introduction
The support team keeps the LIC running 24 hours a day, every day of the year. It also advises customers on what services can meet their e-commerce requirements and provides expert help to developers. The team is cross-discipline, which means it has to cover the areas of application support, network support, operations, security and system administration. Each member of the team is an expert in at least two of these areas.
There are plenty of other areas of support that this team do not cover, such as capacity planning and problem management.
what it is
The LIC is made up of a mix of gadgets and programs. These are complex and not exactly uniform in their approaches to getting their work done. A person needs to be a master of half a dozen disciplines (systems of rules) to control the whole LIC.
team disciplines
A mix of disciplines is needed to be able to support the LIC. A discipline is an area of expertise. Every technician who work in computerland has a good grip on at least one discipline and a little knowledge of the rest. If an Internet service breaks and the person who usually fixes it is away on holiday there must be at least one other person who can do her job.
| LIC table: support team disciplines | |
|---|---|
| name | description |
| application support | Application support personnel are responsible for performing the emergency code fixes. An Internet applications discipline covers areas like these:
|
| development | Developers build and maintain custom applications, as well as make any necessary modifications to Third-party software. Only simple development is done by the support team. Programmers are developers. |
| network administration | A network administrator is responsible for providing and maintaining the Network Infrastructure and ensuring the network is functioning properly and efficiently. They are also responsible for Network Security. |
| operations | Operations people are responsible for the day-to-day running of the environments, including data integrity, monitoring problems and initiating the escalation process. |
| security | Security staff are responsible for creating new user accounts, as well as modifying existing accounts. |
| system administration | A system administrator is responsible for providing and maintaining systems that are functioning properly and efficiently, from an operating environment perspective. |
team structure
There are several ways a support team can be assembled. These specialists are usually arranged in either one mixed discipline team or in several single discipline teams.
- One man band. The LIC could be supported by one person trained in all of these disciplines who has a lot of time on his hands. There are uber-nerds who know everything, have no social life and do not sleep.
- Six specialist teams. The traditional organisation in large enterprises is to employ lots of specialists. The organisation splits people into half a dozen specialist teams with each team covering one discipline. This introduces the complication of getting different teams to talk to each other.
- One cross-discipline team. A more modern approach in IT, brought about by shrinking wage budgets, is to employ a few generalists. One team of several people supports all areas in the LIC. Each person specialises in at least two disciplines.
An example of a multi-skilled team that can cover all these areas is shown in the table below. There are nine engineers, one team leader and a manager responsible for the LIC as a whole. The what they do fields describe what jobs they tend to get lumbered with and what disciplines these jobs are contained in. Disciplines are described in the table above. The only person who does not cover several disciplines is the boss. No sensible person lets a manager do technical work.
| LIC table: people in one multi-discipline support team | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| team member | job title | what they mainly do | what they also do |
| the boss | manager | wheeling and dealing, administration | |
| the team leader | team leader | administration | e-commerce infrastructure (Net, SA, AS), |
| the old timer | senior network engineer | firewall administration and network infrastructure (Net) | giving technical advice, database administration (DBA) |
| the whizzkid | network engineer | firewall administration (Net) | systems administration (SA) |
| the tea boy | junior network engineer | some network infrastructure and firewall administration (Net) | some CD changing and power switch pushing |
| the thrusting yuppie | senior application engineer | application support (AS) | systems administration (SA), operations administration (Ops) |
| the part-timer | application engineer | e-commerce infrastructure (Net, SA, AS) | administration, systems testing (SA) |
| the graduate | junior application engineer | application support (AS) | systems administration and unix scripting (SA), web content (Dev) |
| the UNIX guru | senior system administrator | systems administration and systems testing (SA) | operations administration (Ops) |
| the pisshead | system administrator | systems administration (SA) | operations administration (Ops) |
| the chatterbox | database administrator | database administration (DBA) | systems administration (SA) |
 |
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Why do we need all these disciplines? If we look at the components that are involved in processing an Internet service request then we can see that different team members look after each component. One resource request from a web client in the Internet can pass through several different areas in the LIC, each of which is covered by one or more disciplines. The flowchart below lists areas and job titles of people who specialise in these disciplines.
| LIC table: technical things and their masters | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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| One client request being processed by an LIC web site can pass through all these things. This flowchart shows the things that the request passes through. The area's name is listed in the top of each box. The person responsible for looking after each area is listed in the bottom. |
what it isn't
The whole support package. There are plenty of other areas of support that this team do not cover, such as capacity planning and problem management.
where it is
Team members can be located just about anywhere. Only network engineers and system administrators need to get close up and personal with the computers in the LIC. The rest can work from any Tibetan Buddhist retreat or Bali beach hut with a good Internet link.
