P3

There are a variety of different planning techniques that will allow you to plan IT maintenance activities. The planning technique that I will use is the Gantt chart, this is because if feel that the Gantt planning method will be the best suited for IT maintenance.

The Gantt chart is a chart that will allow you to plan your projects, letting you allocate time and resources to many of tasks to get a project completed. For example, using Gantt charts will allow you to:

·         Asses how long a project will take.

·         Lay out the order in which tasks need to be carried out

·         Help manage the dependencies between tasks.

·         determine the resources needed to get a project done

·         Helps to monitor the progress of the project

These are some of the main features of a Gantt chart that other project planning methods don’t have and that is why I think it to be most suitable for this project.

The time of the project will take a varying amount of time and will determine on a number of factors. The first factor you will have to consider is the need and the priority of the tasks within the Gantt chart for example if the task doesn’t take very long and is high on the priority scale meaning it will get done very quickly, whereas if the task will take a very long time and is rather low on the priority list so it could take a very long time to get the task done. The other factor of the project time is how long it takes for companies to reply to the tender and then for the college to reply to the companies to get the project proposal.

Here is a Gantt chart that I have made for the later tasks. But bear in mind this is only a draft and the tasks may change.

This is an example of a Gantt chart. This will enable me to time manage all of my tasks better and with more efficiency because everything has been pre-planned and is not all being guessed or figured out as I go along

P2

When performing maintenance on computer systems, there are many health and safety risks that both the users and the IT practitioners are going to be liable to, I will now explain some of the  health and safety risks that an it practitioner or a user may come across when maintaining computer systems.

The first risk that is also the most obvious is the risk of electrical shocks and electrical damage, this is Apparent with any electrical appliance with a current flowing through it. Electricity isn’t exactly safe for humans, it could cause a whole manner of injuries if it flows through them such as burns or even death! Static electricity is also very bad for other electrical component and short them out, burning fuses, capacitor and microchips out, rendering them useless. To avoid this risks you will need to take a number of precautions. First of all for flowing electricity, you will have to make sure that you get rid of the power, this can be done by unplugging the power cord from the wall outlet or by taking out the batteries, meaning that there is no more electricity that can flow through you. To prevent static electricity you will have to use a static wristband, this will ensure that you have the same amount of electricity in you as the rest of the computer, meaning that it has no reason to diffuse and jump out of the components and on to you.

The second risk to health and safety you would come across while performing computer maintenance is a fire risk. There is a fire risk because some of the faulty component or the computer system that you’re repairing could potentially be smoking, sparking or on fire, which is obvious as to why it’s a bad thing. To prevent these kinds of risks, PAT tests are performed to ensure the safety of all electrical appliances, making sure that they are not liable to catching fire.

The third and final Health and safety precaution that you will have to follow is the physical aspect of moving equipment around. This is apparent when IT technicians move things around and then get injuries like cuts, bad backs and broken toes. In order to negate the risk there are a number of procedures that should be followed, for example; having to cart around equipment rather than carrying it, wearing the correct dress code and wearing gloves.   

P1 M1

When an organisation uses IT within its company there are issues that arise that they will have to consider when they are planning computer systems maintenance.

The first issue that you may come across is downtime. The organisation has to consider how long the system, computer or whatever it is will be inoperable for, this is because the rest of the business will be unable to use these systems  which means they will be losing productivity and therefore money.  So the organisation will either (1) have to make the maintenance as quick and timely as possible as not to cause much production loss or (2) make the maintenance happen outside of normal business hours.

The second issue that will have to be considered is whether the planning of the maintenance is necessary or not enough to justify the loss in production because if it’s only something that isn’t really needed then there is no point in maintaining it, because it’s simply not worth it.

The third issue that you will have to consider is the safety and safety at work act for planning of IT maintenance. For example could the IT support fix the problem safely without any tools such as fixing a software issue or it could have a hardware issue that could require special tools to stay safe such as static bands and correct tools. This is very important to comply with the health and safety at work act because it will help to ensure your workers and users health and safety. Another point is to make sure that all of the staff have the necessary training. This important because it I allows them to operate efficiently and safely when performing maintenance on the systems or computers as well as giving the staff the capability to obey the Health and safety at work act making things faster and more seamless.

One more thing that an organisation would have to consider while planning performing maintenance is the security of the said maintenance. For example, if you are upgrading the firmware for the security cameras in your organisations buildings the cameras will be out of order until the maintenance is completed.

Another issue that you would have to consider is the local laws and county wide laws of your respective state and governments. This will include many laws such as the data protection act which would mean that you have to make sure that you will comply with keeping all of the user’s information safe and secure and having preventative measures for security risks.

Another issue that you would have to consider when planning IT maintenance is to identify and comply with all of the staff rotas and time tables. This means that you’re making sure that the maintenance for things like hardware will occur the same time that the Hardware Maintenance guy is working this is also true with software and the software guy.

Policies and procedures to control the maintenance of computer systems are a necessity within IT support these days for a number of reasons, for which I will explain below.

The first reason that we need policies and procedures when performing computer maintenance is for health and safety. This makes sure that all of your staff members are staying safe and following all the correct procedures, this will mean that they won’t hurt themselves causing your company to save money and keep business.

The second reason for this is that policies and procedures control the way you perform computer maintenance is because it will protect your company or organisation and all its staff from being liable for damage because they haven’t followed correct procedure and have gotten something wrong, whereas if you follow procedure correctly then nothing should go wrong at all.

The Third reason that policies and procedures are used to control the Maintenance of computer systems is security. security is a crucial for when maintaining computer systems. this is because a good security system will help to prevent breakages and other issues with the computer, where as if your computer system has bad security, the maintenance you perform for example; malware removal . would be pointless , because the malware could get onto the system easily again. To stop this from happening you would need to ensure that you have good security measures in place. for example using antivirus software such as AVAST, AVG or microsoft security essentials. and as an added bonus, these programs can perform maintenance automatically so you don't have to!

The final reason Policies and Procedures are used to control the maintenance of computer systems is prioritisation. Prioritisation ensures that you give computer maintenance to those who, either need it most or have the most money. this is so that the IT support can focus on the most on some issues, if they need to be solved faster for example if the computers in an exam went down then it would be a high priority, whereas if something cant print then its a low priority. This prioritisation method allows you to organise in a strategic manner how to get tasks done.