Information Technology Operations Guide

Description

• An operations guide that provides technical information to IT system administrators and staff regarding installation, set-up, operations and troubleshooting procedures.

Business Value

• The IT System Operations Guide ensures that all IT staff have consistent, well-documented and controlled procedures for all required system activities.  A well-controlled operations guide also provides system administrators with an effective avenue for implementing changes to operational procedures as the IT system evolves.
• If the system or application is deployed without a well-written, comprehensive and formally-documented operations guide, inconsistencies in the management of the IT system will arise and key technical procedures may be lost over time.

Approach

The IT System Operations Guide outlines the procedures that explain how system operations are performed.  The procedures developed should be clear, easy-to-follow and readily accessible.  They should cover not only normal operation of the system, but the handling of exceptional or crisis situations as well.

1. Determine the requirements of the IT System Operations Manual , including:
1. Design, amount of detail, and format standards
2. Type and level of user (i.e. audience of the IT System Operations Guide)
3. Technique for recording and controlling user manuals (i.e. on-line hyper-text, manual paper, workflow, computerise help “wizards”, etc.)
4. Determine requirements for controlling distribution and modification of documentation.
2. Draft individual procedures:
1. System installation and set-up
2. System operations
3. Hardware and software system standards
4. Backup and disaster recovery
5. Security.
3. Compile, a draft IT System Operations Guide (on paper or electronic format).
4. Review guide with the appropriate decision-makers and revise, as appropriate.
5. Test procedures with selected IT staff using the draft documentation.
6. Finalise guide.

Guidelines

Problems/Solutions

• Reference documentation provided by the vendor is usually written in generic terms and is limited to the standard system functions and operations.  Consider developing additional reference material to cover client-specific manual procedures, workflow and operations.  However, it is important to balance the value added from custom-developed reference documentation with the ongoing cost of maintaining it.