Unit 12 IT Technical Support and Management Assignment Brief

Unit in Brief

Learners investigate the support and management of IT systems, carry out support tasks and prepare a support and management plan, all of which are essential for organisations to operate.

Unit Introduction

Effective IT technical support and management of systems are vital to organisation and individual performance. Organisations require their IT systems to perform at their optimum capacity and efficiency, as any downtime of these systems can lead to lost working time or capacity. Individuals working in organisations often lack the technical expertise to maintain their systems correctly and efficiently, which is why support teams are employed to do this job for them.

In this unit, you will examine the support and management needs and characteristics of IT systems used by organisations, identifying areas where support is necessary and the different job roles involved. You will examine the legislation and regulations that are in place to provide a safe and productive environment for employees. You will carry out a series of practical IT support activities on a system and a range of devices, which could include performing software updates and changing user access rights. You will monitor system performance and optimise it to meet the client’s requirements. You will learn about and apply appropriate behaviours to complete these activities.

Finally, you will prepare a support and management plan for a new IT system.

This unit will help to prepare you for progression to higher education, and in particular it will develop your communication, problem-solving and planning skills, which are valued by higher education providers. It will also prepare you for employment in the IT sector or for an  IT apprenticeship.

Summary of Unit

Learning Aims

Learning aim A: Examine the IT system support and management needs and characteristics of different organisations, which are essential to their operation

A1 Purpose and nature of IT system support and management

• The main purpose of IT system support and management is to:
  o support different types of user using the system, including end users who can be classified as beginners, intermediate or expert, and administrators who have access rights that include the support staff
  o provide continuity of IT-based:
  – systems, e.g. servers and virtual personal computers, cloud storage, mobile devices, laptops, bring your own device (BYOD) and network systems
  – processes, e.g. financial management, email communications and stock control
  o maintain and improve the performance of organisations through system diagnosis, preventative maintenance and system upgrade and configuration
  o ensure security and protection of data in the system, including storage and backup and recovery in the event of system failure.
• Understand that the support and management needs of organisations varies across the system’s life cycle:
  o design, build and test, e.g. install software, configure systems, training and setting up users
  o operate, e.g. password resets, fault logging and management, managing data storage
  o decommission, e.g. archive and migrate system data, recycle hardware.
• Understand that:
  o support resources include: human, number and type of software licences, number and type of hardware devices, capacity requirements, e.g. size of hard disk drive (HDD) and network o demand increases due to organisational change, e.g. changes to processes  and systems
  o user need for support can be frequent or infrequent depending on their usage of the systems, expertise and access rights
  o support provided is a compromise between cost, the resource availability, productivity of users and the environmental impact, e.g. energy consumption and reuse/recycling of hardware
  o organisational needs can vary by sector, e.g. office, process and engineering industries and entertainment, IT and media sectors.

A2 Safe working practices in IT support and management

• Safe working practices for the use and care of IT equipment in organisations as covered under the current regulations or other relevant international equivalents, including:
  o display screen equipment (DSE), e.g. the adjustment of screen height and angle, display screen equipment health and safety regulations, including:
  – disorders that can arise from negligence
  – precautions to be taken to ensure effective practice
  o manual handling operations regulations, including:
  – lifting, carrying and lowering, pushing and pulling
  – repetitive tasks, stretching, bending, awkward postures
  o portable appliance testing (PAT) – provision and use of work equipment regulations
  – electricity at work regulations
  – standards and codes of practice
  o effects on the organisation should safe working practices not be followed, e.g. legal action, employee turnover and absence.
• IT support related health and safety hazards, including:
  o electrocution and electrostatic discharge (ESD), e.g. from an unprotected power supply
  o fire, e.g. from faulty wiring
  o ergonomics of workstations that could result in injury or reduced productivity.
• Hazard mitigation methods, including ESD wrist strap, ESD mat, firefighting equipment and training, first-aid training.

A3 Job roles in IT technical support and management

Typical job roles in the IT technical support function, including:

• 1st line support who collect the customer’s information and determine the customer’s issue by analysing the symptoms
• 2nd line support who prioritise support activities and take on more technical problem-solving activities
• 3rd line support who understand the strategic priorities, routinely manage the most complex activities and determine underlying problems
• infrastructure architects who design enterprise IT solutions
• network administrators who often work as part of 2nd and 3rd line support.

A4 System and network support and management tools

Understand the function of the tools that a system administrator and/or manager can use to support the day-to-day running of the system, including:

• network performance monitoring and management tools, e.g. bandwidth and application monitoring and network scanners
• provision of user desktop computing by various means, including server virtualisation with thin client computing and web-based applications
• tools used to create and remotely deploy desktop disk images
• asset management, including software licences
• remote desktop access and control and administration, including performing updates.

Learning aim B: Carry out routine support and management activities on  IT systems

B1 Management of user support requests

• Understand that:
  o an issue prevents the intended use or operation of an IT system, or infringes the rule of law or an organisation’s policies, e.g. forgotten login details, privacy and copyright, insufficient user training
  o a fault is a defect in either hardware or software that prevents the intended use or operation of an IT system.
• IT support and management processes:
  o  issue and fault management, including raising a support ticket, assigning a severity and priority to the request, classifying the request, allocating the request to a support technician, escalation of unresolved requests and communicating the status of requests to users
  o service-level agreements (SLAs) covering request solution and performance monitoring of the IT support function, e.g. ticket volumes, response times, closure rates
  o communicating with user, including listening skills, tone of voice, communicating factual information, e.g. estimated time for repair and estimated cost
  o customer satisfaction and analysis of support request data to identify issues, including training needs, problem software and hardware, scheduling of resources (e.g. time of day/week when most problems occur), staffing issues.
• IT support and management systems:
  o reporting systems, including telephone helpdesk and web-based reporting tools
  o recording information about the issue/fault, including date, name of person, location of issue/fault, type of device, location of device, error code, parts used, description, symptom(s)
  o solution knowledge base and its use to support technicians, e.g. automatic error messages, helpdesk records, questioning the user, technical manuals
  o actions taken, including issue/fault history, record of work carried out.

B2 Routine support activities

Routine support activities for an IT system, including:

• helpdesk and technical support – issue and fault logging and management, communicating with users, routine support and repair tasks, work around solutions.
• analysis of system data to identify problem areas and trends and to improve performance, e.g. amount of downtime, application monitoring, system monitoring software
• account management – user account creation, password resets, setting and adjusting access rights, storage area limits.

B3 System management and implementation activities 

IT system management and implementation activities, including:

• system installation, upgrades and adjusting system settings, including:
  o individual device configuration, e.g. mobile devices, laptops, firewall
  o storage management, including backup and restore
  o upgrades, e.g. random-access memory (RAM), hard drive and additional hardware cards
  o peripheral installation and/or configuration, e.g. printers, scanners or extra monitors.
• Software management, including patches or new application roll-out, upgrades, e.g. office applications and security, software removal.
• Disk configuration, including creating network shared drives, creating disk images, setting permissions on folders.

B4 Performance of IT systems

• Security optimisation, e.g. firewalls and access control rules, latest patches and known vulnerabilities, device hardening as required, management of system permissions.
• Traffic optimisation, e.g. checking performance, under load, throughput and speed, identifying bottlenecks and how these might be resolved.
• Improving system performance:
  o techniques, e.g. basic input/output system (BIOS) settings, firmware updates (‘flashing’), operating systems (OS) settings, memory management, disk optimisation, antivirus, anti-spyware, hardware and software upgrades
  o upgrades, including:
  – hardware processor, e.g. memory, video card, motherboard, router
  – software, e.g. installing patches, installation and un-installation procedures, system rollback.
• Automated system monitoring, e.g. servers, disk space and network availability and monitoring of a system during support activities to ensure it works as intended.

B5 Personal behaviours 

• Time management, including planning, setting relevant targets, how and when feedback from others will be gathered.
• Reviewing and responding to outcomes, including the use of feedback from others.
• Behaviours and their impact on outcomes, to include professionalism, etiquette, communication, supportive of others, appropriate leadership, and responsibility.             

Learning aim C: Develop a plan to support and manage a new IT system using industry standards and methods

C1 IT system diagrams

• Understand and interpret computer system documents in written and graphical form, to include route maps, upgrade paths, schedules, Gantt charts, reports of network performance monitoring and maintenance checklists.

C2 Incident response and disaster recovery planning

Organisation continuity planning in accordance with the current ISO/IEC 27031 or other relevant international equivalents:

• management of incidents, including identification, classification, and priority of incidents, minimising business impact and workaround solutions
• identifying areas for IT readiness and critical systems
• measure continuity, security and readiness for a potential disaster, including recovery time objective (RTO) and recovery point objective (RPO)
• backup planning
• site mirroring and when this is best implemented
• disaster recovery procedures and planning for unplanned downtimes, including possible workaround solutions.

C3 Capacity planning

• Capacity of systems based on the type, location and number of concurrent users and overtime and the nature of the work being done.
• Optimisation of networked systems and assets to provide value for money for an organisation.
• Capacity planning to cover the current and future needs of an organisation, based on three-, five- and ten-year intervals.
• Capacity considerations, to include system requirements, scalability, availability and suitability of cloud-based solutions and customer experience.
• Monitoring of the system, e.g. disk, memory and central processing unit (CPU) capacity and performance over the system life cycle and to identify potential bottlenecks, g. peaks, spikes and troughs.

C4 Sustainability and environmental waste planning

• Sustainability considerations, including external service providers/cloud, consideration of finite resources, reduction of waste with recycling, repair of hardware and software instead of replacing, sourcing of products that reduce carbon, remote working.
• Environmental management, including:
  o  on-site IT system effects, e.g. ground water, air quality, noise pollution
  o recycling, to include current and relevant parts of waste electric and electronic equipment regulations or other international equivalents.

C5 An IT technical support and management plan

• Understand that all IT support and management plans should have a purpose, a defined scope of the IT systems covered, client’s requirements and constraints.
• An IT support and management plan should cover as a minimum: disaster recovery, incident response, capacity management, and sustainability and environmental management. Other parts of a support and management plan could include:
  o security planning, e.g. apply and monitor procedures for security, including access controls, malware protection, data protection, internet and email protection, encryption, audit trails
  o ergonomics, e.g. workstation layout, positioning of equipment, health and safety issues, including repetitive strain injury (RSI), eye strain, electrical equipment safety, trailing cables, PAT
  o floor plans to show the positioning of office furniture, e.g. desks, cabinets and positioning of IT equipment, e.g. workstations, cabling, servers, printers, lighting, air conditioning
  o outsourcing of IT services, e.g. cloud storage, including SLAs
  o other procedures and policies, e.g. fault and issue reporting and escalation process, user support documentation and acceptable usage and safe use policies, g. internet.

Assessment Criteria

Essential information for Assignments

The recommended structure of assessment is shown in the unit summary along with suitable forms of evidence. Section 6 gives information on setting assignments and there is further information on our website.

There is a maximum number of three summative assignments for this unit. The relationship of the learning aims and criteria is:

Learning aim: A (A.P1, A.P2, A.M1, A.D1)

Learning aim: B (B.P3, B.P4, B.M2, B.D2)

Learning aim: C (C.P5, C.P6, C.M3, C.D3)

Further information for teachers and Assessors 

Resource requirements

For this unit, learners must have access to:

• a wide range of research resources, largely text and internet based, including appropriate regulations
• industry standard software, e.g. Packet Tracer, OpenNMS^®, Zenoss^® Core IP Scanner, Total Network Monitor, operating systems for servers, including open source versions and Mac OS^® where possible
• an IT system(s), including as a minimum, Linux^®-based and Windows^®-based systems and where possible Mac based.

Essential information for assessment decisions

Learning aim A

For distinction standard, learners will evaluate the support and management needs and characteristics of at least two different IT systems. The systems will be different in their nature,  for example the numbers of users and the IT skill level of the users might be different.  The systems may also be different in the way support is provided, for example in-house or outsourced. Learners’ evaluation will include a comparison of the support and management provided and will give clear, reasoned justification of where improvements might be possible.  For example, a support team managing a system with a large number of non-expert IT users might develop online training materials to update users’ skills with the latest version of office software.

Learners will produce a clear and balanced evaluation that will be logically structured and easy to understand by a third party who may not be an IT professional. Technical language must be fluent and accurate throughout, along with a good standard of grammar and spelling.

For merit standard, learners will compare the support and management needs and characteristics, including the purpose and nature, safe working practice, job roles and tools  used, to support and manage at least two different IT systems. For example, in an office-based environment such as telesales, there is typically significant in-house IT support as many users  will not be IT experts and the systems are business critical, whereas in a software development company, IT support is likely to be minimal as most users are likely to be experts.

Overall, the comparison will be clear and logically structured, technically accurate and easy  to understand.

For pass standard, learners will explain the purpose and nature of the safe working practices required to support and manage different IT systems. For example, in an office environment,  the display screen equipment (DSE) regulations are important to prevent injury or discomfort.

Learners will explain the common job roles and system and network tools used to support and manage at least two different IT systems. For example, in an office-based environment with a  large number of users, support roles are likely to include 1st, 2nd and 3rd line support and an infrastructure architect. However, in a software development company, 1st line support may not  be required as most issues raised will be complex technical ones.

Overall, the evidence will be logically structured. It may be basic in parts, for example covering more generic statements that do not link to the context. The evidence may contain minor inaccuracies or omissions for example, the name of a regulation may be incorrect.      

Learning aim B

For distinction standard, learners will complete at least six routine support activities effectively and safely to meet the client’s requirements. They will carry out performance monitoring of the system and will optimise the system to meet the client’s requirements, based on their findings.  For example, by adjusting security settings, updating software, adjusting the operating system configuration and carrying out hardware upgrades. They will provide detailed evidence of the optimisation they have done and how it is intended to improve performance.

Overall, learners’ evidence will demonstrate that they have understood how systems can be optimised during support and that they can demonstrate effective behaviours while completing the activities. For example, effective behaviours may include time management, where learners will prepare an activity plan before starting the assignment and/or how they collected feedback on their users’ satisfaction. Learners will use technical language fluently and accurately, showing a clear understanding of IT support and management.

For merit standard, learners will demonstrate in their evidence that they can complete at least  six different routine IT support activities safely and will use appropriate processes consistently.  For example, learners will record each issue or fault correctly and assign a corresponding severity and priority. Learners will use appropriate processes while monitoring the performance of the systems. For example, when taking user feedback and using network specific monitoring tools,  such as a Packet Tracer.

Overall, learners’ evidence will demonstrate that they can complete different technical support activities to meet the client’s needs. The evidence will also demonstrate that appropriate behaviours have been used, for example taking responsibility and being professional.

For pass standard, learners will demonstrate in their evidence that they are able to complete at least six different support activities safely. For example, they might configure devices, complete  a backup and restore, upgrade some hardware, install a peripheral device, create a shared drive  and install an application. During the activities, learners will demonstrate the application of some appropriate processes. For example, learners will configure a laptop using the correct process  but they may not take sufficient and accurate notes of the issue and its resolution.

Learners’ evidence will demonstrate that they can monitor a system’s performance against the client’s requirements. For example, learners might monitor the application performance on a network and identify a shortage of bandwidth.

Overall, the support activities should be fully completed and there will be evidence of using some appropriate behaviours. For example, learners may listen closely to a user’s issue or fault but their tone of voice may not be appropriate.

Learning aim C

For distinction standard, learners will evaluate their refined IT support and management plan and will consider the feedback from others. They will provide evidence of the feedback they have obtained and show how they have used it. For example, those parts of the plan that are fully complete and those that may need further information to fully meet the client’s requirements.

Overall, learners’ evidence will be logically structured and easy to understand by a third party who may not be an IT professional. Accurate technical language must be used fluently, along with a good standard of grammar and spelling. If any diagrams are present then they will be appropriately detailed, fully annotated and technically accurate.

For merit standard, learners will provide in their evidence a clear, balanced and sound justification to support decisions taken in their IT support and management plan. For example, learners may justify the choice of operating system by giving an accurate and reasoned rationale for their choice. The justification given will mirror the client’s requirements and be fit for purpose.

Overall, the evidence will be logically structured, technically accurate and easy to understand.

For pass standard, learners will produce an IT support and management plan for a given system that may include diagrams. As a minimum, the plan will cover incident response, disaster recovery, capacity planning, sustainability and environmental waste planning, and at least one other aspect of IT support and management. Learners’ evidence will clearly show how the plans adequately meet most of the client’s requirements.

Learners will review their IT support and management plan with others and use the feedback to make improvements to the plan. For example, their original plan may lack detail about how the system is to be protected from external hackers and amend their plan by adding details about how a firewall can be installed and configured.

Overall, the evidence will be logically structured. It may be generic in parts and/or contain minor inaccuracies or omissions. For example, learners’ plan may not fully meet the client’s requirements as it may explain how faults will be reported but it does not fully explain how they will be escalated if they remain unresolved.

Links to other units

This unit links to:

• Unit 1: Information Technology Systems
• Unit 2: Creating Systems to Manage Information
• Unit 9: IT Project Management
• Unit 11: Cyber Security and Incident Management
• Unit 14: IT Service Delivery
• Unit 15: Customising and Integrating Applications
• Unit 16: Cloud Storage and Collaboration Tools
• Unit 19: The Internet of Things.

Employer involvement

This unit would benefit from employer involvement in the form of:

• guest speakers
• technical workshops involving staff from organisations/businesses
• contribution of design/ideas to unit scenario/case study/project materials, including own organisation/business materials as exemplars where appropriate
• feedback from staff from local organisations/businesses on plans/designs/items developed opportunities for observation of organisational/business application during work experience
• support from local organisation/business staff as mentors.

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