IT Services: Costs, Metrics, Benchmarking, and Marketing

11.2. Ensuring Success

Devising an account management plan, defining success, and mutually agreeing to the definition via a service level agreement does not in and of itself guarantee success. The services identified in earlier chapters must be executed in an appropriate sequence and level of intensity. Much like the need for the account plan and service level agreement from a general standpoint, there is a need to "get in front of the curve" from a micro or individual application standpoint.

Sun Microsystems has created a process that ensures that operational services required to support and enable new applications during development, testing, and production are identified. This process is called the Client Server Production Acceptance (CSPA) ...