Operations Overview
The Operations Service Management Function (SMF) addresses what it takes to ensure effective and efficient day-to-day operations of an IT service after it has been conceived, built, and deployed into the production environment. This SMF focuses on how to determine what the daily, weekly, monthly, and as-needed tasks for maintaining an IT service are, and then on how to ensure that they are understood and followed by those responsible for that maintenance.
The SMF does not, for the most part, say what those tasks are—other than in the form of examples—because such tasks vary depending on the service being maintained. Instead, this SMF addresses how an organization can determine for itself what those tasks should be.
That determination is crucial, because it is at the heart of how to create and keep a well-maintained production environment. Successful operations pays off, resulting in:
- IT managers knowing what is required to maintain and administer an IT service.
- An IT Operations Manager who manages the workload in accordance with an operations plan.
- Operations staff members who know what to do and how to execute their work efficiently.
In order to ensure that IT services are designed for effective operations, some of the process for planning operations work actually starts in the Deliver Phase of the IT service lifecycle, during the release planning stage of planning for a new IT service. At that point, the Technology Area Manager and the release team work together to determine operations work requirements for the new service.
Later, when the project team is building the new IT service, the Technology Area Manager should develop operational work instructions. And then, after the new service has passed the release readiness review and has been released into production, the team can complete the planning of operational work.
Operations SMF Role Types
The primary team accountability that applies to the Build SMF is the Operations Accountability. The role types within that accountability and their primary activities within this SMF are displayed in the following table.
Table 1. Operations Accountability and Its Attendant Role Types
Role Type
Responsibilities
Role in This SMF
Operator
- Executes tasks with predictable results based on instructions
Conducts planned operations tasks
Administrator
- Executes tasks that are not well defined, requiring a deeper level of knowledge
Conducts unplanned or undefined operations tasks
Technology Area Manager
- Owns short-term performance of components in a technology area
- Owns the work instructions
- Ensures operational requirements are met for the technology area
Ensures work instructions are carried out as intended
Monitoring Manager
- Responsible for Service Monitoring and Control SMF tasks
- Ensures that the right systems are monitored
- Facilitates effective monitoring mechanisms
- Is the expert on how to monitor, not what to monitor
Ensures needed monitoring information is generated
Scheduling Manager
- Plans schedule of individual activities within operations
- Owns timing decisions
- Plans operational work, including maintenance
Schedules operational work
Operations Manager
- Accountable for Operations and Service Monitoring and Control SMFs
Management oversight
Goals of Operations
The goals of Operations include the following:
- Ensure that the work required to successfully operate IT services has been identified and described.
- Reduce time spent by Operations staff on reactive work.
- Minimize service disruptions and downtime.
- Execute recurring and on-demand IT operations tasks effectively and efficiently.
Table 2. Outcomes and Measures of the Operations SMF Goals
Outcomes
Measures
Improve efficiency of IT staff
Number of Operations staff, number of work hours used outside operations plan
Increase IT service availability
Service availability, service level agreement (SLA) targets missed
Improved operations of new/changed IT services
Number of incidents the first month
Reduction of reactive work
Reduction in number of incidents
Key Terms
The following table contains definitions of key terms found in this guide.
Table 3. Key Terms
Term |
Definition |
Work instruction |
Prescriptive guidance that precisely describes how a specific work activity should be completed |
Operations guide |
An operations plan containing prescriptive work instructions |
Service window |
Span of time during which maintenance of an IT service can be completed without affecting the availability specified in the SLA |
Operations log |
Records listing when operational work has been completed and by whom |
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