Crisis Management
Helping the organization prepare for unexpected, this framework assessment provides an overview of current processes and data used during major events. Whilst not all incidences can be avoided, being able to manage them effectively to resolution whilst minimizing impact to the business cannot rely on luck, therefore having a solid framework within which these events can be managed will help all organizations prepare. Alongside incidences, the findings recommendations and frameworks will also assist management of key events such as major releases, market / industry events.
Method
Key areas covered
- Incident Taxonomy
- Severity Levels, impact taxonomy
- Communications and recording
- Call trees, attendees, scripts
- Contacts
- Escalation vs notification
- War games, simulations, training…
Outputs
- Current state assessment of preparedness
- Set of recommendations for improvement
- Practices and trainings for sustainability
- Runbooks and scripts to be used by the teams
- Reduced downtime and impact on major operational events
Method
- Key areas covered
- Service hotspots, pain points and incident review
- Release process and change quality
- Instrumentation / monitoring assessment
- Business objectives and outcomes assessment
- End of life / technical assessment
- Voice of the customer
- Business Continuity assessment
- Outputs
- Maturity assessment across each key dimension
- Set of recommendations, prioritized by impact on both robustness and ROI.
- Baseline metrics for sustainable future assessments
- Best practice recommendations to maintain and manage solution for the future.
- Proposed set of metrics for health-checks and operational affirmation – aligned to business requirements.
Service Reviews
Certain applications or platforms may require deeper dive analysis from time to time, due to major periods of instability, or to assess readiness for major change programs etc., therefore assessing across a number of dimensions the operational robustness of the solutions can help identify significant areas for improvement or provide a more systematic set of results to provide confidence in the robustness of the solution.
Resource Optimization
Human resources are one of the primary assets of any business and ensuring they are optimally used is paramount for any team or organisation. Our Resource Optimization services looks at ensuring the optimal configuration of resource skill, workload and location is achieved at the appropriate cost point and service level.
By understanding the key aspects and the dynamics of the service to be delivered we are able to propose alternative models for resource utilization in ensuring the desired business outcomes are met. This can include leveraging partners to deliver a service component, taking advantage of global cost arbitrage opportunities or looking differently at the way workloads are organized.
Method
Key areas covered
- Existing roles and responsibilities
- Current service levels, cost and resource utilization
- Skillset assessments and human resource satisfaction
- Existing use and purpose of partner organisations
- Location strategy review
Outputs
- Articulation of workloads that could be undertaken by partner organisations
- Resource measurements to drive productivity
- Recommendations for segregating workloads
- Skillset and maturity assessment
Method
- Key areas covered
- Business Objectives
- Process breakdown from start to finish
- Assessment of effectiveness and efficiency of each stage
- Opportunities for improvement – removal, automation etc
- New process flow from start to finish, including effectiveness and sustainability tests.
- Outputs
- Documented process from start to finish, before and after.
- Statement of outcomes of process for future iterations.
- Recommendations for automation / sourcing strategies for reduced manual intervention
- Baseline view for future assessment.
Process Optimisation
Processes tend to evolve over time, building on initial steps and iterating as new deployments or requirements add more stages to the overall process. Taking a step back and truly understanding the current business objectives and outcomes of each process allows the stages to be assessed ensuring they are still required, and with advances in technology also allows a review of most efficient method of execution at each stage. As a result, outdated or very manual processes can be re-engineered to be much more effective, reducing manual error and overhead and minimizing the probability of operational impacts at a reduced run cost.
Instrumentation
Most applications output plenty of data, in many cases too much. However, its still the fact that all too often its not used appropriately and key indicators of service degradation are not identified early enough to help avoid downtime. Identifying the right levels of data from the application, and linking this to the business outcomes will both help with incident response as well as avoidance through trend analysis. Not being able to see the ”wood for the trees” causes prolonged incident recovery and reduces the ability to proactively take action to avoid incidences. Additionally a framework to measure and report on Service Level Objectives can then be achieved.
Method
Key areas covered
- Application / system assessment
- Identification of key business outcomes
- Identification of key technical indicators of service (process running, error messages etc)
- Linkage of technical indicators to business outcomes.
Outputs
- Set of technical indicators for monitoring, trend analysis etc.
- Impact statement linking indicators to business outcomes.
- Set of technical indicators to assess for application health and to be used for measurement of Service Level Objectives.
- Recommendation for further technical output to enhance the instrumentation framework.
Method
- Key areas covered
- Strategic review of the services being provided
- An understanding of how the services currently being delivered
- Team operating structure and capabilities
- Service effectiveness
- Service Level objectives documented
- Outputs
- Recommendations on how to either rebuild, build or refine the existing operating model
- Maturity assessment across each dimension of people, processes and tools.
- Gap analysis of current state to desired target state
- Clear articulation of service definition, service measurements and organizational capabilities.
Service Operating Model
To deliver the business outcomes an organization desires from technology it’s important that teams are assembled and organised to deliver the business goals. The service operating model is the blueprint to enable this to happen in an effective and efficient way.
Within the design of the operating model key elements are covered including defining the services in scope, location of resources, skills and infrastructure required to deliver these services and how the service will be governed, monitored and improved.
Automation
As a result of Service Reviews, Process Optimization reviews, and other assessments, certain opportunities for automation will be identified. This service provides an overall framework within which the automation work can be achieved, but not only delivering the automations, but also a method to track effectiveness, ongoing suitability and the metadata around the process for reference. As a result, a sustainable framework around the automated solutions can be achieved, effectively providing the supervisory requirements for the automation workforce.
Method
Key areas covered
- Creation of Taxonomy of automation opportunities.
- Delivery of automation tasks.
- Comparison of manual vs automated solutions and their effectiveness.
- Build out of automation reference library.
- Identification of further automation opportunities.
Outputs
- Automation solutions, with appropriate instrumentation and effectiveness indicators
- Metadata and taxonomy of all automation opportunities, linked to library of automations.
- Ability to identify cycles saved as a result of automation.
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