Production support is the practices and disciplines of supporting the IT
systems/applications which are currently being used by the end users. A
production support person/team is responsible for receiving incidents and
requests from end-users, analyzing these and either responding to the end user
with a solution or escalating it to the other IT teams. These teams may include
developers, system engineers and database administrators.
The importance of production support In order to understand the importance of
production support, one needs to take a few factors into account.
Studies have found that the maintenance cost of software is more than 90% of the
total cost. We also know that software spends much
more time in production than development because it needs to verify the
properties The maintenance cost of the hardware.
From the factors listed above, one can see that the way in which production
support is managed, is extremely crucial.
Production Support Steps The major steps for Production Support
are as below. These Production Support steps are in context of the Batch
processing. = Recording Production Error =
Usually a batch job or group of related batch jobs runs to accomplish one or
more business functions. These batch jobs run unattended and normally
complete without any errors or issues. However, sometimes the batch job can
have a breakabend/abort. There could be several reasons why a job could abend.
When a job abends, it can send out an automated alert notification via e-mail,
page, text. Also, data center or operations team is also actively
monitoring the jobs. They also send alert notification using e-mail, page,
text or they can call the on call person responsible for the recovery of the
abended job. The on call person acknowledges the
e-mail, page, text or phone call for the abended job. The on call person also
records the abended job details in a production issue tracking system.
Sometimes, the abended job automatically records the job abend details along with
job standard list in a production issue tracking system. The abended job details
are available in the production job scheduler tool. The Production issue
tracking tool creates a request number and this request number is given to the
support team. This request number is used to track the progress of the
production support issue. The request is assigned to on call support team person.
= Notification of Production Error = For critical Production Errors, an
e-mail is sent to entire organization or impacted teams so that they are aware of
the issue. They are also provided with the estimated time for Production error
recovery. = Investigation or Analysis of
Production Error = The Production support team on call
person collects all the necessary information about the Production error.
This information is then recorded in the Production error tracking tool using the
correct support request number previously assigned. All the details
such as data, environment, process, program logic that failed is used in the
investigation. Production batch job, program used or any tool/utility used is
reviewed for any possible errors. = Resolution of Production Error =
If similar Production error occurred in the past then the issue resolution steps
are retrieved from the support knowledge base and error is resolved using those
steps. If it is a new Production error then new Production error resolution
steps are created and Production error is resolved. The new Production error
resolution steps are recorded in the knowledge base for the future usage. For
major Production errors, a phone conference call is initiated and all
required support persons/teams join the call and they all work together to
resolve the error. This is also called as an Incident Management. If a problem
occurs repeatedly then it is recorded and tracked using appropriate tools and
processes until it is resolved permanently. This is also called as
Problem Management. The issue is closed only after the customer or end user
agrees that the problem is resolved.. For major Production errors, a phone
conference call is initiated and all required support persons/teams join the
call and they all work together to resolve the error. This is also called
as an Incident Management. If a problem occurs repeatedly then it is recorded
and tracked using appropriate tools and processes until it is resolved
permanently. This is also called as Problem Management. The issue is closed
only after the customer or end user agrees that the problem is resolved..
= Production job/program code correction If the Production error occurred due to
programming errors then a request is created for the Development team to
correct programming errors. Problem is identified, defined and root cause
analysis is performed. The programming error is fixed using normal SDLC process
- analysisprogrammingtesting/release. The new version of the Production
job/program is deployed and verified/validated.
= Production Process correction = If the Production error occurred due to
job/schedule dependency issues or sequence issues then further analysis is
done to find the correct sequence/dependencies. The new
sequence/dependencies are verified and validated in test environment before
Production deployment. = Infrastructure Issue correction =
If the Production error occurred due to infrastructure issues then the specific
infrastructure team is notified. The infrastructure team then implements
permanent fix for the issue and monitors the infrastructure to avoid same error
again. Production Support Billing
If the Production error occurred due to unexpected consequences of
infrastructure changes then most often the infrastructure team is not able to
bill the time spent in remediation of the issue at the full rate. In some
cases hours are completely disqualified from being billed.
Production Support - Follow up and Reporting
The Production error tracking system is used to review all issues periodically
and reports are generated to monitor resolved issues, repeating issues,
pending issues. Reports are also generated for the IT/IS management for
improvement and management of Production jobs.
See also Information technology
ITIL Production environment
External links Software Maintenance Costs
Applying CMMI to a Production Support Production Support Process improvements
Applying Incident Management to Production Support