Stake holders
Applications supported and sensitive application areas, previous issues, problems and solutions, organizational assets and processes (SLAs, Model templates and Communication channels),
Support planning
Execution
Monitoring and Controlling
Vendor management cannot be done in isolation without understanding details of the above five major areas. Let us look into the details of the each area.
Stakeholders:
What we need to know?
We need to identify the stakeholders and prepare the list of all the stake holders (both Internal and external). After finishing the identification of the stakeholders, classify these stake holders based on their power, legitimacy and influence based on salience model described.
Understand the stakeholders’ needs in terms of their area of interest viz-a-viz application, reporting requirements, problem areas, previous escalations etc., Once we understand these details, we get sense of the overall user base, organizational structure, various stake holder, their needs and their priorities.
How do you get it? Tools and Techniques.
Conducting meetings
Reading available documents - organizational process assets.
Meeting/interviewing people personally.
Consult senior managers for help and feedback
Output:
List of all stakeholders.
Stakeholders' business needs.
Stakeholders' priorities.
Understanding of the reporting needs.
Classified list of Stakeholders - power, influence, who can help and who need information etc,
Application users,
List of vendors and the teams
Applications - vendors support matrix
Support processes and the application
What we need to know?
Once you get the fair idea of the stake holders, their priorities and needs, the next step is to understand support process and the applications the organization is supporting. Find out the list of services, application areas, communication channels, escalation points, reporting formats and requirements, out of the office hours supporting mechanisms, terms and conditions in SLAs, on call support and costs, target requirements.
After understanding the support process, you would get an idea of the applications being supported, priority and sensitive areas of the services supported by the vendor, list of problems, implications and solutions.
How do you get it? Tools and Techniques.
Study the SLAs
Meet the users and browse through the applications
Guided application/s navigation
Organize user meetings
Study previous reports/formats
Stakeholder-Report matrix.
Vendor team and capability matrix
Output:
List of services and application supported by the vendor
Priority of the services/applications
Urgency/Importance of the services
Reports by the vendor
Reports by the business and to the business
Communication channels - formal and informal communication
Escalation process
Understanding the support system – Help desk, remedy, same time etc.
Support planning
It involves planning for all the activities that requires successful planning of all activities need to be done.
What we need to know?
Once we have the above list of supported applications, users and its matrix's, you plan for regular routine activities and new enhancements to support the system smoothly. We need to identify daily routines such as any incidents/requests opened, priority, issue logs, check lists of support activities, weekly routines such as meetings, status reports and monthly routines and so on and clear plan of action for the routines and change request which are result of bugs. For example, If we get new enhancement who will approve it, time taken for change implementation, go live etc.
How do you get it? Tools and Techniques.
We need to take all the outputs from the previous process and analyze, prepare lists of routine activities of daily, monthly nature and ad-hoc activities. Prepare list of reports and formats and users of these reports. If you get any doubt, go back to the previous steps and repeat it until clear idea of the planning. Discuss with the senior mangers of the planning process and get inputs from them and modify your plan.
Meet the vendor team and understand the work culture, abilities,team structure and reporting organization. This will help you in understanding the team dynamics and abilities of the vendor team and results in better estimation of the work load and planning.
Output:
You have the clear plan of what are all the things you need to do regularly
List of daily , weekly activities and monthly activities
Change control process and implementation
Reports and reviews plans and formats
Vender reports and meetings and its frequency
Issue logs and regular updates to issue logs.
Execution
This stage involves performing all activities we have planed in the previous step.
What we need to know?
We need to work with the Vendor/the team and business users to provide the good support regularly. We need to have constant look at the issue logs, all routine activities and report to the business users periodically and incorporate the changes into the plan/process. We also need to send and get reports from vendors regarding the status of the incidents and enhancement requests and verify the same..
How do you get it? Tools and Techniques.
Always well inform the vendor on the priorities and issues.
Inform the vendor on business implications
Use effective communication channels such as phone calls / meetings/Personal visits
Regularly report the issue status and have the live issue log
Regular follow up
Share metrics with the users and vendors.
Root cause analysis
Output:
Status of the support and enhancement
Problems faced by business and vendors – related to technical/business
Performance against the targets
Issues which need to planning
Feedback from the existing systems and processes.
New changes and planning
Incident patterns
root cause
Monitoring and Controlling
It involves looking into the processes which are planed and executed for smooth support process are running/ working properly and correcting activities which are not as per the plan/not able to achieve desired output so that we are back on track to have good customer satisfaction.
What we need to know?
we need to measure the performance against the the plan and take corrective actions. To do this we need to do the below activities.
Progress against the plan
List of activities and its percentage completion
Process and plan revisions
Status of the tickets
How do you get it? Tools and Techniques.
Have the reports and verify it. Ensure things are as per the plan. Information is correct and accurate.
Issue logs and status
Metrics analysis and plan for the resolutions for it
Have regular formal and informal meetings, feedback.
Surveys with internal and external stakeholders and action plans
Earned value metrics for enhancements/major changes
Status meetings
Output:
Changes to the plans and activities
Changes to the support system
Plan for the new changes
Improved reporting systems
Enhanced customer satisfaction.
feedback to the vendor
