Steady State Support Team

1
Steady State Support Team
DIG FOR VICTORY

• A Proposed Approach for
• Organising the Portal Support, Post Go-Live

How to structure your support organisation along
the lines of the classic three-tier model.
Typical skills sets you may require and in what
combinations
2
Org Design Principles

• The Three-Tier Model
• It is assumed there is sufficient scale in your
  organisation (i.e. over 5,000 people) to make
  this worth doing
• The separation of duties between the three tiers
  allows each part of the team to focus on their
  specific activity
• Same resources involved in Portal tiers 2 3
• In other words, problem management is a role but
  may not be a separate set of FTEs (unless of
  course your portal is huge, where this may be
  justified)
• This is to ensure efficiency in handover
• Only Portal infrastructure is managed in the team
• It is assumed that the LAN WAN infrastructure
  on which the portal runs (for example) is
  supported elsewhere
• It is (further) assumed that support for the
  browser and any associated applications on the
  end-users desk is also managed elsewhere (e.g.
  desktop support team)

3
The IT Support Organisation
Company Helpdesk Single point of contact for all
technical faults, wherever they occur and
whatever the cause
LVL 1 SUPPORT
Portal Problem Management Where the nature or
frequency of faults suggests problems with the
portal, these are passed to the Portal support
team
Desktop Problem Management For isolated, PC
related faults
Network Problem Management For netwrok related
faults
Other Lvl 2 Teams
LVL 2 SUPPORT
Firewall Support Team
PC Support Team
WAN Support Team
Email Support Team
LVL 3 SUPPORT
LAN Support Team
Master SLA
4
Level 1 Resources

• Helpdesk staffing
• Junior, non-skilled (in IT) people to answer
  phones log faults
• Use incentives to minimise turnover of staff, so
  that (with greater experience) there is greater
  resolution at first call and better
  categorisation of faults prior to passing to
  Levels 2/3
• Helpdesk systems
• All three tiers of support should have access to
  the same system, which is used for progressing
  faults to their resolution
• Helpdesk scripting
• Portal helpdesk scripts should be designed by
  senior technical experts, based in a
  decision-tree diagnosis of any given fault
• This should ensure that operatives ask the right
  questions of the user reporting a fault with the
  portal
• Faults will then get properly categorised and
  passed to the right level 2/3 teams for
  resolution
• Sourcing considerations
• Helpdesk is a good candidate for out-sourcing to
  a third party, but I would recommend that the
  most common level 2/3 problem management tasks
  (e.g. desktop) are included in the tender package
  so that you benefit fully from economies of
  scale

5
Level 2/3 Resources

• Problem Management
• Good generalist skills in web servers, app
  servers, firewalls, DNS, switchers routers,
  load balancing, database, etc.
• Likely to be able to sniff out the underlying
  disease behind any given set of symptoms
• Good at forming and testing hypotheses for what
  is wrong and giving honest status updates in the
  face of intense pressure
• Level 3 Application Support Maintenance
• Holds and understands the documentation for all
  applications resident on the portal
• Has contacts with any external application
  vendors or integrators and works to apply
  upgrades or small changes to those apps
• Level 3 Portal and CMS Support Maintenance
• Trained to a formal standard in the underlying
  technologies (e.g. Plumtree, Interwoven,
  Broadvision, etc.)
• Draws on the Professional Service Organisation in
  the main vendors for advice and assistance in
  problem resolution etc.
• Works to apply any service packs, server security
  patches and any upgrades or small changes to the
  main portal technologies

6
Conclusions

• The three-tier model is best for a large
  organisation
• As it allows you to de-skill low-value adding
  activities whilst multi-skilling in complex level
  2/3 areas
• Keep tightly integrated elements together
• The same team should look after levels 2 3
  support and maintenance for the Portal, CMS,
  Directory Services, etc.
• And should also manage the underlying hardware
  configuration and maintenance
• Separate out Application support maintenance
• And maintain close links with the vendors or
  integrators who built them
• Maintain a capability to undertake small changes
  in-house alongside regular support activities