Design – Build – Run: Applied Practices and Principles for Production-Ready Software Development

7.1. The Three Levels of Live Service Support

In most organizations there are three different levels of support, generally referred to as Level 1, Level 2, and Level 3, respectively. It really depends on the organization as to which tasks are performed at each level and who actually performs them. This section uses a typical scenario.

Under normal circumstances, the three levels of support are formally introduced once the system is in live service. Throughout the project, "live-service readiness" will assess and ensure that all the processes and procedures are in place.

Figure 7-1 shows a typical support model.

Figure 7.1. Figure 7-1

I discuss each role in more detail later in the chapter, but for now the following scenario will highlight some of the key roles and actions that take place.

Assume that a Windows Service called the Batch Agent Service has stopped. A Critical alert is raised on the operations console, and the following transpires:

1. The operator logs the live service incident (the "ticket") in the incident-tracking tool.

2. He or she checks the Operations Manual for something along the lines of "Batch Agent Service Alert: Stopped."

3. The Operations Manual says to restart the service and wait for it to indicate that is has started. In this instance, restarting the service is achieved by right-clicking on the service and selecting Start. The service itself would enter a Starting ...