The "Advancement" field is intended to convey the extent to which we're doing new things, rather than just keeping things running, or "fire-fighting". For lack of a better term (*please* suggest a good one), it's called "Advancement". There are 3 general possibilities. Within each, there are a few subcategories that explain the reason for the work. Only common or interesting reasons are so categorized. Work that doesn't fall into a specific subcategory is categorized only in the main category.
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
| New | A functional enhancement, an expansion, an improvement not involving fixing existing equipment. Inherent work which we do in advance of when it would normally be done in order to facilitate New work becomes New. A request to verify functioning (e.g. of backups) is considered New, if there's no evidence of a problem. New work can eventually in some cases become predictable, should it be determined to be done regularly, and hence becomes Inherent rather than New. |
| Update | An unpredictable request for an update, typically of software version, in advance of any scheduled Evergreen work (see below), and typically for increased functionality. |
| Inherent | Work that is the unavoidable result of choosing a specific Component. "routine maintenance" is the most common example, e.g. patching, evergreening, license renewals. This is not just work that we can predict is likely to happen sometime (such as Problems), it's work we can plan for. Whether something is inherent to a Component can be a choice in support standards. As our capabilities improve, we may deem specific work to be Inherent in a Component that hadn't been before. A regular work report, specific to a Service because it's been requested as part of the Service, isn't Inherent, even though it can be planned for, because it's inherent to the Service, not to a service Component. A problem report, caused by not doing inherent work in time, is still classified as a problem, not as inherent. Consulting is usually New work. However, there are situations where roughly the same questions are asked every term. Answering these questions is Inherent work. |
| Backups | The technology used to avoid losing data in case of failure. |
| Evergreen | The ongoing (predictable) renewal of technology. It is typically used for hardware, however it can apply to software as well. This is different than "New -- Update", which is an unexpected request in advance of scheduled Evergreen. |
| Licensing | Expected renewals of license and maintenance agreements. The initial installation of a license would be New work. |
| Monitoring | The expected act of monitoring, rather than the monitoring technology itself. |
| Patching | The application of regular expected patches from the software supplier. Applying a patch to enhance functionality would be Advancement -- New. Applying a patch to fix a specific problem would be Advancement -- Problem. |
| Retirement | Work caused by equipment end of life. It's usually work to surplus the equipment, although it can also be to reclaim or repurpose equipment no longer wanted by its current owner. This can be thought of as the alternative to Evergreen, when the choice is to retire rather than update. |
| Problem | Work caused by something that's (apparently) broken, requiring more than regularly expected maintenance. It includes diagnosis of the cause of a problem, even if it turns out to be irreparable. We can use this to assess how error-prone something is. |
| Abuse | Work caused by deliberate abuse of computing resources. Typically it's copyright violation, sometimes combined with system overload caused by sharing such to the world. |
When specifying this field in a customized sort or display, use the name "advancement". The values to use for advancement in custom queries are part of the database schema.