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Environment Management - MWT/TEBT Supporting Process

Purpose

Environment management is an optional supporting process within the MWT/TEBT Collaboration Architecture. It is used where multiple projects perform their own testing but require assess to shared resources to provide development and testing environments. Environment management does not include the Production environment in this model.

Overview

Environment management, when implemented instead of a complete MWT/TEBT Enterprise Testing Capability, comprises of the following functions:

an environment manager role who is accountable for environment management services
a dedicated environment support team and/or additional service accountabilities for the existing production support and/or project teams
the ability for project managers, test managers, and training managers to book environments by application / interface component name
services available to project managers to encapsulate the detail of common environment services, such as: environment creation, data refresh, data baseline, and environment roll forward (i.e. run nightly batch processes and change date)
clear environment service management accountability

Components

This section describes each of the components of the associated diagram.

Component	Description	Deliverable / Input / Output
Environment Booking Request	The environment booking request defines a project, test, or training managers environment requirements in terms of Logical Application components, the type of activitiy the environment will be used for (generally test types), and the cycle plan. The cycle plan also includes environment services which are required for each cycle and should map to the test cycles in the test plan. Additional information may also be collected in the template but care should be taken to ensure only items that the requestor should reasonabily be expected to know are required.	Input
Environment Manager	The environment manager is accountable for: assessment of environment requests environment availability as per firm bookings maintaining the environment schedule adherence to the cycle plan completion of environment services as requested coordinating environment support as required Optional: managing a dedicated environment support team
Environment Service Catalog	The environment service catalog lists the services relating to environment management which can be requested of the environment manager and to which the environment manager is accountable to other team members. They also, like all services, represent the lowest project or enterprise planning quanta. 1 Services must include at a minimum: Responding to an environment request with confirm, reschedule, and/or issues Building an environment for a logical application or set of logical applications (plus related interfaces) Refresh data into environment from Production (and run interfaces as required) Refresh data into environment from Data Baseline (and run interfaces as required) Create Data Baseline Response to Environment Support incidents Optional: (tier-2) Aquire new hardware Optional: (teir-2) Increase virtualisation Optional: obscure production data Note: this is the standard MWT Service-Based Management Process.
Environment Issue Management	Environment issue management referes to a standard issue management process for all environment 'issues'. These could be: issues with schedule issues with environment booking requests issues with environment service delivery issues which represent production support issue but in non-Production environments.
Environment Scheduling	The environment scheduling sub-process minimises conflict across multiple environment request bookings and maintains the environment booking schedule. This process is owned by the environment manager and may involve working with requestors to negociate other environment booking times. Where a teir-2 environment service exists to aquire new hardware or virtualisation to allow more environment capacity these activites are also scheduled.
Environment Service Management	Environment service management is a standard service management process for services in the environment service catalog.
Environment Schedule	Maintained by the environment manager and includes the environment owner for each logical environment, over time. In the absense of configuration management may also need to include additional information about the components in a logical environment. It must also include environment setup activities, activities to aquire new hardware, data refreshs, where environments are shared, etc. All environment services should be scheduled.	Deliverable
Environment Support	Environment support refers to production support-like activities in non-Production environments, and their management.	Deliverable
Project Team	Refers to multiple project teams using environments booked to their project.
Production Support Team	Refers to the organisation's existing Production Support Team, if applicable.
Environment Service Delivery Responsibilities	Environment Service Delivery Responsibilities describe the roles and responsibilities for each service in the environment service catalog. They do not include capability delivery processes, just roles and responsibilities. Care must be taken to ensure the environment manager maintains responsibilities including service management.
Delivery Architect	Standard MWT Delivery Architect role is shown here to indicate who defines the services and service delivery responsibilities. This position isn't envolved in the process itself.

Configuration Management

It is possible for the environment management process to operate without configuration management. However, the environment manager will be required to operate with the following configuration items (whether maintained formally or informally) in order to deliver the standard environment management services:

Application / Interface object code, or source and build code (read)
Application / Interface installation instructions (read, update, create)
Application / Interface installation parameterisation instructions (read, update)
Production Application Architecture (read)
Production Batch Schedule (read)
All items installed on non-Production environments under environment management

As always, configuration management can be a tricky concept to grasp. A focus on environment management services and service-based management prior to configuration management is recommended.

Traversals

Traversals through the components, representing business scenarios, are not available in the on-line version of this document. Contact us for more information.