Abstract
As IT systems, applications and infrastructure grow in complexity and as organisations come to rely on these systems for their very existence maintenance becomes more of a priority. However, increasing reliance means that balancing the opposing needs of keeping the systems up to date, bug free and as secure as possible with the organisations growing need to have the systems available around the clock becomes more of a challenge. It is no longer acceptable, from either a business or IT management point-of-view, to perform maintenance in an ad-hoc manner, whenever the administrator has the time or the inclination.
Organisations generally plan their business activities well in advance. For example, pay cycles, end of year processing and legislative reporting. If they don’t already, organisations will soon expect the same rigour from their own IT departments.
This presentation will discuss how ICTS at Griffith University manages its maintenance schedule. It will include:
- A brief description of the situation in the ‘old days’
- Why we manage our schedule in the way that we do;
- How we liaise with university staff (both general and academic) when preparing the schedule for the following year;
- How we coordinate activities to be undertaken in each maintenance window;
- How and why we communicate the maintenance activities to the rest of the University;
- How we deal with problems that occur during a maintenance window;
- Results and feedback from the University community; and
Where to from here? Some ideas for further improvements in the future.
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