Application Production support refers to maintenance and support of applications that are in production environment. Sometimes people refer to it as Production support as well .
So what do we mean by production environment. Basically all applications go through phases during their lifecycle viz requirement analys , development , testing and QA and finally it is deployed ie “goes live”. This go live environment is known as production environment.
So who supports an application in production environment ? We need to look at the evolution of industry to answer this question. In the earlier days it all was rolled up into one , ie the developer used to support the app as well when it went into production. However with increasing maturity in the support model, things are tiered now. This ensures more efficient use of resources. For e.g If a user needs a help with new account setup, it doesn’t really make sense to pull a resource with technical skills just to show the user how he needs to go about with this.
So support and development got segregated into separate functions as this is more efficient. Further more even the support function is segregated based on level of expertise required to solve a request or issue being raised.
Enter ITSM (IT service management )and ITIL 1 (IT service Library) which is the most widely used ITSM framework. . ITIL1 proposed the glossary that is widely followed in all support processes
Support Levels :
first-line support (ITIL Service Operation) The first level in a hierarchy of support groups involved in the resolution of incidents.1
second-line support (ITIL Service Operation) The second level in a hierarchy of support groups involved in the resolution of incidents and investigation of problems. Each level contains more
specialist skills, or has more time or other resources. 1
third-line support (ITIL Service Operation) The third level in a hierarchy of support groups involved in the resolution of incidents and investigation of problems. Each level contains more
specialist skills, or has more time or other resources. 1
These support levels are also known as L1 Level 1, L2 Level2 and L3 Level3 in the industry.
The players.
User – The client for whom the applications have been created.
Developer/Development team – The team that created the application .
QA – Quality assurance. – Function or team that tests the application to ensure it meets the standards .
What do these support levels signify ?
L1 – Level 1 support. This is the first line of support , could be user facing or in some cases their might be an additional help desk function that does the user facing activities.
Support function cannot be categorized as L1 just because its user facing. It categorized based on the level of expertise required to resolve the issue or request . Level 1 support can be defined as all the activities that are fully documented and can be completed by following steps elaborated in the documentation. This documentation is critical for functioning of this level based support. Support documentation is refered to by different names in the industry at times interchangeably . however below are the types and their definitions
Known error record. : documentation containing list of issue and their solutions
Run book : documentation elaborating the activities that need to be performed on day-to-day basis by support team
User manual: Documentation meant for the user , detailing how to use the application and various features within it.
Support document: Details of the system and application from a support point of view.
Standing instructions : These are one-off instructions to fix an issue . Generally they are meant to be of short-term nature till a permanent fix is applied.
Escalation procedures : escalation tree and hierarchy
Handover doc: open issues or things that need to be taken care of by the next shift
Level 1 activities basically are such issues that can be fixed by referring to the documentation and importantly can be done in a short time. Level 1 is high volume stuff, typically the teams get hundreds of tickets a day and can afford to focus only a few minutes to solve an issue.
Technical/functional skills may or may not be required to execute L1 activities. Even in case technical skills are required , its safe to assume that a beginner level knowledge of skills involved will suffice.
This support level can be staffed by resources with fewer years of experience.
Good communication skills are very essential at this support level. You need to keep affected parties or users informed in a manner that is timely and precise. The first step of support process begin with acknowledgement ie indicating to the user that you have picked his request or the issue raised and are working on it. The next step is to provide timelines and next steps . Third step is closure and confirmation .
Level 2 :
Level 2 support activities require greater technical/functional skills as compared to L2. The scope of L2 would be to try to resolve requests or fix issues that aren’t necessarily documented. It can also involve activities that are documented but are complex in nature and need certain technical skills for their execution.
As this definition is kindof open-ended, so is the job profile of L2. They might be expected to look at scripts and code to figure out issues or rely on their experience to guess the solution for an issue.
Hence it is expected that L2 resources be well versed with technologies that they are expected to work in . Intermediate skill level would be expected to deliver in this level.
Level 3 :
Level three sits between L2 and dev teams in hierarchy and their profile includes bug fixes, hot fixes to resolve issues . So they are expected to have advanced skill level of technologies involved. In case they aren’t able to fix an issue its routed to development teams for fix.
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application production support 