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Production Control = Infrastructure QA

Sep 7, 2001

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What Is Production Control?
Production Control Versus Applications Development
Why Bring Back Production Control?
Harris Kern's Enterprise Computing Institute

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Why Bring Back Production Control?

We've been asked this question hundreds of times from every part of this country. The answer is that IT needs to consider ensuring customer satisfaction and preserving RAS as a priority that will affect all areas of IT.

When IT began to ignore the production control organization, it subsequently disregarded and discarded processes and people issues. From dozens of infrastructure development workshops with Fortune 500 and emerging e-commerce companies, we know that organization and process focus are lacking throughout all IT organizations, and a production control function can help.

Infrastructure Issues Addressed by Production Control

Table 1 lists the top IT infrastructure-related issues, which category or categories (people, process, organization, etc.) are affected, and issues that conceivably could be resolved with a production control function. This table is based on actual data from our infrastructure development workshops.

Table 1 Top IT Infrastructure Development and Support Issues

Issue(s)	Category(ies) Affected	Resolved with Production Control Function	Potentially Resolved with Production Control Function
Lack of a process to gauge customer satisfaction	Process
Lack of a security policy and staff to implement security	Process, IT management, organization
Lack of defined metrics for measuring the effectiveness of IT	Process		X
Lack of standards and adherence to standards throughout the infrastructure or enterprise	IT management, process, organization
Three levels of technical support (system administration) not defined	Organization	X
Lack of an effective architecture/planning function involving the design of infrastructure	Process, organization
Difficult for staff to learn new technologies - too preoccupied with daily fire-fighting	Organization	X
Multiple support groups, roles and responsibilities unclear for customers (desktop hardware group, desktop software group, and desktop project group)	Organization, communication
IT shops organized based on technology (mainframe, AS400, NT, UNIX, Novell, etc.)	Organization		X
Reinventing the wheel - wasted costs	Organization
Lack of RAS in production environment	Organization, process, people	X
Increased costs for maintenance and upgrades to keep software in synch with changing business and technology	IT management
Lack of coordinated responses to problems; inappropriate escalation or inability to respond	Communication, process, organization		X
Lack of service levels between operational support and applications development, and between IT and its customers	Process, organization		X
Difficulty Recruiting and retaining technical resources	Organization, people		X
Not enough staff to cover all support requirements	Organization, people		X
Separate infrastructure support groups, causing power struggles between infrastructure development and production support	Organization		X
Lack of balance between standards and flexibility	Process
Lack of communication about decision-making at the director level	Communication
Promising customers more than infrastructure support (IS) can deliver	People, communication, process, IT management
Inefficient enterprise-wide change control notification	Communication, organization, process		X
Technical staff input not used in key decision-making throughout IT	IT management
Help Desk cannot support all technologies they are responsible for	Organization, people
Lack of centralized, empowered project management methodology and process	Organization, process
Help desk provides inadequate and/or incorrect information or problem tickets	Organization, process, IT management
Lack of coordination between end users and support groups	Process, communication	X
Unclear decision-making process, inputs, parameters	Process, communication
LAN support split between multiple organizations	Organization
Database administration not centralized	Organization
Inadequate management of customer expectations by IS management and technical leads	Communication		X
Philosophy of saying "yes" to customers regardless of their demands; customer perception is the inverse	Organization, communication
Over-reliance on consultants	Organization, people
Irrational organization structure - responsibility without accountability	Organization		X
Lack of "all-IT" meetings on a regular basis	Communication, IT management
Centralized IS group perceived to be in a glass house or ivory tower environment	Process, communication
Lack of respect for IS from customer base	Organization, communication, process
Meetings - inefficient, too many, difficult to coordinate, often changed, lack of respect for attendance, punctuality, preparation	IT management, communication
Unclear centralized ownership along with scattered responsibilities of technology and process	Organization, process	X
Customers driving technology decisions more than they should	Organization, process, communication
IS needs to market/sell services corporately	Organization, process, communication		X
Business liaison model eliminated from customer perspective	Organization
International technical resources don't report into centralized IT	Organization
IS not seen as a strategic business partner	Organization, communication
Lack of (or unenforced) enterprise-wide system management and monitoring tools	Organization, IT management, people, process		X
Customers circumventing call process	Process, communication
No internal QA process for IS	Process, organization	X
More technologies deployed than can be supported efficiently	Process, people, organization	X
Ineffective problem management or lack thereof	Process, organization
Lack of clear roles and responsibilities throughout enterprise	Process, IT management, organization		X
Poor communication within organization on all levels/barriers, walls between groups	Process, IT management, communication, organization		X
No formal level two support structure	Organization, process	X
Lack of testing or pre-production environment	Process, technology, IT management, organization
Lack of technical resources – inability to pool resources	Organization, people	X
Lack of an effective enterprise-wide change management and control process	People, process, organization	X
Poor communication of standards	Communication
Poor alignment of technical resources with business drivers and requirements	Communication, IT management, process
IT focused on high-visibility projects versus planning	IT management
Lack of mission and goals of IT as a whole, failure to communicate goals and mission	IT management, communication
Lack of management resources	IT management
Tactical, not strategic approach	Organization	X
Lack of a process to market and sell IT services	Process	X
High complexity in the organization structure	Organization
Multiple help desks - no integration of the corporate with the local help desks	Organization, process, IT management
Split network support functions	Organization, process
Ineffective project management and resources	People, process, communication, organization
Lack of a tape librarian function	People, process, organization
Lack of benchmarking	People, process
Lack of senior resources to mentor lower-level technical support	People, organization	X
Lack of a production control function	Process, organization, people, IT management	X
Duplicate system administration and management functions	Organization		X
Lack of storage management process	Process		X
Lack of definition of what is mission-critical and levels of importance to the business	Process
Lack of hardware management	Process, IT management, organization
Lack of career development path for IT staff	Process, IT management, people, organization
Lack of strategic IT marketing and sales of IT services	Process, communication
Lack of software version control and code migration	Process
Lack of asset management	Process
Lack of capacity planning	Process
Ineffective global coordination	Process, communication, IT management, organization
Lack of configuration management in both hardware and software configurations	Process
Lack of production acceptance process and client/server application	Process	X
Lack of internal and external Service Level Agreements	Process, organization
Lack of a disaster recovery process	Organization, people, process, IT management

This list is appalling, but is it shocking? No, primarily because IT organizations try to do production control on a part-time basis—it's never a priority. Deploying new systems and technology is always a priority. But ensuring high customer satisfaction must also be a top priority.

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