Achieving and Managing Availability SLAs with ITIL Driven Processes, DevOps, and Workflow Tools

TL;DR

This paper discusses how Wolters Kluwer CT Corporation improved system availability by integrating ITIL processes with Agile and DevOps practices, using automation and organizational changes to meet SLAs effectively.

Contribution

It presents a comprehensive approach combining ITIL, Agile, and DevOps to enhance availability SLAs through workflow automation and process engineering.

Findings

Significant progress in meeting availability SLAs.

Effective use of automation and organizational models.

Integration of ITIL with Agile and DevOps practices.

Abstract

System and application availability continues to be a fundamental characteristic of IT services. In recent years the IT Operations team at Wolters Kluwer CT Corporation has placed special focus on this area. Using a combination of goals, metrics, processes, organizational models, communication methods, corrective maintenance, root cause analysis, preventative engineering, automated alerting, and workflow automation significant progress has been made in meeting availability SLAs or Service Level Agreements. This paper presents the background of this work, approach, details of its implementation, and results. A special focus is provided on the use of a classical ITIL view as operationalized in an Agile and DevOps environment. Keywords: System Availability, Software Reliability, ITIL, Workflow Automation, Process Engineering, Production Support, Customer Support, Product Support, Change Management, Release Management, Incident Management, Problem Management, Organizational Design, Scrum, Agile, DevOps, Service Level Agreements, Software Measurement, Microsoft SharePoint.