問40
頻出度★★★
IT サービスマネジメントにおけるリリース管理の説明として, 適切なものはどれか。
平成23年度 特別試験 ITパスポート試験 問40
マネジメント系サービスマネジメント › サービスマネジメントシステム
This question's explanation and your answers so far.
解説
問 40
Incorrectア
Identifying the root cause of an incident and preventing the problem from recurring is a description of problem management. The purpose of problem management is to investigate and analyze the root cause (the problem) behind recurring or serious incidents and to find a permanent solution that prevents recurrence. Its distinguishing feature is that it puts more weight on eliminating the cause than on restoring the service quickly. A fix that becomes necessary as a result of the root-cause analysis is submitted to change management, and only after approval is it applied to the production environment by release management, so problem management itself is a process separate from release management.
Incorrectイ
Quickly restoring normal service operation when an incident occurs is a description of incident management. The top priority of incident management is to return the service to its normal state as soon as possible so that the impact on users is kept to a minimum, and for that purpose a temporary workaround may be used even when the root cause has not yet been identified. Investigating the cause belongs to problem management, and applying approved changes to the production environment belongs to release management; the roles are clearly separated. This description is therefore not a description of release management.
Incorrectウ
Accurately tracking the IT assets used by the organization and preventing their inappropriate use is a description of IT asset management (which includes software asset management). Its purpose is to keep an accurate record, in a ledger or similar, of what hardware, software, and licenses are held and how they are used, and to prevent inappropriate use such as using more copies than the licenses allow or installing unauthorized software. It is an activity for correctly maintaining asset and configuration information, not an activity for applying approved changes to the production environment, so it is wrong as a description of release management.
- エ
正解 The correct answer is エ. Release management (release and deployment management) is the management process responsible for taking changes approved by the change management process, introducing them into the actual production environment, and bringing them to a state where users can use them. IT service management deliberately separates the role that judges whether to approve a change from the role that actually applies an approved change to production: the former is change management, the latter is release management. Specifically, it bundles several approved changes into a single unit called a release, draws up a release plan, builds the necessary programs and equipment, carries out acceptance testing in an environment equivalent to the production environment, notifies and trains users, coordinates the switchover procedure and the date and time it will be carried out, and prepares a back-out procedure for returning to the original state should the release fail; it then deploys to the production environment according to the plan. After deployment it confirms that everything works correctly and reflects the results in records such as the configuration management database (CMDB). Delivering approved changes to production safely and reliably in this way is the purpose of release management, and this is exactly what エ describes.
ここがポイント
- Definition of release management — the management process that bundles changes approved by change management into release units and, after building, testing, notifying users, and preparing a back-out procedure, introduces and deploys them into the production environment according to plan. Grasp the division of roles: change management is the role that approves a change, and release management is the role that applies it to production.
- Distinguishing similar processes — incident management restores the service quickly (recovery via a workaround is acceptable even when the cause is unknown), problem management identifies root causes and prevents recurrence, and IT asset management tracks assets accurately and prevents inappropriate use. Telling them apart by the purpose of each process is a standard exam pattern.
用語