SupportStep Summary
The purpose of the SupportStep
Application Support Framework™
is to showcase a common set of
processes, best practices, and
templates that can be used to
build and run the application
support function consistently
throughout the company.
SupportStep provides value to
your company in the following
areas.
-
Sets an overall direction
and destination that all
support groups can strive to
achieve.
-
Establishes a common set of
terms and a framework for
thinking that can be used
consistently throughout the
company. This helps
facilitate communication and
reduces the chances for
confusion.
-
Provides a set of management
practices that can be used
consistently to proactively
manage resources and align
the work to ensure it
supports business
initiatives.
-
Creates a common and
consistent set of
measurements for internal
process improvements and for
external reporting to the
clients.
-
Facilitates training and
cross-training, since the
knowledge and skills of how
you do support work is
consistent from one area to
another.
-
Encourages organizational
horizontal planning across
multiple groups since each
group is using common terms
and a common support
framework.
In many companies, the place to
start evaluating your support
function is through a formal
organizational definition.
Depending on the size of your
company, the formal definition
could be at the company,
division, department, group, or
team level. This process helps
you think through and gain
agreement on the fundamental
nature of your organization.
Examples of the types of
information that could be
included in the organizational
definition would be mission,
vision, strategy, and principles.
It is also important to define
who your clients are.
Once you have the foundation
provided by an organization
assessment, you can look at your
support organization to
determine the best way for them
to be managed and to operate
effectively. SupportStep helps
to define a common business
model that can be used as a
starting point. The various
areas SupportStep covers include:
Definition
The content in this section is
used in two instances. The first
is when you are putting together
a support function for the first
time. The information in this
section allows you to understand
your responsibilities and how
the work you do aligns with the
rest of the company. However,
most of the readers of
SupportStep already have support
functions in place. If you have
a support function already, you
can still use the Definition
section to validate your work,
your processes, your clients,
etc. In many cases, you will
find that the things you do
today are perfectly fine. In
some instances, you may discover
that you want to fundamentally
change what you are doing and
for whom you are doing it for.
Organizing for Basic Support
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This is where most of
the direct, targeted
content is described. If
you worked through the
Definition Section, this
is where you would fill
in most of the details
needed to organize and
run the support function.
This section is divided
up into a number of
sub-sections that are
used to document the
details about your
applications, your
clients, your team, and
how you run and manage
the support process.
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-
Activities.
Activities refer to work
done for clients or
stakeholders that does not
result in the creation of
tangible deliverables.
Services provide value by
fulfilling the needs of
others through people
contact and interaction.
SupportStep describes the
types of activities
associated with the
application support group,
including emergency response,
major/minor error correction,
environmental changes and
even simply answering
questions from users.
-
Applications. Support
work implies that your group
is maintaining some specific
set of products. SupportStep
focuses on the support of
applications that your
company uses to run their
internal and external
business processes. These
applications need to be
understood and inventoried,
along with key information
that is required for support.
-
Clients. Providing
services implies that you
are helping other people.
SupportStep helps identify
the clients and stakeholders
that your support team
serves, as well as
characteristics about them.
Clients and stakeholders
include application business
owners, main user contacts,
power users, and regular
users. The support team
ensures that the
applications are accurate
and stable on behalf of
clients and stakeholders.
-
Team. Most of the
dynamics of the application
support organization
revolves around the support
team. SupportStep describes
the application support team,
roles and responsibilities,
profiles, etc. Your
management challenge is to
structure your support team
so that all the applications
have the proper level of
coverage, all the staff is
challenged, and everyone has
the right skills. For
example, one technique for a
small team is for everyone
to share all support
responsibilities. However,
as the application inventory
gets large, this becomes
difficult. For large teams,
application specialists are
usually more effective.
These specialists include
application primary and
backup support roles, or
designating a support
dispatcher.
-
Processes. This
section of SupportStep
defines some of the basic
processes used to run and
manage the support
organization. Among the
topics covered are
prioritizing work; defining
different levels of support
severity; and creating an
escalation procedure.
-
How to Measure. There
are a number of potential
metrics that can be captured
as a part of the application
support process. One is time
reporting, which tracks time
spent in many different
aspects of support,
including fixing errors,
answering questions,
communication with the
client, cross training, etc.
Other potential metrics
include support surveys and
management surveys. These
metrics can determine
customer satisfaction, time
allocation, cost, quality of
service, and much more.
Management
SupportStep also provides
guidance on how to manage the
support function. This includes
how to allocate people, how to
plan the work, and how to
validate that the actual work is
aligned close to your Business
Plan.
Miscellaneous
All support organizations need
to work through the various
subsections associated with the
Definition section. There are
other specific activities that
the support group may be
responsible for. The larger your
organization is, the more
applicable these advanced topics
become. This includes content in
areas such as disaster recovery
exercises and software change
management tools. In many
support organizations, these
“advanced” topics may really
just be a part of the normal
expectations for support/.
Related Topics
This section includes
information on subjects that
might be of interest for people
working on support functions,
but that are not directly
related to support. For instance,
many people on support teams
also perform enhancement
requests. These enhancement
requests are actually small
projects. However, they are
managed with much less rigor and
structure than regular projects.
This topic and others are
explained more fully in this
section.
