Establish and Document the Operations and Support Primary Contact and Teams

This chapter addresses the Operations and Support Team(s) that run and support the Application in Production, and their primary contact for the Application.

Why Operations and Support Contacts Matter

When an Application fails or misbehaves, the first question is who can help. If the answer is not immediately available, an incident lasts longer than it needs to. The Operations and Support Team(s) run and support the Application’s Instances in Production, and the Operations and Support Primary Contact is the person in those teams whom others contact first about the Application.

Establish the Operations and Support Primary Contact and Teams

Identify the team or teams that run and support the Application in Production, and the person who serves as their primary contact for the Application. Ensure that the appropriate authority, usually operations and support leadership together with the Application Manager, confirms both. Where support is shared between internal teams and a vendor, identify each party and its role.

This chapter addresses who the teams and primary contact are. The detailed structure of support, such as support levels, service desk and on-call arrangements, hours, and vendor support contracts, is addressed in the chapter “Establish and Document the Application’s Support Model.”

Document and Share the Operations and Support Primary Contact and Teams

Record the Operations and Support Team(s) and their Primary Contact, with current contact details, in the Application Documentation and the Application Record. Make this information prominent and easy to find, since it is often needed urgently. Review it with every Release and whenever support arrangements change.

Best Practice: Establish and Document the Operations and Support Primary Contact and Teams

It is a best practice to both establish and document the solution for who runs and supports an Application in Production: identify its Operations and Support Team(s), confirm their primary contact for the Application, and record both prominently.

Benefits: Knowing immediately who runs and supports an Application removes the most avoidable delay at the start of an incident: finding the right people. It also gives engineers, Release Managers, and vendors a defined counterpart for coordinating changes that affect Production.

Connections to Related IF4IT Practices and Inventories

The Service Management Best Practices addresses the incident, request, and support processes the Operations and Support Team(s) carry out. The Service Catalog Best Practices addresses how supported services are published to their consumers.