Microsoft Operations Framework
Version 3.0
Published: August 2004
For more information, see http://www.microsoft.com/mof
MOF Executive
Overview
Contents
Abstract ............................................................................................................ 1
What’s New? ..................................................................................................... 1
Introduction ...................................................................................................... 1
The Customer Perspective: Operations and the State of Business ............................ 2
Enhancing Your Organization with MOF ................................................................. 5
The MOF Components........................................................................................10
Additional Information .......................................................................................19
The information contained in this document represents the current view of Microsoft Corporation on the issues
discussed as of the date of publication. Because Microsoft must respond to changing market conditions, it
should not be interpreted to be a commitment on the part of Microsoft, and Microsoft cannot guarantee the
accuracy of any information presented after the date of publication.
This White Paper is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS, IMPLIED
OR STATUTORY, AS TO THE INFORMATION IN THIS DOCUMENT.
Complying with all applicable copyright laws is the responsibility of the user. Microsoft grants you the right to
reproduce this White Paper, in whole or in part, specifically and solely for the purpose of <DESCRIBE THE
EXPRESS PURPOSE FOR GRANTING REPRODUCTION>.
Microsoft may have patents, patent applications, trademarks, copyrights, or other intellectual property rights
covering subject matter in this document. Except as expressly provided in any written license agreement from
Microsoft, the furnishing of this document does not give you any license to these patents, trademarks,
copyrights, or other intellectual property.
Unless otherwise noted, the example companies, organizations, products, domain names, e-mail addresses,
logos, people, places, and events depicted herein are fictitious, and no association with any real company,
organization, product, domain name, e-mail address, logo, person, place, or event is intended or should be
inferred
 2004 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
Microsoft is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries.
The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective
owners.
Abstract
This MOF Executive Overview white paper summarizes the content of Microsoft®
Operations Framework (MOF) and presents the business value realized by its adoption.
MOF describes proven team structures and operational processes and applies best
information technology (IT) practices to improve the efficiency and quality of IT
operations. It has its basis within the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL), published by the
United Kingdom’s Office of Government Commerce (OGC), and extends ITIL through
the inclusion of guidance and best practices derived from the experience of Microsoft
operations groups, partners, and customers. This white paper explains the business case
for adopting MOF and briefly summarizes the Team Model, Process Model, and Risk
Management Discipline that are its core components. The paper provides a foundation
for understanding the in-depth information provided in companion MOF white papers
and guidance documents. To access these other publications, see the MOF Web site at
http://www.microsoft.com/mof.
What’s New?
Microsoft Operations Framework version 3.0 represents a significant update to the core
MOF content. This version was developed to make MOF more streamlined and easier to
implement and to align it more closely with ITIL version 2.0 and Microsoft Solutions
Framework version 3.0, among other enhancements. This Executive Overview has been
updated to highlight the business value realized by adopting MOF and to reduce
redundancy in descriptions of MOF details used in associated documents. The overview
also reflects the recent changes published in MOF version 3.0, including changes to the
Process and Team Models and Risk Management Discipline.
Introduction
Microsoft has long recognized the value of industry best practices and standards for IT
operations. In particular, guidance provided through ITIL has been globally
acknowledged as providing a sound basis and de facto standard for IT service
management.
In keeping with ITIL’s spirit to “adopt and adapt,” Microsoft has chosen to provide
additional, specific guidance, which is applicable to customers using Microsoft
technologies within their environments. Microsoft created the first version of Microsoft
Operations Framework in 1999. MOF was designed to complement the well-established
Microsoft Solutions Framework for solution and application development. Together, the
combined frameworks provide guidance throughout the IT life cycle.
2
Microsoft Operations Framework
The Customer Perspective:
Operations and the State of
Business
Organizations are increasingly dependent on IT to support and enhance the business
processes required to meet their organizational and customer needs. In many cases, IT
services form the basis for the entire business model; in these instances, IT does not
merely support the business —it is the business. Yet, despite the importance now
attached to IT, intense competitive and economic pressures on business are often
reflected through corporate mandates to maintain, or even to decrease, their current IT
budgets. At the same time expectations of IT for quality, innovation, and value continue
to increase. As IT continues to grow in significance to most organizations, it is imperative
that IT groups take a business- and service-oriented approach to operations rather than a
technology-centric one.
IT service management is concerned with delivering and supporting IT services that are
implemented in direct response to the organization’s business requirements. While it is
essential that an organization’s IT services support core business activities, it is also
increasingly important that these same IT services facilitate change as businesses evolve
and compete in a global marketplace. IT must become a primary stakeholder in the
business decision-making process.
Enhancing IT Business Value
In order to establish their credibility and elevate their strategic impact within the
corporate sphere, IT groups must clearly focus on directly supporting the business
objectives of the organization and emphasizing the business value IT provides. IT enables
new ways of doing business and is better managed when considered as an asset to the
development and execution of key business strategies. This requires IT groups to be able
to show how their services make specific, tangible, and critical contributions to achieving
business outcomes. It also requires that IT groups show how they are achieving the levels
of security, efficiency, reliability, and agility that their businesses require.
This approach is more proactive than has been typical in the past. The traditional,
perhaps legacy, view of IT has typically been that IT is a significant, potentially strategic
investment, but not one that is expected to drive business value. At best, efficiently
managed IT operations could be considered to contribute some cost savings to the
organization, but frequently even these benefits cannot be seen or quantified because
there is no mechanism in place to capture the metrics.
In reality, IT can drive significant value in such non-traditional IT business areas as sales
and customer support, in addition to such traditional IT areas as operational efficiency.
In order to do this, IT groups must embrace a variety of business terminologies, methods,
techniques, and concepts that are commonly employed elsewhere in the business world.
Example: MOF and Remote Access Service at
Microsoft
One example of how MOF helps drive IT business value was the evolution of Remote
Access Service (RAS) from a non-core, secondary service to a secure, easily usable, highly
available, integral component of the Microsoft IT infrastructure. Over a 24-month period,
the Microsoft IT organization undertook a top-to-bottom overhaul of the RAS
infrastructure that included monitoring, alarming, metrics gathering, and the setting of
new standards for client technologies and applications to access the network. In parallel
MOF Executive Overview
3
to these technology upgrades, Microsoft IT began a phased implementation of MOF to
help manage the upgrade and service improvement projects.
As a result of this technology and service improvement effort, RAS quickly evolved into
a strategic business-enabling service that is used to enhance staff mobility and reduce
business unit costs. The Microsoft IT RAS solution seeks to make the user experience on a
remote access session virtually indistinguishable from a corporate-connected LAN
experience in accessibility, security, and performance. Approximately 85–90 percent of
Microsoft’s 55,000 workers regularly access the service on a daily basis. According to
Microsoft IT, without a disciplined support model in place across the organization, the
service quality and total cost of ownership goals simply could not be met. MOF has
provided that level of discipline.
Improving IT Cost Allocation
Without the ability to equate services with costs, it is practically impossible to quantify IT
value to the bottom line. Conversely, exhibiting cost savings can graphically demonstrate
IT service value. MOF provides a way to capture and present these data.
The table below illustrates a few examples of this concept in other industries. In each
case, costs are allocated to a measurable service task or component.
Table 1
Industry
Activity Cost
Benefit
Telecom
Telephone call cost per
minute
Ability to build profit margin into customer
price
Automobile
Replacement cost of
defective parts
Ability to cost-justify manufacturing process
improvements to remove defects, and to
increase warranty coverage at minimum risk
Consulting
Hourly cost per
consultant skill level and
per sales agent
Ability to build sales costs into consulting
hourly rate
Similarly, the table below shows examples of IT service costs and their associated
benefits. These quantified benefits can clearly show the business value realized through
effective operations management.
Table 2
IT Function
Activity Cost
Benefit
Help desk
Cost per incident per
user
Ability to build help desk staff increases into
project budgets (capital expenditures) based
on estimates of new user/new incident
volumes, thus preventing productivity
losses when users suffer system- or servicerelated work stoppages and help desk is not
adequately staffed to handle the request
volumes
System
Cost per change type
administration (major, standard, and so
on)
Ability to provide operational cost estimates
to keep applications/systems up-to-date
once in production
Monitoring
Ability to demonstrate value to the bottom
line provided by problem resolution
effectiveness and by preventative measures
Cost per minute/hour of
downtime per
application
4
Microsoft Operations Framework
IT must not only translate business requirements into services that meet these
requirements, it must also strive for inclusion up front in the business’ strategy planning.
This ensures that business and IT are aligned from the outset when new initiatives are
established and facilitates IT in guiding business direction on the basis of new technology
as it becomes available. For example, if the business is planning a partnership with
another business, the business strategy would differ based on the business’
understanding of available business-to-business technology options.
Example: Service Improvement at Microsoft
Microsoft IT is responsible for building, operating, and managing the global Microsoft IT
infrastructure. From this position, Microsoft IT can provide valuable feedback on the
application and implementation of new Microsoft products to any enterprise business
process. As a result, Microsoft expects Microsoft IT to be its first and best customer.
Microsoft IT is an early adopter of Microsoft products, technologies, and processes, using
the beta releases to provide feedback to improve the quality and functionality of released
solutions and products. By implementing and testing new products within the Microsoft
business processes, the business values can be documented to provide prescriptive
guidance and advice to customers. Microsoft IT creates IT Showcase documentation that
describes the business scenarios they’ve used and provides implementation and
management guidance to ensure that customers can effectively use the new products
they adopt. The guidance and best practices provided by showcasing new products
within the Microsoft IT business processes can help to reduce implementation and
deployment costs for all customers. As part of its ongoing commitment to utilize
Microsoft technologies and practices, Microsoft IT has made a CIO-level commitment to
ensure that all operations processes are based on MOF. MOF provides improvements in
consistency and maturity for diverse operations
processes. In return, Microsoft IT documents
“The results across the board
both its own and customers’ data to improve and
from all six projects showed a
enhance prescriptive guidance for future MOF
dramatic increase in the
and product releases.
process maturity, organization,
In late 2002, Microsoft IT conducted a MOF
and execution on the service
assessment of its operations in six of the MOF
management
improvements,
service management functions to identify
which we expect to be visible
redundant processes and optimize on best
at the TCO level.”
practices, following MOF guidelines to improve
process maturity. Although the assessment
Mike Carlson
demonstrated that Microsoft IT generally had
Senior IT Director
practices and processes in place for most
Microsoft
common tasks, in many cases they were not well
documented or coordinated. For example,
different groups within the organization had
different ways to handle change management, using multiple change management tools.
Microsoft IT has spent the last year running service improvement projects based on the
recommendations from the MOF assessment with dramatic results.
Other Microsoft operations groups, for example MSN and Microsoft.com, have also
embraced MOF principles in structuring and managing their operations. These
relationships between Microsoft operations groups and the MOF development group
have greatly assisted in ongoing MOF development, through the ability to rapidly
evaluate and capture feedback relating to MOF guidance. As Microsoft rolls out next
generation infrastructure for in-house beta testing prior to release, MOF guidance to
deploy, operate, support, and optimize that infrastructure is developed in parallel.
MOF Executive Overview
5
Enhancing Your Organization
with MOF
The IT Life Cycle and Microsoft
Frameworks
Within any organization, the IT services and the applications and infrastructure that
support them have a finite life cycle. This cycle may be divided into three key sets of
activities:

Understand the business and operational needs for the service and create a solution
that delivers these within the specified constraints.

Effectively and efficiently deploy the solution to users with as little disruption to the
business as the service levels specify.

Operate the solution with excellence in order to deliver a service that the business
trusts.
Microsoft provides guidance and implementation packages for the effective employment
of our technologies across the entire gamut of the IT life cycle. This guidance is clustered
into two frameworks—Microsoft Solutions Framework (MSF) and Microsoft Operations
Framework (MOF). MSF addresses the first set of activities (analyzing the need and
creating a high-value solution); MSF and MOF coordinate processes and activities to
deploy the solution in the second set; and MOF addresses the final set of activities until
the solution is retired. MOF also incorporates and extends a wealth of guidance that is
already available through other existing (and developing) IT standards organizations.
These relationships are summarized in the following sections.
The life cycle and how MSF and MOF interact throughout it are depicted in Figure 1.
Figure 1. The IT life cycle and Microsoft frameworks
The development and deployment of an IT solution typically involves two IT teams. The
project team is assembled for a limited time to plan, build, and deploy the solution. MSF
provides a flexible and scalable way to plan, design, develop, and deploy successful IT
6
Microsoft Operations Framework
solutions. MSF guidance consists of principles, models, and disciplines for managing the
people, process, technology elements, risks, and the trade-offs that most projects
encounter. For more information about MSF, see http://www.microsoft.com/msf.
In contrast, the operations team is permanent and is responsible for the solution’s daily
operations and management. MOF is designed to guide the operations teams. It provides
technical guidance that enables organizations to achieve mission-critical system
reliability, availability, supportability, and manageability of IT solutions built with
Microsoft products and technologies. MOF’s guidance addresses the people, process,
technology, and management issues pertaining to operating complex, distributed,
heterogeneous IT environments. For more information about MOF, see
http://www.microsoft.com/mof.
The two frameworks are complementary, minimizing the time to value—that is, the time
between recognition of the need and delivery of the service. Consistency of terminology
and concepts between the two frameworks also supports the delivery of a high-quality
service.
The two frameworks are also well integrated. For example, the deployment of an IT
solution requires knowledge of the solution’s requirements and user controls as well as
the system requirements to operate it. MSF and MOF both include guidance for team
roles and processes that ensure a successful deployment into the production
environment. Throughout development, MSF and MOF emphasize the institution of
processes to ensure that the solution (or any change to the IT environment) is built for
operability and supportability, and that it meets release requirements.
MOF guidance is based on the direct knowledge and experience of Microsoft, its
partners, and consultants in the daily operation of large and small IT environments and
execution of software and IT service development projects. Microsoft also incorporates
and aligns with acknowledged standards from within the worldwide IT industry, often
enhancing and extending generic standards to facilitate their employment in Windowsbased operating environments.
Implementing MOF: Service
Improvement Projects
and Solution Accelerators
MOF core guidance, available through white papers and other guidance documents,
provides a solid foundation upon which to deploy and operate successful IT solutions.
MOF is also incorporated into prescriptive guidance to enhance IT operations for specific
functions and processes and in business solutions that combine tools and technologies
with MOF operations guidance.
The diagram below illustrates the relationship between MOF and these prescriptive
solutions. Core MOF guidance resides at the center of Microsoft operations guidance.
These core principles are elaborated upon through a catalog of more than 20 service
management function (SMF) documents, each of which describes and provides guidance
on a specific set of IT activities. In turn, the SMFs serve as the foundation for
progressively more prescriptive guidance to achieve specific objectives. This guidance is
available through service improvement project (SIP) guides and solution accelerators.
Each service improvement project (SIP) is intended to provide prescriptive guidance on
implementing or enhancing a particular service management function (or set thereof).
For example, an organization may conduct a SIP specifically to enhance its support
functions by improving help desk operations. MOF has released a SIP guide to provide
generic assistance in implementing projects of this type and is developing SIP guidance
for specific SMFs for future release.
MOF Executive Overview
7
Solution accelerators combine Microsoft products, additional tools and technologies, and
related SMFs to provide a packaged solution that adds service capabilities and business
value to your IT organization. Solution accelerators are available that assist in solving
several common business challenges, such as ensuring the efficient, reliable deployment
of Microsoft Windows Server™ 2003 and business desktops, patch management, service
monitoring and control, and others. By basing these solution accelerators on a MOF
foundation, Microsoft enhances the operability of deployed solutions, now and in the
future.
Figure 2. MOF core guidance supports actionable solutions
Currently available MSIM solution accelerators include:

Business Desktop Deployment

Enterprise Messaging

Internet Data Center

Service Monitoring and Control

Domain Server Consolidation and Migration

File and Print Server Consolidation and Migration

Patch Management (several versions)

Windows Server Deployment
For more information on these solution accelerators, visit
http://www.microsoft.com/technet.
8
Microsoft Operations Framework
MOF and ITIL
MOF aligns and builds on the IT service management practices that have been
documented within the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) maintained by the United
Kingdom’s Office of Government Commerce (OGC). The OGC is a U.K. government
executive agency chartered with development of best-practice advice and guidance on
the use of information technology in service management and operations. Microsoft has
been actively involved with the ITIL community since 1999, both using the ITIL content
and contributing to new and updated documentation, including co-authoring several
books.
ITIL currently includes more than 40 books. Of these, ten are of particular significance to
a corporate IT organization. Figure 3 illustrates these ten titles and their relationships.
Figure 3. The ITIL publication framework
Each of these ITIL publications is devoted to a function of IT service management and
contains cross-references to its companion publications.
One goal of MOF is to extend and enhance the practices and guidance offered through
ITIL in order to provide more detailed
prescriptive guidance in specific areas of
“Microsoft uses ITIL both as the
IT management.
MOF is similar to ITIL in several ways:

MOF (in conjunction with MSF) spans
the entire IT life cycle.

MOF is based on best practices for IT
management, drawing on the expertise
of an international group of
practitioners, including Microsoft
World Wide Services, Microsoft
Partners, Microsoft customers, and the
internal (and extensive) Microsoft IT
operations group.

The MOF body of knowledge is
applicable across the business
community—from small business to
basis for Microsoft Operations
Framework, which is our structured
approach to helping customers
achieve IT operational excellence,
and in how we operate our own
systems. We are proud to have
contributed as lead authors to the
writing of the Application
Management and the Planning to
Implement Service Management
books in the ITIL collection.”
Rick Devenuti
CIO and Corporate Vice President
Microsoft Services
MOF Executive Overview
9
enterprise. MOF is not just for those operating on the Microsoft platform within
homogenous environments.

Like ITIL, MOF has expanded to include more than just a documentation set. MOF is
a core component of the MSIM solution accelerators, ensuring that solutions are
operable in your IT environment, post-deployment. Furthermore, a variety of
resources have been developed to support MOF principles and guidance, including
self-assessments, IT management tools that incorporate MOF terminology and
features, training programs and certification, and consulting services. These are
offered by numerous third-party vendors and consultants.
MOF expands upon and extends ITIL through the following:

Addition of the MOF Team and Process Models and Risk Management Discipline
(summarized subsequently within this document).

Simplification of IT processes into a simple diagrammatic model, with all
components and their relationships visible at a glance.

Focus on the service-delivery level of IT management, rather than on IT operations in
their entirety. For example, ITIL identifies individual service functions such as
Service Level Management and Capacity Management; these are described within
the ITIL Service Delivery publication. In contrast, MOF individually recognizes over
20 service delivery functions and devotes an entire publication to each of them,
providing descriptions, examples, and best practice guidance.

Combination of ITIL collaborative industry standards with specific guidelines for
using Microsoft products and technologies.

Scalability of MOF guidance and principles from implementation within a single
service to implementation across a high-order structure such as a data center or
entire operations environment. 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 e-commerce systems.
MOF and Quality of Service Improvement
Initiatives
IT organizations often implement service improvement programs as a result of feedback
obtained through MOF-based review exercises or other review processes. The question
may arise, “Is MOF compatible with my preferred quality improvement methodology?”
In most cases, the answer is “Yes.” MOF and ITIL can be applied simultaneously with
most of the project management methodologies and standards that are currently
employed for service improvement. The following are some examples of compatible
programs:

PRINCE2 is a standard project management methodology (developed and made
available by the OGC) that can be applied to ensure improvement projects are
managed systematically. Like MSF, PRINCE2 can be used to apply good project
management skills to an operations environment for a structured approach to release
rollouts and/or service improvement projects.

Six Sigma techniques are applicable, for example, to establish project rationales and
charters for quality improvement projects; these techniques can be used to
implement the original design and improvements to it. Total Quality Management
(TQM), a related methodology, can be used in much the same way.

Quality-management standards, such as International Organization for
Standardization (ISO) 9000, can be applied in conjunction with ITIL to good effect.
(For more information, see the ITIL publication Quality Management for IT Services.)
Quality-management systems, such as the EFQM Excellence Model in Europe and
10
Microsoft Operations Framework
the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award (MBNQA) in the United States,
complement these efforts.

Capability maturity models (CMMs)—such as Carnegie Mellon’s CMM and
Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI)—and ISO 15504, also known as
Software Process Improvement and Capability dEtermination (SPICE), can be used
with MOF to determine the capability of one’s MOF SMFs against an industrystandard framework; the MOF Operations Assessment, for example, uses the ISO
15504 standard as its basis.

The IT Governance Institute develops and publishes its guidelines on IT governance
as Control Objectives for Information and related Technology (CobiT). Especially
with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, corporate governance and audit are
increasingly important with businesses of all sizes.
Within MOF, several mechanisms have been included to assist in monitoring and
enhancing quality of service. The Service Level Management SMF provides a means for
IT operations to negotiate the service levels they will provide to service customers and to
monitor metrics to evaluate the quality provided. The MOF Optimizing Quadrant, one of
four areas within the MOF Process Model, is dedicated to the assessment and
enhancement of quality IT service.
Getting Started with MOF
MOF provides IT with an internationally recognized body of guidance to facilitate the
management and operation of the IT infrastructure. Guidance may be applied within
organizations of all sizes—from small businesses to global enterprises. An IT
organization can begin to apply MOF anywhere in the environment and then branch out
into other areas. Furthermore, MOF guidance may be applied incrementally, adding
additional components as an organization matures in its operating capabilities.
The MOF Team Model, described later in this document, defines a set of roles that
encompass the full range of activities involved in operating an IT infrastructure. MOF
provides flexibility in assigning these roles within an existing corporate organizational
hierarchy. Similarly, the MOF Process Model groups together common IT processes at
various stages of the IT life cycle and associates them with the relevant roles.
Implementation of MOF may progress toward various levels of maturity. In addition,
different processes and functions within MOF may progress at rates that are best suited
for your business. The first step is to understand your current organization’s strengths
and weaknesses, and to prioritize your goals for improvement. Following that,
organizations typically implement one or more service improvement projects (SIPs) to
upgrade their capabilities within the desired IT service functions. In short, the flexibility
and modularity of the MOF framework permits you to quickly adapt MOF to fit your
needs and your organizational structure.
The MOF Components
MOF comprises several components: core knowledge provided through white papers,
prescriptive guidance presented through SIPs, SMFs, and solution accelerators, and
training, made available through a network of qualified training partners. All of these
components are based on these foundation elements of MOF:

The Team Model

The Process Model

The Risk Management Discipline
These provide guidance about people, process, and risk management in IT service
management. Each focuses on enabling technologies and best practices for achieving
MOF Executive Overview
11
high systems availability, reliability, supportability, and manageability on the Microsoft
platform. They also provide guidance on interoperability with other technology
platforms. The sections that follow discuss the three MOF components.
The MOF Team Model
Overview
The MOF Team Model was developed to provide agility in adapting to the complexities
of geographically or institutionally distributed teams managing distributed systems.
While maintaining a high degree of flexibility, the MOF Team Model also assigns specific
accountability and responsibility to team roles; this enables a MOF-based organization to
measure and improve its effectiveness even though service functions may be spread
across multiple locations and even through multiple subgroups.
The MOF Team Model organizes an IT operations organization into several role clusters;
these are individuals or groups who perform related activities to accomplish a particular
component of an IT service. These role cluster assignments are based on industry best
practices for structuring operations teams. MOF then provides additional guidance that
applies collectively and individually to the role clusters, describing:

Key activities and competencies of each role cluster.

Recommendations for scaling the teams for different sizes and types of
organizations.

Effective combination of roles for smaller teams.

Interaction of MOF operations teams with MSF development teams.
Guiding Principles
Building successful, efficient operations teams requires more than just role and
responsibility descriptions. It also requires shared principles that instill a sense of
business priorities and establish set guidelines for how the team should function. The
five primary principles and guidelines that apply to all role clusters within the MOF
Team Model are:

To provide timely, efficient, and accurate customer service.

To understand the business priorities and enable IT to add business value.

To build strong, synergistic virtual teams.

To leverage IT automation and knowledge management tools.

To attract, develop, and retain strong IT operations staff.
12
Microsoft Operations Framework
Team Model Role Clusters
Experience has shown that, to be successful, IT management teams must achieve
numerous quality goals associated with key service functions. The role clusters of the
MOF Team Model are organized around seven general categories of activities and
processes, each with its own set of quality goals. Role descriptions within a cluster are
focused specifically on activities directed to meet the quality goals; they are not job
descriptions, and they do not imply any kind of corporate organization.
The following diagram maps the seven role clusters to two dozen possible functional
roles or function teams in a typical operations organization. The rest of this section
summarizes the functions of each of the seven role clusters.
Figure 4. MOF Team Model role clusters and examples of functional roles or function
teams
MOF Executive Overview
13
Role Cluster Details
Descriptions for each of the role clusters are provided in the table below.
Table 3
Role Cluster
Description
Release
Tracks changes and lessons learned in a corporate knowledge base.
Tracks inventory and changes in a configuration management database
(CMDB).
Acts as liaison between the change development team and the
operations groups; it encompasses the ITIL disciplines of configuration
management and software control and distribution.
Infrastructure
Defines physical environment standards.
Manages physical assets.
Maintains the IT infrastructure and oversees IT architecture evolution.
Coordinates building and office moves, expansions and acquisitions,
and physical environment changes such as wiring, lab space, and user
connectivity.
Support
Provides technical support for internal and external customers,
resolving incidents and problems using highly automated tools and
knowledge base systems.
Provides production support for line-of-business (LOB) applications.
Gives feedback to the development and design team.
Operations
Ensures that daily, routine tasks are performed reliably within specific
technology areas and production systems (messaging, system
administration, etc.).
Performs scheduled and repeatable processes such as data backup,
archiving and storage, output management, system monitoring and
event log management, and file and print server management.
Partner
Defines and manages partnerships in a mutually beneficial and costeffective manner.
Includes both the internal manager responsible for the relationships
with external parties, and those parties themselves.
Security
Ensures data confidentiality, data integrity, and data availability.
Influences business policies, such as defining exit procedures to follow
when an employee leaves the company.
Service
Ensures that all of the IT services being provided to customers are
aligned to the customers’ need for them.
Maintains a working relationship with customers, understanding their
need for IT services, and managing the introduction of new services,
service improvements, and (eventually) service reductions and
retirements.
14
Microsoft Operations Framework
The MOF Process Model
Overview
The MOF Process Model provides a functional blueprint and description of the processes
that operations teams perform to manage and maintain IT services. It assumes that the
operations group’s main responsibility is managing change in the IT environment. The
most effective way to deal with change throughout the lifespan of a service is to group
related changes together into a package called a release, so that the changes can be
planned and managed as a unit. The MOF Process Model describes a life cycle that can be
applied to any release and the processes and activities that make up each part of that life
cycle.
Guiding Principles
The MOF Process Model is based on four guiding principles:

Structured architecture. The MOF Process Model organizes all operational activities
needed for mission-critical computing in a complex IT environment.

Rapid life cycle, iterative improvement. MOF supports an iterative IT life cycle that
facilitates rapid assessment and change to respond to evolving business needs.

Review-driven management. The Process Model requires operations management
reviews (OMRs) at key points in the life cycle. In these reviews, the team and key
stakeholders evaluate performance for release-based activities as well as time-based
operational activities.

Embedded risk management. Since the ultimate business cost of an IT service failure can
be catastrophic, MOF proactively manages risk throughout operational processes.
Process Model Quadrants
The MOF Process Model describes a life cycle that can be applied to releases of any size
and relating to any service solution. The model groups similar IT management functions
called service management functions (SMFs) into each of four quadrants. Each quadrant
owns a specific mission of service. Note that, although the circular aspect of the MOF
Process Model implies that management activities occur sequentially, in fact several
releases, each at a different stage in the IT life cycle, may occur simultaneously within an
IT organization. Furthermore, the service management functions described in the
Operating and Supporting quadrants all occur continuously and simultaneously within
the data center. The following diagram illustrates the basic life cycle, including the four
quadrants and the four OMRs.
MOF Executive Overview
15
Figure 5. The MOF Process Model
The following table lists the mission of service and the OMR for each quadrant.
Table 4
Quadrant
Mission of Service
OMR
Changing
Introduce new service solutions,
technologies, systems,
applications, hardware, and
processes.
Release Readiness Review provides
approval to deploy the fully developed
and tested release.
Operating
Execute day-to-day tasks
effectively and efficiently.
Operations Review is scheduled
periodically to evaluate IT staff’s ability
to maintain a given service, meet
service level requirements, and
document its experience in a
knowledge base.
Supporting Resolve incidents, problems, and
inquiries quickly.
Service level agreement (SLA) is
performed periodically and evaluates
the staff’s ability to meet the service
level requirements defined in the
service level agreement.
Optimizing Drive changes to optimize cost,
performance, capacity, and
availability in the delivery of IT
services.
Change Initiation Review increases
likelihood that proposed changes are in
alignment with business objectives and
operability requirements.
Two of the OMRs are driven by the release schedule. The Change Initiation Review
(formerly the Release Approved Review) is completed before formal development work
begins on a new or updated release, and the Release Readiness Review is conducted
before deploying the release into the production environment. The Operations Review
and the SLA Review are held at regular intervals after the introduction of a release in
order to assess the internal operations and performance against customer service levels.
16
Microsoft Operations Framework
As a result, the Operating Quadrant is where MOF will provide the majority of the
operation’s guidance specific to Microsoft products and technologies. In addition, due to
the focus that Microsoft applies to IT operations, many products are now incorporating
features and functions directly targeted at making them more supportable, reliable, and
manageable. Where applicable, MOF extends the foundational IT SMFs of ITIL with
specific references to Microsoft products and features that either automate or improve
the delivery of the SMF.
The Service Management Functions
Each of the SMFs within a particular quadrant shares a common mission of service, or
goal. Many of the SMFs are based upon the OGC’s IT Infrastructure Library. The notable
exceptions are Workforce Management (in the Optimizing Quadrant) and all SMFs in the
Operating Quadrant. Because ITIL is platform-independent, it does not cover these items.
SMFs are best practices and typically will require customization to address unique or
specific requirements of a particular operations environment.
The SMFs and the quadrants they belong to are shown in the following figure.
Figure 6. MOF Process Model and SMFs
Each SMF has specific guidance written for it within MOF. Each guidance document
typically provides:

General principles for the specific service management functional area.

A description of the roles involved in implementing the service function and their
responsibilities.

Annotated lists of the daily, weekly, monthly, and as-needed tasks required to apply
the SMF in a production environment.
A more detailed overview of the SMFs and their components is provided in the MOF
Process Model white paper.
MOF Executive Overview
17
Process and Team Model Convergence
The MOF Team Model role clusters generally align with the four process quadrants of
the MOF Process Model, as shown in the following diagram. Note that multiple roles
may be involved in a single quadrant, and a single role (such as Supplier or Security)
may be involved in multiple quadrants. The Partner Role Cluster may be involved
anywhere within the Process Model, so is omitted for brevity.
Figure 7. MOF Team Model role clusters and their alignment to the MOF Process
Model
The MOF Risk Management Discipline
Overview
MOF and MSF collect guidance pertaining to risk management into a body of knowledge
called a discipline. A distinction is made between disciplines and models, since
knowledge contained within a discipline may be applied at any stage of any process. The
MOF and MSF Risk Management Disciplines are substantially identical, although
descriptions and examples provided in their detailed presentations may vary.
The Risk Management Discipline for operations applies proven risk management
techniques to the daily problems faced by operations staff. Many models, frameworks,
and processes exist for managing risks. These all share similarities in how they identify
and manage risk. The MOF and MSF Risk Management Disciplines improve upon most
of these risk management schemes through the application of key principles, a
customized terminology, a structured and repeatable risk analysis and evaluation
process, and integration into a larger operations framework.
18
Microsoft Operations Framework
Guiding Principles
The Risk Management Discipline for operations advocates these principles for successful
risk management in operations:

Assess risks continuously. This means the team never stops searching for new risks,
and it means that existing risks are periodically re-evaluated.

Integrate risk management into every role and every function. At a high level, this means
that every IT role shares part of the responsibility for managing risk, and every IT
process is designed with risk management in mind.

Treat risk identification positively. For risk management to succeed, team members
must be willing to identify risk without fear of retribution or criticism.

Use risk-based scheduling. Maintaining an environment often means making changes
in a sequence; and, where possible, the team should make the riskiest changes first to
avoid wasting time and resources on changes that cannot be released.

Establish an acceptable level of formality. Success requires a process that the team
understands and uses.
These principles are summarized in the word proactive. A team that practices proactive
risk management acknowledges that risk is a normal part of operations and, instead of
fearing risk, the team views it as an opportunity to safeguard the future. Team members
demonstrate a proactive mindset by adopting a visible, measurable, repeatable,
continuous process through which they objectively evaluate risks and opportunities and
take action that addresses the causes of risk as well as its symptoms.
Risk Management Process
The following diagram illustrates the steps of the risk management process: identify,
analyze, plan, track, control, and learn. It is important to understand that each risk goes
through all of these steps at least once and often cycles through each of them numerous
times. Also, each risk has its own timeline, so multiple risks might be in each step at any
point in time.
Figure 8. The process of managing risk
The six steps in the process lead risk managers and team members through a process to
identify risk, determine its potential impact, and plan to deal with it in a proactive
manner. Other steps in the process enable organizations to track risks throughout the IT
life cycle, control risks as they occur, and learn from experience.
MOF Executive Overview
19
Additional Information
Guidance Documents and Solution
Accelerators
In-depth descriptions, explanations, and examples are available for the core MOF
components described in this overview. The MOF Team and Process Models, as well as
the Risk Management Discipline, are each fully developed in separate white papers. Each
of the service management functions listed is also the subject of a focused guidance
document. All of these resources in turn list related and associated guidance documents
that may be applied. These are available from the Microsoft MOF Web site at
http://www.microsoft.com/mof.
Further information on solution accelerators related to IT management may be viewed at
http://www.microsoft.com/business/reducecosts/efficiency/manageability/bestpractices.
mspx.
Additional information on Microsoft Solutions Framework is available at
http://www.microsoft.com/msf/.
For additional information on ITIL, visit http://www.itil.co.uk/.
Courses
Suggested courses on ITIL and MOF are:

ITIL Service Management Essentials

Microsoft Operations Framework Essentials (1737B)

Microsoft Operations Framework Changing Quadrant (1787B)
For course availability, see http://www.microsoft.com/learning/training/default.asp.
Books
The following book is recommended for additional information about the concepts in
this white paper:

IT Service Management, IT Service Management Forum/CCTA, ITIMF Ltd., 1995