IT Production Services

Rating:
Summary: Substantially valuable with some gaps
Review: First, the positive points of this book:
- it focuses on a narrow, but important, topic (production control and production acceptance)
- a solid case is made for a parallel QA function for infrastructure instead of relying exclusively on QA for applications
- the case studies and checklists provided are valuable artifacts and both support the approach set forth in this book and underscores the value of production control as a key function

Where this book falls short is it seems to be written in a vacuum - the authors do not appear to have an awareness of the ITIL (IT Infrastructure Library), which is an international standard that covers all of the areas this book addresses. This omission is all the more glaring because the ITIL is vague on some areas that are given in-depth treatment in this book, and had the authors taken the time to align their approach with the ITIL this book would stand out as an exceptionally valuable resource for a wider audience.

Is it worth reading? Yes, if you have a good base of experience and knowledge of IT operations management and/or ITIL. An experienced reader will spot where the information and approach provided in this book can fit within the ITIL, especially the production acceptance approach that is a near perfect fit with the ITIL's configuration, change and release management areas under service support, IT service continuity management under service delivery, and portions of the ITIL Business Perspectives Set.

Do the processes and approach set forth in this book scale? Although one case study was of an 80,000 person organization, there are some areas in the book that will not scale to large enterprises without modifications. For example, assigning a tape librarian cited in the book as a key role appears to overlook the fact that most of that function in a complex IT environment is automated using software and technology feature sets. For example, an enterprise that is using EMC's storage solutions to their best advantage, including business continuity volumes (BCVs), SRDF for remote replication, and an enterprise back-up solution such as Legato AAM will have little need for a tape librarian.

This book does fit in with the others in the Enterprise Computing Institute Series, so if you have been basing your infrastructure management strategy on that, then this book is an essential addition to your technical library.

Gaps and ommissions notwithstanding, if you work in IT operations at the management level, or are implementing the ITIL this book will flesh out some of the vague areas in other resources with respect to production control and production acceptance. I only hope the authors update this and the related books in the Enterprise Computing Institute Series to be consistent with the ITIL.

Rating:
Summary: Setting Standards For Performance
Review: Structuring effective systems and processes will help eliminate inefficiencies and roadblocks. It will also help clarify work procedures, set up appropriate communication channels, and standardize work processes. The book "IT Production Services" really nails down the tools an IT organization would need in order to perform well. Standardizing an IT organization on production acceptance concepts will not allow an IT group to have to "reinvent the wheel" for each new project or for different kinds of situations. I feel the authors of this book truly have a grasp of the IT industry. By reading and thoroughly understanding the concepts I have been able to implement many of these concepts within my own consulting practice. In this day and age I still find it amazing just how many IT organizations do not use these concepts. Overall I found the book to be refreshing, informative, and easy to extrapolate the information when needed.

Great job...!!!

Rating:
Summary: I love my book and I am not willing to share it....
Review: This book has been a saving grace for me in my Consulting Project Management engagement at my client site. I swear that my client is to the letter one of the case studies that the book highlights.

The book has helped me to sit down as part of an Enterprise Financials deploy and discuss intelligently and in an organized fashion with the Senior IT Management how we can get to a stabilized Production Services model.

No magic, no mystique, just good old true and tried ways of engaging and organizing and making team's accountable. This book is organized in such an easy and logical manner that even if you have a mix of a young and old talent pool everyone can appreciate the clarity of the information delivery.

We are following the templates as a fail safe practice in order to follow a holistic bottom up strategy to ensure the success of the production services model. We are going to ensure that we get a good solid production services model in place to support our implementation that is due in production by December by following this cook-book methodology.

The managers keep trying to rip my book away from me and borrow it every night to read up about the topic but I am not willing to part with it for even one night. Thanks to Rich Schiesser's book I can hit the ground running with some best practices and be the hero at my client's site even though I am not a technical and network guru!

I recommend this book especially for schools that focus on teaching the right way of putting together a production services model. If we learned this in college it sure would have saved us a lot of pain in the real world of managing large IT shop enterprise deployments.

Sincerely Sabrina Mancini-Johnson
Principal
www.2EnVisionInc.com
Orange County California

Rating:
Summary: Excellent addition to the IT bookshelf
Review: This book succeeds in many ways, and to follow up to another reviewer who asks if the authors have not heard of ITIL, I contend that this book goes well beyond what you get from ITIL publications. Those are almost exclusively theory, and there almost nothing actionable or a single example to be found. That being said, I am a huge proponent of ITIL as well, and am ITIL certified. Nothing in this volume that I can find is anything but complementary to and builds upon the tenets that ITIL documents.

This book gives you actionable fundamentals with examples, case studies, and supporting artifacts.

Another area this book touches on that ITIL does not is THE PEOPLE! Example organizational structures, job descriptions, role and responsibility charts, etc.

The book stresses the notion of gaining executive buy-in, knowing the key issues that confound CXOs.

I fully support the notion of production acceptance, no more 'throwing it over the wall' for IT to deal with as has happened in the past several years. Isn't this how we used to do it in the 'mainframe days'? Yes, it worked!

A very worthwhile book to have, and it will only help you implement what ITIL preaches!