Generic Technical Management activities

Technical Management is involved in two types of activity:

• Activities that are generic to the Technical Management function as a whole are discussed in this section as they enable Technical Management as a function to execute its role.
• A set of discrete activities and processes which are performed by all three functions of Technical, Application and IT Operations Management are covered in Chapter 5.

Generic Technical Management activities are highlighted as follows:

• Identifying the knowledge and expertise required to manage and operate the IT Infrastructure and to deliver IT services. This process starts during the Service Strategy phase, is expanded in detail in Service Design and is executed in Service Operation. Ongoing assessment and updating of these skills is done during Continual Service Improvement.
• Documentation of the skills that exist in the organization, as well as those skills that need to be developed. This will include the development of Skills Inventories and the performance of Training Needs Analyses.
• Initiating training programmes to develop and refine the skills in the appropriate technical resources and maintaining training records for all technical resources.
• Design and delivery of training for users, the Service Desk and other groups. Although training requirements must be defined in Service Design, they are executed in Service Operation. Where Technical Management does not deliver training, it is responsible for identifying organizations that can provide it.
• Recruiting or contracting resources with skills that cannot be developed internally, or where there are insufficient people to perform the required Technical Management activities.
• Procuring skills for specific activities where the required skills are not available internally or in the open market, or where it is more cost-efficient to do so.
• Definition of standards used in the design of new architectures and participation in the definition of technology architectures during the Service Strategy and Design phases.
• Research and development of solutions that can help expand the Service Portfolio or which can be used to simplify or automate IT Operations, reduce costs or increase levels of IT service.
• Involvement in the design and building of new services. Technical Management will contribute to the design of the Technical Architecture and Performance standards for IT services. In addition, it will also be responsible for specifying the operational activities required to manage the IT Infrastructure on an ongoing basis.
• Involvement in projects, not only during Service Design and Service Transition, but also for Continual Service Improvement or operational projects, such as Operating System upgrades, server consolidation projects or physical moves.
• Availability and Capacity Management are dependent on Technical Management for engineering IT services to meet the levels of service required by the business. This means that modelling and workload forecasting are often done with Technical Management resources.
• Assistance in assessing risk, identifying critical service and system dependencies and defining and implementing countermeasures.
• Designing and performing tests for the functionality, performance and manageability of IT services.
• Managing vendors. Many Technical Management departments or groups are the only ones who know exactly what is required of a vendor and how to measure and manage them. For this reason, many organizations rely on Technical Management departments to manage contracts with vendors of specific CIs. If this is the case it is important to ensure that these relationships are managed as part of the SLM process.
• Definition and management of Event Management standards and tools. Technical Management will also monitor and respond to many categories of events.
• Technical Management departments or groups are integral to the performance of Incident Management. They receive incidents through Functional escalation and provide second- and higher-level support. They are also involved in maintaining categories and defining the escalation procedures that are executed in Incident Management.
• Technical Management as a function provides the resources that execute the Problem Management process. It is its technical expertise and knowledge that is used to diagnose and resolve problems. It is also its relationship with the vendors that is used to escalate and follow up with vendor support teams.
• Technical Management resources will be involved in defining coding systems that are used in Incident and Problem Management (e.g. Incident Categories).
• Technical Management resources are used to support Problem Management in validating and maintaining the KEDB.
• Change Management relies on the technical knowledge and expertise to evaluate changes, and many changes will be built by Technical Management.
• Releases are frequently deployed using Technical Management resources.
• Technical Management will provide information for, and operationally maintain, the Configuration Management system and its data. This will be done in cooperation with Application Management to ensure that the correct CI attributes and relationships are created from the deployment of services and the ongoing maintenance over the life of CIs.
• Technical Management is involved in the Continual Service Improvement processes, particularly in identifying opportunities for improvement and then in helping to evaluate alternative solutions.
• As a custodian of technical knowledge and expertise, Technical Management ensures that all system and operating documentation is up to date and properly utilized. This includes ensuring that all management, administration and user manuals are up to date and complete and that technical staff are familiar with their contents.
• Updating and maintaining data used for reporting on technical and service capabilities, e.g. Capacity and Performance Management, Availability Management, Problem Management, etc.
• Assisting IT Financial Management to identify the cost of technology and IT human resources used to manage IT services.
• Involvement in defining the operational activities performed as part of IT Operations Management. Many Technical Management departments, groups or teams also perform the operational activities as part of an organization’s IT Operations Management function.

Date: 2014-12-29; view: 1062