Process 3: Plan Operational Work
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Figure 5. Plan operational work
Activities: Plan Operational Work
This process includes:
- Categorizing operational work.
- Assigning resources.
- Estimating duration.
- Identifying dependencies.
- Building the operations schedule.
The following table describes these activities in greater detail.
Table 6. Activities and Considerations for Planning Operational Work
Activities
Considerations
Categorize operational work
Key questions:
- Which of the activities must be executed according to a predetermined schedule (daily, weekly, monthly)?
- What work is triggered by a request to the Service Desk—that is, not executed according to a predetermined schedule? Examples are account management or provisioning of a new desktop computer.
- What work is support-related (for example, predefined responses or solutions to known problems)?
Input:
- Operations guide
Output:
- List of operational activities sorted by responsible roles
Best practice:
- Make sure the Customer Service desk addresses work that requires a rapid response. See the Customer Service SMF for more information.
- Assign work that is difficult to document to administrators or Technology Area Managers.
Assign resources
Key questions:
- Does the Operations team’s current workload allow members to execute this work while fulfilling their existing responsibilities? What is the current workload of the people with the appropriate skills?
- Would it be more cost-effective to outsource some of the work?
- Who has the skills required to execute the operational work? Are there people on the Operations team who are not fully utilized and who can be trained to do this work?
- Can the workload of the existing resources be balanced differently?
Inputs:
- Operations guide
- Service request
Output:
- List of operational activities sorted by responsible roles with resources assigned
Best practices:
- Assign the Customer Service desk all work requiring rapid response—this will free the Operations team to complete all proactive work.
- Ensure that the Operations team performs only uninterrupted work, such as preventive maintenance and administrative work that does not require immediate action. See the Team SMF for more information on uninterrupted and interrupted work.
- If an Operations team member is ever called upon to do interruptible work, make sure that it does not interfere with the proactive work—or, if possible, assign someone else to perform the proactive operational work instead.
- Prioritize and complete proactive work according to the operations guide. Failing to do this will result in more reactive work, which will put the Operations team into “firefighting” mode and will hamper its efforts to work effectively and efficiently.
- If the Operations team is spending increasing amounts of time doing reactive work, consider hiring outside resources to help remediate the root causes of the reactive work.
Estimate duration of work
Key questions:
- What is the estimated time needed to complete each work instruction? Should instructions be tested to get a more accurate estimate?
- Will the resources assigned to the work be able to complete it within the time specified?
Inputs:
- Operations guide
- Experience from similar tasks
- Capability of assigned resources
Output:
- Operations guide with listing of task durations
Best practice:
- Make sure that the people responsible for completing the work estimate its duration. This ensures that differences in skills between the person who developed the work instruction and the person executing it are taken into consideration. It also encourages buy-in from the people executing the work.
Identify dependencies
Key questions:
- Must any of the operational work be performed in a certain sequence?
- Does the work have a performance impact on the production system?
- Does the work affect the availability of the service (for example, does it require a restart or a shift into maintenance mode)?
- Does the work require specific approvals before execution?
Input:
- Operations guide
Output:
- Operations guide listing dependencies and sequences, if applicable
Build operations schedule
Key questions:
- Does the service level agreement mention availability and uptime requirements that affect the planning of operational work?
- What is the required sequence for the operational work?
- Will the work affect service availability? Has a service window been established?
- When can the work be completed without affecting the end users?
- When are the assigned resources available to perform the work?
- Is a common planning tool available for all affected IT staff to use?
Input:
- Operations guide
Output:
- Operations schedule
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