Preface

Setting up and managing IT maintenance probably would not rank high on your list of exciting and challenging information technology (IT) projects. You may think that “the other guy” will handle maintenance. But what if you are the other guy?

I was the other guy several times while working for a major utility. I have run new development projects, set up ongoing maintenance for those projects, and managed those maintenance teams. My passion is for project management—delivering something new. So when I began to set up ongoing project maintenance for the third time, I decided to apply my passion for project management to the task of setting up and managing maintenance of a suite of applications. I decided to take a different approach to the task than I had taken in the previous two systems maintenance teams I’d set up. For those systems, I was content with setting up the team, ensuring the team developed the needed skills, and instructing the team to meet the customer’s needs. But I now saw the possibility of a substantial benefit to be gained from treating the maintenance assignment just like a project—but with tighter controls and processes.

As a good project manager, I pulled out an old friend, Project Management Institute’s (PMI’s®) PMBOK® Guide. The PMBOK® Guide does not directly apply to IT maintenance, but its tools and techniques can be expanded, modified, and used to improve how IT maintenance is managed. The results of doing so are in this book.

In my experience, most IT project managers do not run just projects. They also set up and run system maintenance at times in their careers.

Theory or Reality?

Theory is great in college, where it expands our minds and works under ideal circumstances. I don’t want to discount theory or the language used in lectures and scholarly circles. However, you will not find theoretical, esoteric discussions in this book. That is just not my style.

The material contained here is based on my successfully setting up and managing IT maintenance in the real world. The approaches presented have been tested and have proved to be valuable in practical experience.

The language used in this book is the language that business-people use, not the language IT people use. Instead of using terms like corrective changes and perfective changes, for example, this book uses terms like bug/defect fixes and enhancements. In my experience, these are the terms that non-IT businesspeople use. The systems we support exist only because of their business value, so speaking the language of business is most appropriate.

The chapters in this book provide you with practical methods to improve the business of IT maintenance. My overall motivation in this book—the same motivation I had in the lead roles I played—is to improve processes, make them simple, manage them for a period of time, and then turn over a stable situation to others to manage so that I can move on to the next challenge.

Why Should You Read On?

IT professionals on every level—whether from large or small companies, in-house organizations, or outsourced service providers—will benefit from reading this book.

Chief information officers (CIOs) will want to read this book so that they can:

•   Drive standardized processes for the entire IT maintenance organization.

•   Apply proven techniques to lower maintenance costs.

•   Apply proven techniques to improve the delivery of services, thus improving customer satisfaction.

•   Implement continuous improvements.

•   Improve current maintenance operations in order to identify and reap the benefits before outsourcing any functions. Doing this provides greater insight into the outsourced service provider’s real value.

IT maintenance managers will want to read this book so that they can:

•   Reference a great checklist of activities to address.

•   Find cost savings by reducing staff.

•   Improve reporting status and metrics.

•   Improve customer satisfaction.

•   Perform work consistently.

•   Decrease the stress level of staff by stabilizing expectations.

•   Streamline their team operations.

•   Decrease their ongoing workload.

IT project managers will want to read this book so that they can:

•   Decrease time to transition new development projects into maintenance.

•   Deliver a product and process that can be easier to maintain.

•   Understand which documents maintenance teams need.

•   Start beneficial processes that can continue into maintenance.

•   Continuously strive to keep their careers relevant in the ever-changing IT marketplace.

IT team members will want to read this book so that they can:

•   Understand how to simplify their job.

•   Consistently perform their job effectively.

•   Develop the skills needed to be promoted.

This book can help you plan and run IT maintenance with better control, clearer measurements for the customer, and less hassle on you and your team. In other words, you can run maintenance as a project.

Most of the maintenance books to date focus on software engineering best practices, not on how to achieve the corporate goals of decreasing cost and increasing business value and customer satisfaction. This book focuses on the business of system maintenance.

This book is written for the managers who set up and run IT system maintenance teams. Items included can be implemented by these individual managers or be implemented in a large, IT-wide approach by a project management office (PMO) or a CIO.

The examples and information are directed to managers and project managers. But for CIOs, this is vital information to apply to increase the value received from each $1 paid for maintaining systems. CIOs have the authority to mandate the principles found in these pages to implement a systematic organizational change.

The items contained may provide more details than CIOs might want to hear, but they will be interested in the results.

Can I Apply This Book Immediately?

This book provides a complete framework for improving IT maintenance. However, each component can stand on its own so that you can immediately apply a component to reap immediate benefits. Implementing a broadly sweeping change is costly, time-consuming, and fraught with the risk of failure. There are also great benefits to such a change. But proceeding slowly and implementing one or two changes at a time can create immediate success and pave the way to implementing additional improvements.

Do I Have to Be a Techie Programmer or Software Engineer to Benefit?

Knowing firsthand the tasks that your team performs is always beneficial. Understanding and applying the software engineering discipline is an indispensable skill. But you don’t need any special technical skills to use this book.

This book focuses on the business of IT maintenance, from initiating the setup to managing and controlling the maintenance process. After reading this book, any project manager will have the skills and understand the tactics that are necessary to establish and manage a maintenance team. The tools and techniques presented here differ from those of project management, but the management aspects, leadership, and applied process-improvement mindset is the same. Even if you don’t have experience in software engineering, you can still be successful, although you will most likely have to rely on the assistance of knowledgeable senior analysts on your team.