Business Oriented Systems Maintenance Management

Abstract

In the introduction to this chapter, we discuss some of the common problems in maintenance. In order to solve these problems, we find it necessary to think in a new way, including the relationship of businesses to the system maintenance. The world outside organisations changes continuously, and the business processes and functions must change with it. However, if we only maintain information technology (IT) and do not co-manage the business changes accordingly, IT will not change at the same pace as the business changes. It would result a gap between the business needs and services provided by the IT product. In that case, IT systems would not be able to provide sufficient business value. The main part of this chapter contains a management model for solving these problems, based on theoretical research and practical experience. The central theme of the model is the connection between the business needs and systems maintenance. This is achieved by maintaining maintenance objects rather than the systems, establishing micro-organisations for each maintenance object where business processes as well as the system are represented. Our proposed model is widely used in more than 50 organisations in Sweden. In conclusion, some future trends and central concepts of the model are discussed.