* What Microsoft’s Operational Framework offers
In a recent article, I talked about the importance of developing processes and mentioned that the IT Infrastructure Library was receiving increasingly more interest. A reader wrote that he agreed with the points in the article, but it would be helpful for our other readers to know about Microsoft’s Operational Framework.
Our reader likes MOF because it addresses some of the more practical aspects of process development. MOF is built on ITIL, and the reader says that “anyone who’s worked with ITIL will recognize concepts common to both – but [MOF] includes a lot of pragmatic processes and concepts related to the actual running of an informatics service. Areas like staffing and team management are covered, for instance.”
MOF includes modules for disciplines, a team model and a process model. The best practices are based on experience from Microsoft, partners and customers. The MOF resources library includes a MOF Executive Overview, MOF Self-Assessment tool, MOF Process Model for Operations, MOF Team Model for Operations, MOF Risk Management Discipline for Operations, and Service Management Functions. This library ca be accessed at:
https://www.microsoft.com/technet/itsolutions/techguide/mof/default.mspx
One of the nice things about MOF is that it is free, unlike ITIL (as our reader points out), as a download from Microsoft’s Web site. However, also note that MOF is geared to Microsoft environments, although it can also be applied to environments using non-Microsoft platforms. For something that’s free, adaptation for other environments seems a small price to pay.
Finally, our reader says that the real selling point of MOF is that you can download a framework document and start filling in the blanks right away. He finds that it is a “real jumpstart toward getting the base documentation done.” I’m all for anything that helps to make the task of documenting IT easier.
So if process is your current area of focus, you should check out Microsoft’s MOF.
