managing Software Inventories
  155. Business Continuity Management
  156. Ten Lessons Learned from Real-Life Disasters
  157. Ten Lessons Learned From Real-Life Disasters, Part 2
  158. Differences Between Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity , Part 1
  159. Differences Between Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity , Part 2
  160. 15 Common Terms and Definitions of Business Continuity
  161. The Federal Government’s Role in Disaster Recovery
  162. The 12 Common Mistakes That Cause BIAs To Fail—Part 1
  163. The 12 Common Mistakes That Cause BIAs To Fail—Part 2
  164. The 12 Common Mistakes That Cause BIAs To Fail—Part 3
  165. The 12 Common Mistakes That Cause BIAs To Fail—Part 4
  166. Conducting an Effective Table Top Exercise (TTE) — Part 1
  167. Conducting an Effective Table Top Exercise (TTE) — Part 2
  168. Conducting an Effective Table Top Exercise (TTE) — Part 3
  169. Conducting an Effective Table Top Exercise (TTE) — Part 4
  170. The 13 Cardinal Steps for Implementing a Business Continuity Program — Part One
  171. The 13 Cardinal Steps for Implementing a Business Continuity Program — Part Two
  172. The 13 Cardinal Steps for Implementing a Business Continuity Program — Part Three
  173. The 13 Cardinal Steps for Implementing a Business Continuity Program — Part Four
  174. The Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL)
  175. The Origins of ITIL
  176. The Foundation of ITIL: Service Management
  177. Five Reasons for Revising ITIL
  178. The Relationship of Service Delivery and Service Support to All of ITIL
  179. Ten Common Myths About Implementing ITIL, Part One
  180. Ten Common Myths About Implementing ITIL, Part Two
  181. Characteristics of ITIL Version 3
  182. Ten Benefits of itSMF and its IIL Pocket Guide
  183. Translating the Goals of the ITIL Service Delivery Processes
  184. Translating the Goals of the ITIL Service Support Processes
  185. Elements of ITIL Least Understood, Part One: Service Delivery Processes
  186. Case Study: Recovery Reactions to a Renegade Rodent
  187. Elements of ITIL Least Understood, Part Two: Service Support
  188. Case Studies
  189. Case Study — Preparing for Hurricane Charley
  190. Case Study — The Linux Decision
  191. Case Study — Production Acceptance at an Aerospace Firm
  192. Case Study — Production Acceptance at a Defense Contractor
  193. Case Study — Evaluating Mainframe Processes
  194. Case Study — Evaluating Recovery Sites, Part One: Quantitative Comparisons/Natural Disasters
  195. Case Study — Evaluating Recovery Sites, Part Two: Quantitative Comparisons/Man-made Disasters
  196. Case Study — Evaluating Recovery Sites, Part Three: Qualitative Comparisons
  197. Case Study — Evaluating Recovery Sites, Part Four: Take-Aways
  198. Disaster Recovery Test Case Study Part One: Planning
  199. Disaster Recovery Test Case Study Part Two: Planning and Walk-Through
  200. Disaster Recovery Test Case Study Part Three: Execution
  201. Disaster Recovery Test Case Study Part Four: Follow-Up
  202. Assessing the Robustness of a Vendor’s Data Center, Part One: Qualitative Measures
  203. Assessing the Robustness of a Vendor’s Data Center, Part Two: Quantitative Measures
  204. Case Study: Lessons Learned from a World-Wide Disaster Recovery Exercise, Part One: What Did the Team Do Well
  205. (d) Case Study: Lessons Learned from a World-Wide Disaster Recovery Exercise, Part Two

This case study describes my recent efforts to access a production acceptance process at large, well-established aerospace firm. The company is over fifty years old and enjoys a reputation for researching, developing, and applying cutting-edge technology for both the military and commercial sectors. At the time of my assignment it employed 80,000 workers of whom 400 resided in IT. The IT platform environment of its main corporate computer center consisted primarily of four huge mainframes, with the same number of midrange computers and servers and approximately 1200 desktops.

The IT operations department of this company had a well-established production services function that ran 350 production applications daily, slightly more during month-end processing, and deployed on average two new production applications per month. There was no quality assurance group at this company although they did have the beginnings of a formal change management and production acceptance process.

Case Study on Production Acceptance: Production Services

The Production Services department was staffed by two very competent individuals who thoroughly knew the ins and out of running virtually every production application in the company, though little of it was documented. They were very technically knowledgeable as was most all of the staff in IT. This reflected part of the company's mission to develop highly technical expertise throughout the enterprise. Another part of the company's mission was to dedicate every department to continuous process improvement. The production services function was still very manually oriented and consequently somewhat inefficient. No automated scheduling systems were in place here at this time, but the company was willing to try new techniques and to technologies to improve their processes.

The Production Services group was also very segregated from other processes such as change and problem management. There was only the start of a production acceptance process which was not tied to production services at all. This segregation occasionally strained communications between operations and applications development. The fact that they were 25 miles apart sometimes added to the lack of effective face-to-face meetings.

Operations did a good job of collecting meaningful metrics such as outages, abnormal terminations, reruns, reprints, and reports delivered ontime. There was an inconsistent emphasis on how often or how deeply there metrics should be analyzed which sometimes undermined their usefulness.

Case Study on Production Acceptance: Strengths and Weaknesses

To summarize this company's strengths, they were willing to try new techniques and new technologies, committed to continuous process improvement, hired and developed a technically competent staff, and were willing to collect meaningful metrics. To summarize their weaknesses, they tended to not interact with members of other IT staffs, provide little documented training, did not always have effective communications with the development group due in part to a 25 mile separation, and did not always analyze the metrics they collected.

Eventually, the operations department implemented a more formal production acceptance process. One of the most important lessons we learned was to ensure the operations department was involved very early with a new application project. This helps ensure that the appropriate operation's group provide or receive the proper resources, capacity, documentation, and training required for a successful deployment. The other important lesson we learned was that the other infrastructure support groups such as network services, the help desk, storage management, and desktop applications need to provide their full support to the production services function. Because this function had worked in an isolated manner in the past, other infrastructure support groups were initially reluctant to support it. With improved processes, automation, and increased communication, the problem of lack of support was resolved.

Case Study on Production Acceptance: Process Assessment

Over the years, many clients have asked me for a quick and simple method to evaluate the quality, efficiency, and effectiveness of their production acceptance processes. In response to these requests, I developed the production acceptance assessment worksheet shown in Table 1. Process owners and their managers collaborate with other appropriate individuals to fill out this form. Along the left-hand column are 10 categories of characteristics about a process. The degree to which each of these characteristics is put to use in designing and managing a process is a good measure of its relative robustness.

Table 1 Assessment Worksheet for Case Study Company

View Table

The categories that assess the overall quality of a process are executive support, process owner, and process documentation. Categories assessing the overall efficiency of a process consist of supplier involvement, process metrics, process integration, and streamlining/automation. The categories used to assess effectiveness include customer involvement, service metrics, and the training of staff.

The evaluation of each category is a very simple procedure. The relative degree to which the characteristics within each category are present and being used is rated on a scale of 0 to 3, with 0 indicating no presence and 4 representing a large presence of the characteristic. For example, at this particular company the executive sponsor for the production acceptance process demonstrated some initial support for the process by carefully selecting and coaching the process owner. However, over time this same executive showed only mild interest in engaging al of the necessary development managers and staffs in the process. I consequently rated the overall degree to which this executive showed support for this process as small and gave it a 2 on the scale of 0 to 3. On the other hand, the process owner was extremely knowledgeable on all of the critical applications and their deployments resulting in us rating category a 3.

I similarly rated each of the categories as shown in Table 1. Obviously, a single column could be used record the ratings of each category; however, if we format separate columns for each of the four possible scores, categories scoring the lowest and highest ratings stand out visually. I have filled in sample responses for each of the categories to show how the entire assessment might work. The next step is to sum the numerical scores within each column. For this company, this totals to 1 + 3 + 4 + 3 = 11. This total is then divided by the maximum possible rating of 30 for an assessment score of 35%.

Apart from its obvious value of quantifying areas of strength and weakness for a given process, this rating provides two other significant benefits to an infrastructure. One is that it serves as a baseline benchmark from which future process refinements can be quantitatively measured and compared. The second is that the score of this particular process can be compared to those of other infrastructure processes to determine which ones need most attention.

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