Production support refers to the practices and disciplines of supporting the IT systems and applications that are currently being used by end-users. A production support person or team is responsible for monitoring the production servers, scheduled jobs, incident management, and receiving incidents and requests from end-users, analyzing these, and either responding to the end-user with a solution or escalating it to other IT teams such as developers, system engineers, and database administrators.
Production support is a vital role within enterprise technology, and it is known by different names, including Application Support, Production Management, and Application Management. Production support involves working closely with business stakeholders, such as traders, to resolve any issues with technical systems and applications. The Production Support team picks up tickets raised by traders and works to address the issues, liaising with other technical teams where necessary.
Production support analysts are required to respond to automated systems that monitor the health of both software applications and infrastructure. They are also responsible for quickly solving problems with the aim of reducing the business impact of a technology issue. Production support teams mainly work in phases 2 and 3 of the technical lifecycle of an application, which includes development, user acceptance testing, and production.
The responsibilities of a production support person/team include:
- Monitoring production servers and scheduled jobs
- Incident management and receiving incidents and requests from end-users
- Analyzing incidents and requests and responding with a solution or escalating to other IT teams
- Working closely with business stakeholders to resolve any issues with technical systems and applications
- Responding to automated systems that monitor the health of both software applications and infrastructure
- Quickly solving problems with the aim of reducing the business impact of a technology issue
In summary, production support is a critical function in IT that ensures the smooth running of systems and applications used by end-users. Production support teams work closely with business stakeholders to resolve issues and are responsible for quickly solving problems to minimize the business impact of technology issues.
