This page describes assumptions
that were made in the
development of SupportStep to
put this material into better
perspective. This includes a
certain set of terms and
terminology that need to be
agreed upon so that the rest of
SupportStep can be better
understood. These include:
Terminology
-
Support:
The term "support" is the
generic name being used to
describe the care and
feeding of production
applications, tools, systems,
and processes. There are
other terms that might be
used in your company, such
as "operations", "maintenance” and
"baseline." The term "support"
is used in SupportStep.
-
Clients:
Everyone has customers, and
in some companies they are
called by different names.
In SupportStep, the term "customers"
refers to the external
customers who purchase the
products and services your
company produces.
SupportStep uses the term
"business client" or "client"
to refer to the internal
customers that are the
direct beneficiaries of the
services provided by the
support team.
-
Applications:
The term "applications" or
"business applications"
refers to the software
systems that are used to
automate otherwise manual
business processes within
your company. Examples of
applications include payroll,
accounts payable, Customer
Relationship Management
(CRM) software, time
reporting, inventory
management, etc. In some
companies, these entities
might be referred to as "systems."
Applications can be
internally developed, or
they can be packages
purchased from an outside
vendor.
-
Support
Analyst:
This term is used to
describe the person or
persons responsible for
supporting a particular
application. The primary
support person for an
application is called the
Primary Support Analyst. The
backup is called the Backup
Support Analyst. It is
possible (and likely) that a
person could be the Primary
Support Analyst on one or
more applications and be a
backup on others.
Support, Enhancements and
Projects
Most organizations like to
allocate people based on
high-level work categories.
There are a number of ways that
the categories can be defined.
The general categories used in
SupportStep are:
-
Support.
The purpose of most of the
SupportStep framework
-
Discretionary.
This is work that can be
prioritized and will be
completed based on having
the resources available.
This work includes
enhancements, but also
includes maintenance work
that is not critical.
Discretionary requests can
be considered small projects
and are explained more fully
in
161.0 Discretionary
Requests,
as well as the
TenStep Project
Management Process
methodology - TenStep PGP®.
-
Projects.
Support staff may be asked
to work on projects as well.
Projects have a defined
start and end date, and
result in the creation of
one or more deliverables.
These could be large
projects or small projects.
They could be enhancement
projects, process
improvement projects,
environment-related projects,
mandatory projects etc. Your
support team may bundle up
many small changes into a
product release. The release
is organized and managed as
a project. Projects are
explained more fully in the
TenStep Project
Management Process
methodology - TenStep PGP®.
Management Soft Skills
The SupportStep Application
Support Framework includes a
section in the methodology for
managing the application support
function. In general, this could
also be taken to mean the
management of the support team.
However, the primary focus of
the management function is in
the area of managing processes,
not managing people. There are
many people management aspects
that must be taken into account
by the managers in the support
organization. This includes
skills such as listening,
leadership, conflict resolution,
etc. However, the soft skills
for managing a team are not
within the scope of SupportStep.
Focus on Internal Application
Support – Not External Customers
The SupportStep Framework
focuses on the internal support
of business applications. If
your company sells software, you
will also have an organization
established to deal with the
support of your licensed
customers. Although
organizations that support
external customers will still
find value in SupportStep, this
framework is probably not the
best overall model for that kind
of support. There are many
complexities associated with
external customer support that
are not designed into the
SupportStep Framework.
Support Function vs. Support
Organization
It is important to distinguish
between the support work
function and the support
organization. It is very likely
that the support organization at
your company does more than just
true support work. Most support
organizations also perform small
and/or large enhancements. It is
possible that projects can also
be executed in the same groups
that do support. SupportStep
contains information for
managing the discretionary
enhancement work (small projects).
However, this aspect of work is
covered more exhaustively in the
TenStep Project Management
Process methodology - TenStep
PGP®.
SupportStep focuses entirely on
setting up and managing the
support function.
Different Types of Support
Organizations
Most of the general content of
the SupportStep process can be
used by any support organization,
regardless of the specific
products and services that your
company produces. However, much
of the specific content in
SupportStep is targeted at the
support of business applications
(see definition of
“applications” above). If you
have a team that supports your
ongoing sales and marketing
programs, for instance, they
could also benefit from much of
the content of SupportStep.
However, some of the material,
including templates, would not
be of specific interest to them.
On the other hand, you could use
the basic SupportStep templates
as the starting point to create
other related templates that
would be of more value.
Low-Tech Templates
Most of the templates in
SupportStep are simple MS Excel
and Word documents. The
templates are in this format so
that you can easily see what
information is on them and what
the value of the information is.
The templates do not have to be
implemented in this format in
your organization. If you use
Excel, for instance, you will
likely want to combine a number
of related SupportStep templates
as multiple tabs in one larger
spreadsheet. Also, if your
organization has access to more
sophisticated tools, you can
implement the templates in that
technology instead. For instance,
many of the templates would be
good candidates to place in MS
ACCESS, Lotus Notes and HTML/web.
