Problem: Projects that I tend to work on are complete by Scrum teams filled with specialist and specialist contractors who move on after project completion. Support is generally handled by dedicate people/teams offshore.
Hypothesis: Having high quality support people working alongside you throughout the project is not very common due to costs. I believe there are key points to cover to ensure that the operational support is effective. Too many companies merely focus on checklists and the ops team don't get a fundamental understanding of the system.
Resolution:
1. People/Support: Understand the domain - Hard
2. People/Support: Understand the architecture - Easy
3. People/Support: Understand who is responsible for level 1- level 3 support and what that entails. Easy if done correctly.
4. People/attitude: Hire patient collaborative, eager people in support (most key point) that want to learn and take ownership. Easy if done correctly.
5. Knowledge base - have a wiki or equivalent. The same issues always present, so document and have an answer that can help your uses. I also like to record mp4's for different levels of support. Record the sessions as it is too easy for level 3 people to say they never got a handover or covered something. This allows people to look back, easily train additional users. Easy if done correctly.
6. Ensure you have automated tests, they are a great source of how your system works. And if a fix has to be released, it also easy to validate that the original logic still works. Hard but it returns great benefits if used.
Hypothesis: Having high quality support people working alongside you throughout the project is not very common due to costs. I believe there are key points to cover to ensure that the operational support is effective. Too many companies merely focus on checklists and the ops team don't get a fundamental understanding of the system.
Resolution:
1. People/Support: Understand the domain - Hard
2. People/Support: Understand the architecture - Easy
3. People/Support: Understand who is responsible for level 1- level 3 support and what that entails. Easy if done correctly.
4. People/attitude: Hire patient collaborative, eager people in support (most key point) that want to learn and take ownership. Easy if done correctly.
5. Knowledge base - have a wiki or equivalent. The same issues always present, so document and have an answer that can help your uses. I also like to record mp4's for different levels of support. Record the sessions as it is too easy for level 3 people to say they never got a handover or covered something. This allows people to look back, easily train additional users. Easy if done correctly.
6. Ensure you have automated tests, they are a great source of how your system works. And if a fix has to be released, it also easy to validate that the original logic still works. Hard but it returns great benefits if used.
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