Application Support Life Cycle

Following phases of application life cycle:

     1. Service Strategy

     2. Service Design

     3. Service Transition

     4. Service Operation

     5. Service Improvement

Service Strategy

Organization makes a plan to manage costs and risks associated with starting any new service or changed service. Within this plan, organization performs the following:

· Set Up Expectations For Serving Customer

· Budget & Financial Performance Plan

· Opportunity Analysis

· Operational Process Requirements 

    Service Design

Based on requirements obtained in the Service Strategy stage, new services are required to be designed and developed. For example, make a service according to client agreed on expectation of service such response time of issue and change request. Following things are included in design phase:

· Statement of Work (SOW)

· Service Level Agreement (SLA)

· Operational Process Requirements

    Service Transition

During transition for new or changed service into operation phase, make a plan to set the operation capacity and structure of application support team. In this plan, define a set of work processes for team to teach how work will be organized and managed. For example, plan how many people will be part of the support process; give them idea about work process etc.

Following things are included in the plan:

· Team Operations Documents

· Application Knowledge Documents

· Operational Work Processes

    Service Operation

The application support team needs to perform day-to-day operational activities in order to provide a service as per statement of work agreed in a service level agreement. Service measure with the help of following reports:

· SLA Report

· Work Event Status Report

· Time Usage Report

· Resource Performance Report

    Service Improvement

Once service set up and it is on track, needs to improve process in order to improve processes efficiency and reduce cost. Based on status reports, check the gaps and improvement area and try to fill it. For example, make optimum use of resources resulting in improved efficiency and reduced cost.

Application support life cycle provides a roadmap for improving and implementing Application Support in terms of processes, outcomes

About Author:

Deepak Borole is a consultant in Systems Plus Pvt. Ltd. Within Systems Plus, he actively contributes to the areas of Technology and Information Security. He can be contacted at: deepak.borole@spluspl.com