While most Application Management teams or departments are dedicated to specific applications or sets of applications, there are a number of activities which they have in common. These include:
Identifying the knowledge and expertise required to manage and operate applications in the delivery of 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 are done during Continual Service Improvement.
Initiating training programmes to develop and refine the skills in the appropriate Application Management resources and maintaining training records for these resources.
Recruiting or contracting resources with skills that cannot be developed internally, or where there are insufficient people to perform the required Application Management activities.
Design and delivery of end-user training. Training may be developed and delivered by either the Application Development or Application Management groups, or by a third party, but Application Management is responsible for ensuring that training is conducted as appropriate.
Insourcing 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 application architectures during the Service Strategy processes.
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. All Application Management teams or departments will contribute to the design of the Technical Architecture and Performance standards for IT Services. In addition they will also be responsible for specifying the operational activities required to manage applications on an ongoing basis.
Involvement in projects, not only during the Service Design process, but also for Continual Service Improvement or operational projects, such as Operating System upgrades, server consolidation projects or physical moves.
Designing and performing tests for the functionality, performance and manageability of IT Services (bearing in mind that testing should be controlled and performed by an independent tester – see Service Transition publication).
Availability and Capacity Management are dependent on Application Management for contributing to the design of applications to meet the levels of service required by the business. This means that modelling and workload forecasting are often done together with Technical and Application Management resources.
Assistance in assessing risk, identifying critical service and system dependencies and defining and implementing countermeasures.
Managing vendors. Many Application 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 Application Management to manage contracts with vendors of specific applications. If this is the case it is important to ensure that these relationships are managed as part of the SLM process.
Involvement in definition of Event Managementstandards and especially in the instrumentation of applications for the generation of meaningful events.
Application Management as a function provides the resources that execute the Problem Management process. It is their technical expertise and knowledge that is used to diagnose and resolve problems. It is also their relationship with the vendors that is used to escalate and follow up with vendor support teams or departments.
Application Management resources will be involved in defining coding systems that are used in Incident and Problem Management (e.g. Incident Categories).
Application Management resources are used to support Problem Management in validating and maintaining the KEDB together with the Application Development teams.
Change Management relies on the technical knowledge and expertise to evaluate changes and many changes will be built by Application Management teams.
Successful Release Management is dependent on involvement from Application Management staff. In fact they are frequently the drivers of the Release Managementprocess for their applications.
Application Management will define, manage and maintain attributes and relationships of application CIs in the CMS.
Application Management is involved in the Continual Service Improvement processes, particularly in identifying opportunities for improvement and then in helping to evaluate alternative solutions.
Application Management ensures that all system and operating documentation is up to date and properly utilized. This includes ensuring that all design, management and user manuals are up to date and complete and that Application Management staff and users are familiar with their contents.
Collaboration with Technical Management on performing Training Needs Analysis and maintaining Skills Inventories.
Assisting IT Financial Management to identify the cost of the ongoing management of applications.
Involvement in defining the operational activities performed as part of IT Operations Management. Many Application Management departments, groups or teams also perform the operational activities as part of an organization’s IT Operations Management function.
Input into, and maintenance of, software configuration policies.
Together with Software Development teams, the definition and maintenance of documentation related to applications. These will include user manuals, administration and management manuals, as well as any SOPs required to manage operational aspects of the application.
Application Management teams or departments will be needed for all key applications. The exact nature of the role will vary depending upon the applications being supported, but generic responsibilities are likely to include:
Third-level support for incidents related to the application(s) covered by that team or department
Involvement in operation testing plans and deployment issues
Application bug tracking and patch management (coding fixes for in-house code, transports/patches for third-party code)
Involvement in application operability and supportability issues such as error code design, error messaging, event management hooks
Application sizing and performance; volume metrics and load testing etc. This is in support of Capacity and Availability Management processes
Involvement in developing Release Policies
Identification of enhancements to existing software, both from a functionality and manageability perspective.
