Microsoft Project Management
• Enterprise Services Framework Review
• Role of MSF in Project Management
• Role of MOF in Project Management
Enterprise Services Frameworks
Planning
Although not currently a dedicated Enterprise Services
framework, this phase is covered by Microsoft Business
Value Services, which provide tools to assess and plan the IT
infrastructure, prioritize projects, and make a compelling
business case for undertaking an IT project.
Preparing
Microsoft Readiness Framework helps IT organizations
develop individual and organizational readiness to use
Microsoft’s products and technologies.
Building and Deploying
Microsoft Solutions Framework provides guidance in the
planning, building, and deploying phases of a project.
Operating
Microsoft Operations Framework provides guidance for
managing production systems within today’s complex
distributed IT environment.
MSF Management Roles Review
MSF Product Management Role
• Goal of product management is customer
satisfaction.
• As the customer advocate to the team, responsible
for understanding customer requirements, creating
the business case, establishing the shared project
vision between team and customer, and ensuring
that any solution that the team develops meets the
needs of the customer by solving their particular
business problem.
• As the team advocate to the customer, responsible
for high-level communications and managing
customer expectations.
MSF Program Management Role
• Role and focus of program management is
to meet the quality goal of delivering the
product within project constraints.
• Owns and drives the schedule, the features,
and the budget for the project.
• Ensures that the right product is delivered at
the right time.
MSF Logistics Management Role
• Serves as the advocate for the operations, product support,
help desk, and other delivery channel organizations.
• As the operations advocate to the team, participates in the
design process to help ensure that the product is
deployable, manageable, and supportable.
• Responsible for understanding the product’s infrastructure
and support requirements and ensuring that installation
sites have met those requirements prior to deployment.
Typically, this is facilitated through the creation and
implementation of rollout, installation, and support plans.
MOF Best Practices Source
• Central Computer and Telecommunications Agency’s
(CCTA) IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL).
• The CCTA is a United Kingdom government executive
agency chartered with development of best practice advice
and guidance on the use of information technology in
service management and operations.
• MOF combines collaborative industry standards from
CCTA with specific guidelines for using Microsoft
products and technologies.
• MOF also extends the ITIL code of practice to support
distributed IT environments and industry trends such as
application hosting and Web-based transactional and ecommerce systems.
MOF Design Goals
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Use ideas that have been proven in action.
Leverage industry best practice.
Provide extensible foundation for operations knowledge.
Address people, process, and technology.
Incorporate input from customers, partners, Microsoft ITG,
and Microsoft product and service organizations.
• Increase IT’s agility so that the business can rapidly adjust
to changing conditions.
• Integrate with frameworks that manage other parts of the
IT life cycle, such as planning and deployment.
• Support managing end-to-end services, including processes
and procedures, rather than just managing servers and
technology.
MOF Models
• Process Model
• Team Model
• Risk Model
MOF Process Model
Management Review Summary
Quadrant
Mission of Service
Review
Changing
Introduce new service solutions, technologies,
systems, applications, hardware, and processes
Release readiness
Operating
Execute day-to-day tasks effectively and efficiently
Operations
Supporting
Resolve incidents, problems, and inquiries quickly
Service level agreement
Optimizing
Drive changes to optimize cost, performance,
capacity, and availability in the delivery of IT services
Release approved
Service Management Functions
Change Management SMF
• Responsible for managing change in an IT
environment.
• Key goal is to ensure that all parties affected by a
given change are aware of and understand the
impact of the impending change.
• Attempts to identify all affected systems and
processes before the change is implemented in
order to mitigate or eliminate any adverse effects.
Change Management SMF Characteristics
 Change controls. Change controls should be commensurate with complexity,
cost, risk, and impact. As appropriate, changes should be managed along a
spectrum of control points ranging from automated approval to full project level
reviews for implementation approval.
 Requests for change (RFC). Change requests are formalized with descriptions
of the change, components affected, business need, cost estimates, risk
assessment, resource requirements, and approval status.
 Change advisory board (CAB). The CAB is a cross-functional group set up to
evaluate change requests for business need, priority, cost/benefit, and potential
impacts to other systems or processes. Typically the CAB will make
recommendations for implementation, further analysis, deferment, or
cancellation.
What is a Release?
A release is any change, or group of changes, that must be incorporated
into a managed IT environment.
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A new or updated Web site including content propagation
New hardware (server, network, client, and so on)
New or updated operations processes or procedures
Changes in communication processes and/or team structures
New infrastructure software
Physical change in the building, environment, and so on
Changing Quadrant
• Release approved is the management review
in which changes are evaluated for cost and
benefits and in turn become the catalyst for
the changing quadrant to begin executing on
the approved change.
• The release readiness review determines if
the release is ready to go “live” and become
fully operational in the target environment.
Readiness Review Evaluation Criteria
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The readiness of the release itself.
The physical environment.
The preparedness of the operations staff and processes.
The installation and cutover plan.
The contingency plan.
Potential impacts on other systems.
Changing SMF Relationship
Key Function
Decides what will
change
Change
Management
CI
's
l
va
ro
pp
Im
pa
cte
d
A
ge
an
Ch
Key Function
Stores
Configuration Item
Details
Key Function
Configuration
Management
Release
Management
What has Changed
Manages
Implementation of
the Change
Release Management SMF
• Focus is to facilitate the introduction of software and
hardware releases into managed IT environments.
• Includes the live production environment and the managed
preproduction environments.
• Coordination point between the release
development/project team and the operations groups
responsible for running the release in production.
• Works closely with the change and configuration
management processes to ensure that the shared CMDB is
kept up to date on the changes implemented by new
releases.
Release Management SMF Activities
 Implementing new software and hardware into the operational environment using
the controlling processes of configuration and change management. A release
should be under change control and may consist of any combination of hardware,
software, firmware, and document configuration items.
 Maintaining the Definitive Software Library of the organization’s components.
 Building and managing the release rollout plan.
 Communicating and working as part of the development team during the plan and
build phases of the project.
 Communicating and managing expectations across the operations teams and with
the customer during the planning and rollout of new releases.
 Designing and implementing efficient procedures for the distribution and
installation of large-scale changes to IT systems.
 Creating and managing the release backout plan.
Configuration Management SMF
• Responsible for the identification, recording, tracking, and
reporting of key IT components or assets called
configuration items (CIs).
• Information captured and tracked will depend upon the
specific CI, but will often include a description of the CI,
the version, constituent components, relationships to other
CIs, location/assignment, and current status.
• information contained about the CIs should be held in a
single logical data repository, referred to as the
configuration management database (CMDB).
• Master copies of software products used for system
installations, standard server, and desktop builds should be
kept in a definitive software library (DSL).
Configuration Management SMF Activities
 Configuration management planning. Planning and defining the scope, objectives, policies,
procedures, organizational, and technical context for configuration management.
 Configuration identification. Selecting and identifying the configuration structures for all the
infrastructure’s configuration items, their “owner,” their interrelationships, and configuration
documentation. It includes allocating identifiers for configuration items and their versions.
 Configuration control. Concerned with ensuring that only authorized and identifiable configuration
items are accepted and recorded from receipt to disposal. It ensures that no CI is added, modified,
replaced, or removed without appropriate controlling documentation, such as an approved change
request, or updated specification.
 Configuration status accounting. The reporting of all current and historical data concerned with
each CI throughout its life cycle. It enables change to configuration items, and makes their records
traceable, for example by enabling the tracking of the status of a CI through such states as
development, test, live, and withdrawn.
 Configuration verification and audit. A series of reviews and audits that verify the physical
existence of configuration items and check that they are correctly recorded in the configuration
management system.
MOF Team Model
IT
Infrastructure
Library
(ITIL)
MCS
&
Existing
Frameworks
(MSF)
Microsoft
Information
Technology
Microsoft
Partners and
Customers
Best Practices
MOF Team Model Roles
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intellectual property protection
network & system security
intrusion detection
virus protection
audit and compliance admin
contingency planning
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maintenance vendors
environment support
managed services,
outsourcers, trading
partners
software/hardware
suppliers
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change management
release/systems engineering
configuration control/asset
mgmt
software distribution/licensing
quality assurance
Release
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Infrastructure 
Security
enterprise architecture
infrastructure engineering
capacity mgmt
cost/IT budget mgmt
resource & long range
planning
Communication
Support
Partner
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service desk/helpdesk
production/product support
problem management
service level management
Operations
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messaging ops
database ops
network admin
monintoring/metrics
availability mgmt
Example Function Teams within Ops Team Model Roles
Release Role
• Point where the logistics manager role of the MSF
team model intersects with MOF.
• Point where the transition between
development/test and production operations
occurs, and it is a crucial juncture for the smooth
transition of the system into production.
• Serves as the primary liaison between the project
development team and the operations groups,
Release Role Responsibilities
 Ongoing identification, change control, and status
reporting of the system and environment.
 Asset management with version control, software
distribution, license tracking, usage monitoring, and
retirement information.
 Maintenance of the CMDB of inventory management
for hardware, software, and physical assets.
Release Role Activities
 Managing the transition between development/test and production operations.
 Planning roll-out activities, procedures, and policies for repeatable practices.
 Managing configuration management process, records, tools, and documentation.
 Optimizing release/configuration automation through tools/scripts.
 Acting as primary liaison between the project development team and the operations
groups (within Enterprise Services, this is the intersection with the MSF logistics
manager role).
 Leading release readiness milestone review activities and go/no go criteria.
 Tracking/auditing/reporting change for hardware and software.
 Controlling configuration (owns CMDB).
 Managing software licensing and distribution, and maintaining the definitive
software library (DSL).
 Managing tool selection/provision for release activities.
Release Role Competencies
 Knowledge of the full range of hardware components available.
 Ability to maintain, secure, and oversee the off-the-shelf software library.
 Ability to maintain, secure, and store highly pilferable hardware items (such as
memory, digital cameras, and Jaz drives).
 Ability to use hardware compatibility lists to help make purchasing decisions.
 Ability to develop and implement Information Services (IS) auditing
procedures and standards.
 Ability to provide basic microcomputer hardware and software repair,
installation, and physical inventory control.
 Ability to maintain software licensing information/statistics.
 Ability to evaluate asset management technology enablers.
MOF Risk Model
1
2
Identify
Retired
Risk
List
5
Analyze
Risk
Assessment
Document
Control
Top
n
Risks
4
Track
3
Plan
Questions?