# Operations Guidelines

## Goal

The IT is an important aspect of our company and should ensure save, reliable and performant work of every companies core business. IT operations should be integrated into the daily business as seamless as possible in order to achieve the companies goals.

## Implementation

### Availability

At least one IT employee must be available during the core work hours who can solve critical IT issues.

### Maintenance, Updates, Upgrades

#### Schedule

Maintenance tasks on working components which would effect the active work of employees during the core business hours should be performed outside this timeframe, unless not possible.

Maintenance tasks on faulty or broken components should be performed as soon as possible.

Maintenance work should be performed once a week but at least one a month. This includes checking hardware components and software components. Software updates must be tested by the IT department and in some cases additionally by other departments in a testing environment before implementing them in the production system. The changes and tests must be documented in the change management system.

In general, free software updates and upgrades should be implemented in a timely manner. 

If components reach EOL (end of life) the IT department (possibly together with other departments) has to coordinate a follow up solution.

### Problems, Support & Change requests

Problems and requests regarding IT components should be resolved in a timely manner. The IT department has to check the support and change management requests multiple times a day. The priorization of the tasks lies with the IT. However, the overall company operability must be kept in mind.

### Jobs

#### Schedules

Job schedules can and must only be changed by members of the IT department. Job schedule changes must be coordinated with the head of other departments if they are effected by these changes. The head of IT must be informed about all job schedule changes. 

In case of schedule change requests from other departments, they must be performed by the respective HOD and checked by an employee in the IT department to ensure no conflicts arise by this non-scheduled job execution. Only then the IT department may change the schedule for a job or execute the non-scheduled job.

New jobs must be approved by the head of IT.

#### Failures

All jobs must be logged and monitored to ensure their correct operations. In case of failures during the job execution the IT department receives a automatic failure log message which must be solved. The IT department ensures that every job is completed successfully and in case of issues takes appropriate steps which include:

* re-running the job in coordination with other departments if necessary
* solving the underlying issue
* changing execution times

## Responsible

The overall responsibility for the IT operations lies with the head of IT. However, every IT employee is responsible within their area of work for upholding the IT guidelines and policies as well as a smooth operation of the IT.

2022-01-01 - Version 1.0
