Weekly Work

Week 1: IT Operations Management Overview (NOMINATED AS BEST WEEK)

Homework Questions
Question 1: Prepare to give an overview of your case to the class. This should include things like,
what the organisation does, and how it is structured. Consider what information you have that you
think is relevant and what information you think you are missing.

My case study is on the Greater Alpine Normal Grammar School which is a high school in Auckland
Central located on Symonds Street. The school was opened in 1985 by John Bobsmith, the school
does not receive government funding, it is a privately funded school (funding comes from the
enrolment fees). What this organisation does is provide students who are eligible for secondary
school study with a very high standard of education. More specifically we will be looking at their IT
department and how they are essential to the everyday running of the school.

Organisational Structure:

Principal

Deputy Deputy
Principal Principal

Dean Dean Dean

Teacher Teacher Teacher Teacher

Group IT
Manager

Support Support Support Database

Technician Technician Technician Admin
As you can see this is a hierarchical model of my organisations staffing structure. In this school;
teachers will report to any one above them such as the deans, deputies or principals. As you go up
the model they will report to whoever is above them. The principal who is the highest authority
doesn’t exactly have anyone to report to although he must make sure that he satisfies requests from
the board of trustees which are usually made up of parents as well as the owner of the school John
Bobsmith.

As for the IT department (this is support not IT teachers) who look after the schools IT infrastructure;
you will find that support technicians and DB administrator must report to the group IT manager.
Usually they work unsupervised but the Group IT manager assigns them with work and handle tasks
which require authority. The group IT manager also makes the final decisions when it comes to
small and large scale upgrading. As for the technicians their work is to support the staff – teachers,
principal, deans deputies everyone sometimes even students will need help from the technicians.
They are not part of the teachers chart; they remain separate because they work best independently
rather than getting caught up in the teaching staff politics. They also carry out the upgrades as well
as report any issues to the Group IT manager.

There is an Administration department which have their own independent staffing structure. This
department contains the Student Administrators, Receptionists and Accountants. Some staff in this
department can take on multiple roles and work unsupervised (which is the reason why I did not
draw a chart); they will report to the principal and deputies directly.

As for the other departments such as the school canteen, they operate similarly to the IT
department as they can be considered as having an independent staffing structure. I haven’t drawn
the other charts because these departments of the school will not provide much information to
support the portfolio.

Information I think I’m missing:

• I don’t know exactly how many support technicians work for the school.
• I don’t know the staffing structure of the other departments (although I don’t think this is
entirely relevant).
• I don’t know if the group IT manager works as a Technician as well as management as in
some companies this can be the case.
• I don’t know much about the administration staff department and what their ICT structure is
like; this may not matter too much now but I will have to develop more assumptions later.

Question 2: Search for your case in the AUT e-library. You may also find other cases that are similar
to yours and you can use them as additional material.

Mumtaz, S (2000) 'Factors affecting teachers' use of information and communications technology: a
review of the literature' , Techology, Pedagogy and Education, 9(3), 319 - 342. Retrieved
June, 6, 2008 from Google Scholar:
http://www.informaworld.com.ezproxy.aut.ac.nz/index/751267077.pdf
Article 1: Factors affecting teachers' use of information and communications technology:
Factors that Prevent Teachers from Using Technology

This section of the article puts together information about factors which prevent teachers from using
technology; according to one of the author’s sources this was caused by a lack of teaching
experience with ICT, lack of on-site support, lack of help supervising children when using computers,
lack of ICT specialist teachers to teach students computer skills, lack of computers’, lack of time
required to successfully integrate technology into the curriculum and a lack of financial support.
Another one of the author’s sources summarised three styles of ICT use amongst teachers;
Avoidance, integration and technical specialisation. According to their study (which took 8 years and
was completed in 1995) most teachers used the avoidance style of computing. I don’t believe this is
the case anymore as people are much more technically savvy today than they were in 1995. The
avoidance style involves the teachers distancing themselves from computers and reduced the
amount of time they spent with computing activities. The integration and technical specialisation
style involves teacher embracing the use of computers. They integrate the technology into their
teaching methods and curriculum.

Factors that Encourage Teachers to Use Technology

This section discusses factors which encourage teachers to use technology. The author’s sources
state that teachers who are already regular users of ICT have confidence in using it and perceive it to
be useful for their personal work as well their teaching. The reasons behind this were that the use of
ICT made lessons more interesting, easier, and more motivating for the pupil’s as well as the
teachers. Other factors included improving presentation of materials, making the teachers’
administration and communication more efficient (I remember in primary school as a student; if the
teacher needed to communicate with another teacher they would write a small note; then give it to
a student to deliver to another teacher(just imagine how much more efficient email is?) The author
also describes that teachers and students’ access to information is significantly greater with the
implementation of ICT. I use the internet for almost 100% of my research because it is very
convenient and I can find information I need whereas with a library you are limited to the availability
of books and you can only withdraw a limited amount at a time as well as for a limited period of
time.

Article 2: Evidence that use of the ITIL framework is effective:

Introduction

This section of the article briefly describes that the Information Technology Infrastructure Library
(otherwise known as ITIL) is a framework which outlines Best Practice in ICT service management. It
is a comprehensive, non-proprietary, publicly available guideline for ICT Service Management. The
office of Government Commerce (otherwise known as OGC who developed the framework) claims
that the use of the ITIL framework improves customer satisfaction and service quality. However this
was not proven but rather inferred. Service management revolves around forming and assigning
service packages and service delivery systems that satisfy customer needs and the effective and
efficient management of the daily activities of the service organisation. The intention of this article
was to monitor the deployment of activities in the ITIL framework for an organisation and then see if
any movement occurs in the levels of customer satisfaction.
Data

ITIL activities increased over time:

This graph is taken directly from the article, it shows the percentage of certain activities and how
much they had increased over time.

Perceptions about service quality improved over time:

The graph data was taken from three surveys completed over a period of time the ITIL activities
were added. Customers were asked how satisfied they are based on certain factors such as
reliability, empathy, assurance, responsiveness and tangible. As you can see by the graph survey 2
 shows a definite improvement over survey one and some factors even show some improvement
between survey 3 and survey 2. Please note that the length of the bars express dissatisfaction.

Conclusions

The author’s aim of this project was to establish if a direct relationship exists between customer
satisfaction and the use of ITIL. The author concludes that customer satisfaction and operational
performance improves as the activities in the ITIL framework increase. Even though this particular
study was limited to a single research site, claims made by the executive management of OCG that
the use of ITIL will improve customer satisfaction seem justified.

Reflection:
What? Session 1 was a general overview on the paper and an introduction to the ITIL framework.
The ITIL framework is basically a set of standards for IT service management developed by the Office
of Government Commerce in the UK. Session 2 gave more in depth information about the ITIL
framework. The ITIL framework is made to cover Incident, problem, change, release and
configuration management. I also had to choose a case study for the paper so I chose a High School
which relies heavily on an IT infrastructure. I also read 2 articles; the first article is called Factors
affecting teachers' use of information and communications technology and the second article is
Evidence that use of the ITIL framework is effective.

Why? The reason I chose to do a high school was because I use to work for a company which owned
some schools ranging from preschool to tertiary education. This was some time during last year. I
therefore have an inside perspective on what goes on in the IT support world for schools. So far in
the weekly lectures we have looked at the ITIL framework which is a set of standards for IT service
management. This applies to my case study as schools rely heavily on their IT infrastructure
therefore they need technicians to support it.

The reason I chose the ‘Factors affecting teachers' use of information and communications
technology’ article is so that we can look at why schools should be using ICT in the first place
(although this was not the main topic of the article certain sections applied very well to my own
case). ICT was a new concept and I remember when I started going to school; the registers were
ticked off by hand and transparencies were used with light bulb projectors. As I finished school;
teachers started using computers to do the register and they also started using data projectors. As a
student I can’t really reflect the use of IT as it was not as commonly used as it is today, however as a
support technician who has worked for schools I have a practical understanding from the “inside”.
This is why I chose this article so that we can see why ICT is being used in schools today and how and
why the IT infrastructures evolved into what they are today for my case study.

The reason I chose the ‘Evidence that use of the ITIL framework is effective:‘ article is because the
second session of this week introduced us to IT Operations Management and related frameworks. I
would find it difficult to incorporate a framework to manage IT Operations without understanding
why we should use a framework in the first place. In other words what is the point of spending time
to understand a framework and to spend even more time implementing it when we could just use
that time to do more important work? According to this article, research shows that when using a
framework such as the ITIL framework customers end up being more satisfied rather than when not
using a framework. This relates to my case study however we would not have customers as such;
instead it would be the teachers and the students (supported by the IT technicians) who will benefit
from the implementation of a framework. I must also admit that my school which is the case study
does not fully implement a certain framework such as the ITIL framework. However we implement
certain aspects of different frameworks as needed as this seems to suit the IT operation
management of the school better.

Reflection: I have learnt that frameworks for IT operation service management existed. I did not
know there were “standard” frameworks which could be implemented in an organisations IT
operation management. Furthermore as I read my articles I found that implementing an ITIL
framework into an organization which has no framework is likely to improve customer satisfaction.
To relate this to my case study you will have to consider the pupils and teachers and other school
staff as ‘customers’. I would like to start up a company one day; initially I would have never thought
of an IT operations service management framework however if my company grows big enough I will
definitely look into it.

Assumptions:
• This is a privately funded school which does not get any government funding.
• The Group IT manager only focuses on management and does not do any tech work himself.
• The IT organization has its own staffing structure.

Reference List:

Mumtaz, S (2000) 'Factors affecting teachers' use of information and communications technology: a
review of the literature' , Techology, Pedagogy and Education, 9(3), 319 - 342. Retrieved
June, 6, 2008 from Google Scholar:
http://www.informaworld.com.ezproxy.aut.ac.nz/index/751267077.pdf

Potgieter, B. C., Botha, J. H., & Lew, C. (2005, 10-13 July). Evidence that use of the ITIL framework is
effective. Paper presented at the 18th Annual Conference of the National Advisory
Committee on Computing Qualifications, Tauranga, NZ. Retrieved June, 6, 2008 from Google
Scholar:
http://www.naccq.ac.nz/conference05/proceedings_04/potg_itil.pdf
Week 2: Incident Management
Homework Questions
Question 1: Consider the aspect of how IT is managed in the organisation:

In my organisation IT is managed by the support desk. The support desk is managed by a group IT
manager. A ticketing system called ticket pro is used to keep track of incidents and problems.

Question 2: What kind of user groups exist (Outline what kind of services these groups expect to
receive)?

My organisation contains the following user groups:

Teaching Staff: require file storage, ms exchange and access to staff intranet

Students: require file storage and access to student intranet

Administration: require file storage, ms exchange, access to staff intranet and access to student and
staff database

Question 3: Draw a diagram of the organisation's IT infrastructure. (This can be a rough sketch of the
IT infrastructure relating to the key processes. Like what kind of servers and databases etc you think
that might have.)

This is obviously not the whole school however this is essentially what it looks like.

Article 1: ITIL Incident Management

This article is a description of ITIL software which provides the ability to control Incident
Management and conform to ITIL specifications. I have summarised this article below:

The aim of incident management is to minimize disruption to the business and to restore operation
quickly whilst adhering to agreed levels of service. Incident Management relies heavily on the
configuration of the organisations Configuration Management Database. Incident management is
often the first process to be implemented and its benefits are acquired almost instantly.

When using centralised information logging, breakdowns in communication are greatly reduced or
eliminated.

Service desk staff can use Mobile clients to capture the details of the incident.

Predefined templates allow for the rapid capture of commonly occurring incidents. This ensures
that incidents that may not always be recorded are captured for analysis and reporting about the
support activities that are taking place.

Incidents can be created automatically from incoming e-mails and which are available to capture
Incident details from end-users.

User Definable Fields increase the accuracy and completeness of information captured by prompting
Customers and Service Desk staff for key information based on the incident category. Working in
this way Incident management staff can be assured that they are working.

Automatic matching identifies related Incidents, Problems and Known Errors ensuring that incidents
are managed efficiently and by the right person.

Automatic notifications to support specialists and customers throughout the incident life cycle
improves customer satisfaction.

Article 2: ITIL Incident Management

Rapidly deteriorating travel conditions in U.S. metropolitan areas have led to renewed interest in
more effectively managing nonrecurrent congestion. Effective incident management requires an
understanding of incident patterns, frequency, and duration(1). However, such information is
limited. This paper presents an analysis of incidents(2) using data from a major Los Angeles,
California freeway. Incident patterns are described, and duration is analyzed as a function of incident
characteristics(3). Results indicate that accidents make up a very small proportion of all incidents,
but account for a relatively greater share of all incident duration. Major explanatory factors of
incident duration include incident type, time of day, truck involvement, and lane closures. The paper
concludes with a discussion of alternative approaches to reducing the congestion impacts of
incidents.

Basically this article is a summary about incident management for a high volume urban freeway.
Even though this is not about I.T. It is a very good article about incident management. Basically they
have gone through the process of understanding the incidents and their patterns, they collect their
data at that stage; then they analyze the data and try to approach the incident with solutions. If you
just read what I have highlighted (1) (2) and (3) then you get some idea of the process of incident
management.
Reflection:
What? This week’s topic was on Incident Management. Basically the aim of incident management is
to minimize disruption to the business and to restore operation quickly whilst adhering to agreed
levels of service. I added 2 articles the first one is titled ITIL Incident Management. Basically it is
about an application called Richmonds Systems which can easily manage and control incident
management. The second article I added was Incident characteristics frequency and duration on a
high volume urban freeway which is a summary about incident management for a high volume
urban freeway.

Why? I believe incident management is important because it ensures that disruption to the business
is minimized and operation is restored quickly. I added the article ITIL incident management
because it describes a tool used for incident management which is similar to the tool that my
organization uses (ticket Pro). Basically it is important that you use a tool so that incidents can be
assigned easily to the right people. The other article titled Incident characteristics frequency and
duration on a high volume urban freeway was added because initially incident management was a
hard concept for me to understand however since I have looked at incident management through a
different angle (in this case traffic) I now have a better understanding of incident management.

Reflection: To tell you the truth I don’t think Incident management deserves to be part of its own
week. I think this can easily be merged with problem management because of how these topics
relate. However when I reflect on incident management related to my case study I can understand
why we need to differentiate between incident and problem management. Problem’s are likely to
cause incidents and if you try to work around the incident or fix the incident itself then the
underlying problem is still there. This can be related to my case study because the support desk is
there to deal with incidents and problems.

Assumptions:
I have not added any assumptions this week.

Reference List:
Giuliano, G. (1989) Incident Management Articles. Incident characteristics frequency and duration
on a high volume urban freeway. United States. TRANSP

Richmond Systems (2008) ITIL Service Desk. ITIL Incident Management Retrieved April, 12, 2008
from AltaVista: http://www.richmondsupportdesk.com/ITIL/itil-incident-management.htm