Wednesday, December 4, 2013
Telework, Telecommute, Shift
Are you still bound by the good old management style of, “I wanna see you at your desk 9-5?” Are you still “micro-managing your staff?” Even though giving up the old habit can be hard, sometimes you need to consider the market, the benefits to you and your company.
Currently there are many large pioneering companies that take advantage of the ideas of “Telework” or “Telecommute”. The major difference between the two terms rely on one engaging the full employee potential by complete remote work environment (home-office); and the next partial work from home and partial from office respectively. The term “work shift” also has come to be used.
This type of work set-up is usually referred to as: Green Style Management Environment (GSME). The benefits of this work environment far surpass all old style management systems. This style is considered by many large companies the way of the future for variety of reasons. GSME is a management strategy where employees are evaluated on performance, not presence. Employees focus on results and only results – increasing the organization’s performance while creating the right climate for people to manage all the demands in their lives . . . including work.
GSME has a proven track record in creating teamwork, and an environment through which the morale and engagement soar, which leads to less workers feeling overworked or stressed out. The employees start behaving “proactively” vs. “reactively”. The number of days they claim “sick” reduces by a huge percentage and because the work and home environment are combined, they become more productive. Also the chance of spreading colds and flu and other ailments decrease significantly.
GSME recognizes that life is an individual experience and that no two lives are identical — and leverages this to achieve better performance from each individual.
Successfully adopting a Green Style Management Environment will position your company to attract and retain talent that will show up energized, disciplined, flexible and focused—ready to deliver all results necessary to drive the business. The workforce is more efficient, productive and loyal to the organization while also feeling satisfied, fulfilled, and in control of their personal and professional lives.
This environment is all about productivity. But more importantly, your workforce will respond to the business as if it were their own. Innovate will no longer be a buzzword, it will be what you do. With GSME you can stop monitoring the hallways, trying to come up with a place to seat an employee and pay high cubicle costs and focus your energy on the business. The only thing you will be providing your employee is the computer equipment and the security access they need to perform their job from remote location.
Some Benefits of GSME for your organization include:
Increase productivity & efficiency
Talent retention & attraction
Optimization of space
Elimination of wasteful processes
Proactive process development
Eliminating non-value added activities
Promoting better communication and response times
Being effective and nimble
Using common sense
Treat your people like responsible, professional adults
Create low turnover of great/good performers
Create high turnover of under/poor performers
Increase productivity
Reduce last minute requests due to poor planning
Reduce wasteful activity and drive efficiency
Give you the competitive advantage - differentiate you from your competitors
Force you to get clear on measureable RESULTS
Once this is all said and done, these methods of work are not for everyone or in all situations. With over 33 years of Business Process Background, I can help you and your organization evaluate whether this is the type of environment for all or some of your employees, and if it will benefit you and to what degree and help implement the process seamlessly. The results will amaze you and the cost savings will prove to be rewarding. Adopt the Green Style of Management today!!! Let me show you how.
el@elmarch.com
416-528-3735
Sunday, May 26, 2013
Business Service Management
Business Service Management to me is the glue
that holds all other processes together.
To harmonize the functions of the IT back-office with the business
processes they serve.
It is no longer enough to know about the
capacity management and CPU performance and monitoring of the resources. The ability to perform effectively is linked
directly to the reliable delivery of IT services. A whole host of tools have emerged to relate
to how well systems, networks and applications are doing as per Operational/Service
Level Agreements.
The demand for IT services to be closely
aligned with business processes has produced a whole new segment of the systems
and applications management software sector called: Business Service Management
(BSM).
The term BSM encompasses a whole range of
technologies and functions. It involves many of the skills used in service
level management, but the way service level metrics are related to business
processes is quite different across vendors. This means BSM is perhaps is best
defined by the operational objectives it pursues to achieve, rather than the
technology it employs.
BSM has been described as: “Visual
representation of the dependencies between business processes, business
applications and the IT infrastructure (servers, storage, networks, middleware
and databases).” Aside from which it
reduces down time and shortens problem resolution and operational efficiency.
Most are familiar with the term: Service level
management (SLM). This is certainly a predecessor
to any concept of business service management (BSM). In Service level management, IT services are
measured and managed to meet prearranged service level agreements, and is in extensive
use today. Of course its popularity shows the recognition of the impact IT can
have on the business - both negative and positive.
While SLM implementation is the foundation of
many BSM services, the ability to capture a description of a business process
which is a major requirement of BSM products are different in terms of
complexity, cost, and ease of implementation.
The successful implementation of BSM needs a
detailed map of the enterprise's relevant business processes, and the IT
resources they depend on. The accuracy of this map will determine the efficacy
of the BSM success. In short, you can’t do BSM if you don’t understand business
service flow. BSM plays an important
role is relaying the significance of IT Operations to business executives.
Monday, May 6, 2013
IT Lab Infrastructure Implementation checklist Sample
IT Lab Infrastructure Implementation checklist Sample
Implementation
Phase
¨
Determine project goals
¨
Identify the lab guidelines and responsibilities
¨
Identify the Organizational Chart
¨
Identify the Individuals
¨
Identify R&R of lab team
¨
Provide training to lab team
¨
Pilot: Initiate QA Pilot
¨
Pilot: UAT (if required)
¨
Internal/External communication of offered lab service
¨
Creation of Service Catalog
¨
Creation of Lab Inventory System Hardware/Software
(DSL) Definitive Software Library
¨
Creation of Industry standard form/templates etc.
¨
Establish Entrance/Exit Procedure
¨
Establish Work Request Procedure
¨
Entering the Audit Phase
Further
suggestions:
¨
Establish seamless interaction between, Release,
Incident, and Problem Management with lab process/procedures.
IT Service Management Internal Alignment plan sample
Analyzing Current State :
¨
Creating a skills matrix
for the team to understand their strengths and placements.
¨
Evaluating existing process
and documentation
¨
Establish KPI’s for the organization
at Account Level
¨
Evaluate various home-grown
/ other available automation tools
¨
Evaluate existing policies
and procedures
¨
Information gathering for
Service Level Management
Service Level Management Phase:
¨
Create RACI charts for the
organization at account level
¨
Establish “Go Live” dates
for implementation.
¨
Communicate SLM
Implementation to all required organizational teams.
¨
Implement relationship
management role between various teams
¨
Implement process of
reporting
¨
Creating/enforcing team
KPI’s and regular reviews
¨
Create industry standard
templates, forms and documentation for various processes in line with
enterprise ITSM initiative.
¨
Implementation of Service
Quality team.
¨
Documenting the lessons
learned and improving knowledgebase
¨
Reviewing/implementation of
Operational Level Agreements
¨
Creation and implementation
of Service Catalogue for the team
¨
Reviewing/applying
changes/implementing (SLA ’s) Service Level
Agreements
¨
Creating and enforcing the
SM audit requirements
¨
Identifying the area of
opportunity and improvement
CMDB, ITIL & Version Control
CMDB, ITIL &
Version Control
This discipline of IT Service
Management is the management of all software configuration items within the
organization. It is responsible for the
management of software development, installation and support of an organization’s
software products.
Software is often not regarded
as a tangible asset because of its intangible nature, which results in it not
being effectively controlled. There can
be several versions of the same software within the organization, and there can
also be unlicensed and illegal copies of externally provided software.
The practice of effective
Software Control & Distribution involves the creation of a Definitive
Software Library (DSL), into which the master copies of all software is stored
and from here its control and release is managed. The DSL consists of a physical store and a
logical store. The physical store is
where the master copies of all software media are stored. This tends to be software that has been
provided from an external source. The
logical store is the index of all software and releases, versions, etc.
highlighting where the physical media can be located. The logical store may also be used for the
storage of software developed within the organization.
The terms version control and configuration management
are often used interchangeably, while some view them as separate
disciplines. In fact, version control
capabilities are a part of a well-defined configuration management process.
Overview
Let's start with some definitions to provide a baseline for the discussion. Here is a general definition for configuration management:
Let's start with some definitions to provide a baseline for the discussion. Here is a general definition for configuration management:
- Configuration management is a system, set of processes or
tools that documents all of the components comprising a larger
entity. Configuration management
enables those entities to be built and replicated reliably, using a list
of the associated components and an understanding of any
dependencies. As a discipline,
configuration management has been used successfully in a wide variety of
applications from software development to complex manufacturing
environments.
- Version control is a process that documents a baseline
for a component or module and also stores all revisions or changes to that
component in a database for later use.
Version control capabilities typically yield the ability to
reproduce the precise state of a component at any point in time.
So one could make the case that
configuration management provides an overall process for how pieces of a
complex system fit together. Version
control provides both the ability to show how all of the pieces in that complex
system have changed over time as well as the ability to restore
to a state at a specific moment. As
such, version control is an important part of a configuration management
process.
Configuration Management for
the Application Infrastructure
Most recently, configuration management and version control are being applied to managing the set of elements that comprise the application layer in enterprise IT. And the application of these disciplines is occurring for all of the right reasons. Consider the application layer in an enterprise IT data center. It usually is composed of application servers, Web servers, databases and middleware most often sourced from different software vendors. While that “best of breed” approach opens the door for flexibility, it also ushers in a great deal of complexity in how those various software elements are configured, updated or changed and deployed throughout the application lifecycle. Each software element in the stack has many different configuration files, each with literally hundreds of parameters to set, tune and control. There are many different elements comprising the application layer and many, many instances of these applications-multiples in production and others for development, quality assurance, support, disaster recovery, just to name a few. If you calculate the number of individual settings or configuration parameters across all elements in the application layer and all phases of the lifecycle, you will be looking at numbers in the tens of thousands. This could be reasonably managed with manual methods if the environments were configured once and then left alone in a "set it and forget it mode.” However, experience and survey shows that change occurs rapidly in these environments, with some companies using more than 15 people to make over 400 configuration changes monthly. Manual methods no longer apply.
Key Requirements for Application Configuration Management
Managing change in that environment is the kind of problem that is well suited to automation. Applying automated configuration management and version control to the IT application infrastructure environment must include:
- Discovery. Gather
individual configuration parameters or settings across all of the
infrastructure software elements and organize them in a database for
follow-on use.
- Change Modeling.
Once these settings are stored in the database, a configuration
management tool could then be used to model the interactions among the
various configuration parameters.
Very often, business owners and IT people experience the
frustrating situation where a change is introduced in one area and that
change causes an unforeseen disruption in another area. The subtle interdependencies among the
configuration settings usually cannot be detected by someone inspecting
the environment and can only be brought to the surface through an
automation solution.
- Change Policy Control and
Standardization. These standards are used to create
templates for individual elements of the application layer (for example,
the standard configuration of a given application server) or for the
entire application stack (a standard build for application server, Web
server, data base and middleware).
- Audit and Reporting.
The discipline of configuration management should also enable
automated change reporting. As
changes are made in configuration settings, these reports can be logged
with results tabulated and presented for IT audit purposes.
In short, we would need to take
the following steps when considering the automation of configuration management
and version control:
- Assemble all of the component level
information into a centralized repository;
- Provide a view into the dependencies
among the various configuration items;
- Impose policy control over how changes
are proposed, tested and implemented;
- Deliver detailed tracking and
reporting; and
- Allow changes to be reversed when
proposed changes have unexpected consequences.
Key Version Control Features
and use cases
The role of version control in this setting would be to provide a critical "safety net" for the change process included in the configuration management environment outlined above. While configuration management would explicitly regulate the change process, the entire process would be enriched with versioning features. Generally, this would imply that all changes are recorded in such a way that earlier versions of the configuration settings could be "reconstructed" and installed. This would have obvious value for situations where changes are made, deployed and then later found to have undesirable impact on performance or stability. But such features would also yield value for both IT compliance audits and disaster recovery situations. As auditors probe the integrity of systems related to revenue transactions, they may need to test the actual system environment that was in place around various sets of transactions. A robust version control capability embedded into the configuration management would conceivably allow the IT team to reinstate an exact copy of the application infrastructure at any desired time. Additionally, this capability would have clear benefits for reinstating infrastructure in a disaster recovery setting. Some critical aspects of the version control capability would include:
- "Automatic" vs.
"Explicit" Versioning: A
snapshot can be taken in fundamentally two different ways: 1)
automatically, every time a change is made; or, 2) explicitly after a
certain set of changes has been instituted and a change set has been
created. Both approaches are valid,
though the automatic approach has obvious benefits in that it records
every change without requiring intervention.
- Level of Versioning:
Versions can also be created for the individual settings or
parameters or for configuration files.
Once again, the former approach is superior because it records all
changes at a very fine-grained level.
With this approach, you can build up to a file-based version, but
if you only record changes at the file level, you will not be able to
drill down easily to find individual changes.
- Roll-back Capability: In order to be truly useful, the
configuration management solution must have the ability to isolate a
version (either by level or by date and time) and then reintroduce those
settings into the application infrastructure. This is alternately referred to as
"roll-back" or back-out in ITIL language.
Summary
Configuration management solutions can play a critical role in managing change for enterprise IT organizations focused on the application infrastructure level, once these solutions have been successfully implemented at the network and server layers. With sufficient features to address the essential requirements for discovery, change modeling, change policies and IT audits, a version control capability will expand the value of the configuration management solution through its ability to rebuild the business-critical infrastructure for performance, stability, disaster recovery and compliance reasons.
Configuration management solutions can play a critical role in managing change for enterprise IT organizations focused on the application infrastructure level, once these solutions have been successfully implemented at the network and server layers. With sufficient features to address the essential requirements for discovery, change modeling, change policies and IT audits, a version control capability will expand the value of the configuration management solution through its ability to rebuild the business-critical infrastructure for performance, stability, disaster recovery and compliance reasons.
The Benefits of Automated Version Control and
Configuration Management
Other than avoiding mass chaos,
there are so many additional benefits to implementing automated version control
and configuration management that you'll want to invest the additional time,
effort, and negotiate a relatively minor upfront cost to implement it. Version control and configuration management
provide the following benefits:
Improves
Communication
By automating
the communication process, a version control system enables the Webmaster to
establish a single, consistent channel for communicating and processing change
requests, ensuring that none fall through the cracks. Employing a consistent communication
mechanism also ensures that threats to quality and schedules are discovered,
communication bottlenecks are eliminated, and development and test time is saved. Most programs can be configured to
automatically notify users that their requests have been received, and the team
can be confident that all requests are reliably stored and easily accessible.
Protects
Shared Web Source Files under Rapid Development
Version control
systems use a check-in/check-out process to protect shared files from being
accidentally overwritten in a team environment.
To edit a project file, a developer checks it out of the archive and
puts a lock into effect. While the file
is locked, no other developer can modify the file until the first developer
checks it back in. Most systems also
enable you to allow multiple developers the ability to edit copies of the same
file in parallel. Later, the version
control system automatically merges the changes into a single version.
Enhances
Workflow
Another benefit
of implementing version control is that it encourages the establishment of good
workflow practices. A good version
control system automates workflow by enabling the Webmaster to quickly
prioritize and assign requests, run reports to determine the status of any
request, determine whether project files are still checked out, or view a
summary of the modifications made to project files.
Report
summaries become available that shows the classification of job priorities,
workload assignments, and job progress updates.
In addition, managerial reports that illustrate trends, number of
requests, project closure rates, requests by originator categories, and
department and resource allocation should be available.
Saves
Time
With an
integrated system, enhancements, new features, and content can be added much
more quickly and at less expense. The
resulting information, products, and services provided by the extranet team can
reach users, prospects, and customers faster.
This translates into the potential for increased revenues.
Reduces
the Number of Defects Introduced into the System
Many of the
most common defects that are introduced during the development process can be
eliminated with automated version control and configuration management. Defects caused by accidental overwriting,
lack of communication, and manual merging of changes can be prevented by a good
version control system.
Reduces
the Costs and Time to Find Defects That Are Introduced
Most version
control systems feature a severity rating system that enables team members to
specify the priority level of their change requests. A list of requests sorted by severity rating
can then be generated, so that the most important defects can be addressed
immediately, resulting in the rapid resolution of the most severe and
revenue-critical defects.
Reduces
Maintenance Costs
An important
part of an automated version control and configuration management product is
its ability to re-create an earlier revision, or build, of the system. The software maintains a cumulative history
of the changes made to each source file, including what has been changed, when,
and by whom. It then becomes easy to
restore an earlier version of a file, reducing maintenance costs.
Improves
Productivity of the Team
When
communication is streamlined and everyone has visibility into all aspects of a
project, true team collaboration is possible, and productivity skyrockets.
Reduces
the Costs of Content and Application Development by Eliminating
·
Unproductive meeting time and redundant e-mails
·
Rework and unnecessary changes
·
Time spent preparing manual reports
Improves
the Quality of Extranet Applications by
·
Ensuring that outstanding issues get resolved
·
Enabling early and ongoing participation by
non-technical staff
·
Encouraging software component reuse
Secondary Benefits of
Version Control and Configuration Management:
- Better corporate image
- Improved team morale. The team feels that their efforts are
being supported.
- Less overtime and weekends required on
the part of the staff.
- A more competitive stance in the
marketplace
- Increased client/customer satisfaction
- Improved communications among all
staff at all levels and between levels
TRAINING & SKILL PROFILE template
TRAINING
& SKILL PROFILE
PERSONAL
INFORMATION
|
Name: Employee
ID:
Transit: Hire Date:
|
CURRENT
JOB INFORMATION
|
Position/Title:
Reports to:
Group/Unit:
Position Level:
Date Assumed Current Position:
|
Previous Internal Positions
Previous External Positions
|
EDUCATIONAL
BACKGROUND
|
Degrees/Diplomas/Certification
|
Course/Training Programs Taken
|
Skills Learned on the job
·
|
Languages Spoken:
Fluency Level:
|
Hobbies & Interests:
|
RECOMMENDED
/ REQUIRED SKILLS FOR THE CURRENT POSITION
|
|||
1
= Expert 2 = Intermediate 3 = Working
Knowledge 4 = Basic Knowledge
5
= Not skilled 6
= Not applicable to current position/assignment
|
|||
Skill Category
|
Description/Classification
|
Level of Expertise
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
TECHNICAL KNOWLEDGE
|
|
|
|
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
|
|
BUSINESS
KNOWLEDGE
|
|
|
|
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
|
|
BUSINESS
APPLICATIONS
|
|
|
|
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
|
|
Project Management
|
|
|
|
Fundamentals
|
|
||
Project
Coordinator
|
|
||
Project
Manager
|
|
||
Professional
Project Manager
|
|
||
|
|
|
|
ITIL
|
|
|
|
ITIL
Foundation
|
|
||
Practitioner
Level Certification
|
|
||
Establishing & Managing IT
Services According To ITIL Best Practices
|
|
||
Establishing A Service Desk
According To ITIL Best Practices
|
|
||
How To Implement ITIL: Integrating
People & Tools With Processes
|
|
||
ITIL Practitioner: Service Desk,
Incident & Problem Management
|
|
||
ITIL Practitioner: Configuration,
Change & Release Management
|
|
||
Measuring, Reporting &
Improving The IT Infrastructure According To ITIL Best Practices
|
|
||
|
|
||
Management
Level Certification
|
|
||
IT Executive Management
Certification
|
|
||
ITIL Service Manager
|
|
||
|
|
|
TRAINING
GAPS
|
·
·
·
·
·
·
·
|
CAREER
PLAN
|
·
Primary
Plan:
·
Alternative
Plan:
Personal
|
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)