What involves monitoring activities and making corrections?

Establishing an ongoing strategy involving monitoring activities and monitoring techniques provides an understanding of your CICS® production system that helps to ensure optimum performance and avoid unexpected problems.

Monitoring is used to describe regular checking of the performance of a CICS production system, against objectives, by the collection and interpretation of data. Analysis describes the techniques used to investigate the reasons for performance deterioration. Tuning can be used for any actions that result from this analysis.

Monitoring is an ongoing activity for a number of reasons:

• It can establish transaction profiles (that is, workload and volumes) and statistical data for predicting system capacities
• It can give early warning through comparative data to avoid performance problems
• It can measure and validate any tuning you might have done in response to an earlier performance problem.

A performance history database (see IBM Z Decision Support for an example) is a valuable source from which to answer questions on system performance, and to plan further tuning.

Monitoring can be described in terms of strategies, procedures, and tasks.

Strategies include these elements:

• Continuous or periodic summaries of the workload. You can track all transactions or selected representatives.
• Snapshots at normal or peak loads. Monitor peak loads for these reasons:
  • Constraints and slow responses are more pronounced at peak volumes.
  • The current peak load is a good indicator of the future average load.

Procedures, such as good documentation practices, provide a management link between monitoring strategies and tasks.

Tasks (not to be confused with the task component of a CICS transaction) include:

• Running one or more of the tools; see Performance measurement tools
• Collating the output
• Examining it for trends

Allocate responsibility for these tasks between operations personnel, programming personnel, and analysts. Identify the resources that are to be regarded as critical, and set up a procedure to highlight any trends in the use of these resources.

Because the tools require resources, they can disturb the performance of a production system.

Give emphasis to peak periods of activity, for both the new application and the system as a whole. Run the tools more frequently at first if required to confirm that the expected peaks correspond with the actual ones.

It is often not practical to keep all the detailed output. File summarized reports with the corresponding CICS statistics, and hold output from the tools for an agreed period, with customary safeguards for its protection.

Do not base conclusions on one or two snapshots of system performance, but rather on data collected at different times over a prolonged period. Emphasise peak loading. Because different tools use different measurement criteria, early measurements might give apparently discrepant results.

Plan your monitoring procedures ahead of time. In your procedures, explain the tools to be used, the analysis techniques to be used, the operational extent of those activities, and how often they are to be performed.

1 What Is Control? ControllingControlling  The process of monitoring activities to ensure that they are being accomplished as planned and of correcting any significant deviations. The Purpose of ControlThe Purpose of Control  To ensure that activities are completed in ways that lead to accomplishment of organizational goals.  Value of Controlling results in three areas. Planning, empowering employees, and protecting the workplace.

2 The Control Process The Process of ControlThe Process of Control 1.Measuring actual performance. 2.Comparing actual performance against a standard. 3.Taking action to correct deviations or inadequate standards.

3 Exhibit 18–2 The Control Process

4 1. Measuring: How & What We Measure Sources of Information (How)Sources of Information (How)  Personal observation  Statistical reports  Oral reports  Written reports Control Criteria (What)Control Criteria (What)  Employees  Satisfaction  Turnover  Absenteeism  Budgets  Costs  Output  Sales

5 Exhibit 18–3 Common Sources of Information for Measuring Performance

6 2. Comparing Determining the degree of variation between actual performance and the standard.Determining the degree of variation between actual performance and the standard.  Significance of variation is determined by:  The acceptable range of variation from the standard (forecast or budget).  The size (large or small) and direction (over or under) of the variation from the standard (forecast or budget).

7 3. Taking Managerial Action Courses of ActionCourses of Action  “Doing nothing”  Only if deviation is judged to be insignificant.  Correcting actual (current) performance  Immediate corrective action to correct the problem at once.  Basic corrective action to locate and to correct the source of the deviation.  Corrective Actions –Change strategy, structure, compensation scheme, or training programs; redesign jobs; or fire employees

8 Taking Managerial Action Courses of Action (cont’d)Courses of Action (cont’d)  Revising the standard  Examining the standard to ascertain whether or not the standard is realistic, fair, and achievable. –Upholding the validity of the standard. –Resetting goals that were initially set too low or too high.

9 Controlling for Organizational Performance What Is Performance?What Is Performance?  The end result of an activity What Is Organizational Performance?What Is Organizational Performance?  The accumulated end results of all of the organization’s work processes and activities  Designing strategies, work processes, and work activities.  Coordinating the work of employees.

10 Organizational Performance Measures Organizational ProductivityOrganizational Productivity  Productivity: the overall output of goods and/or services divided by the inputs needed to generate that output.  Output: sales revenues  Inputs: costs of resources (materials, labor expense, and facilities)  Ultimately, productivity is a measure of how efficiently employees do their work.

11 Organizational Performance Measures (cont’d) Organizational EffectivenessOrganizational Effectiveness  Measuring how appropriate organizational goals are and how well the organization is achieving its goals.  Systems resource model –The ability of the organization to exploit its environment in acquiring scarce and valued resources.  The process model –The efficiency of an organization’s transformation process in converting inputs to outputs.  The multiple constituencies model –The effectiveness of the organization in meeting each constituencies’ needs.

12 Tools for Measuring Organizational Performance Feedforward ControlFeedforward Control  A control that prevents anticipated problems before actual occurrences of the problem.  Building in quality through design.  Requiring suppliers conform to ISO 9002. Concurrent ControlConcurrent Control  A control that takes place while the monitored activity is in progress.  Direct supervision: management by walking around.

13 Tools for Measuring Organizational Performance (cont’d) Feedback ControlFeedback Control  A control that takes place after an activity is done.  Corrective action is after-the-fact, when the problem has already occurred.  Advantages of feedback controls:  Provide managers with information on the effectiveness of their planning efforts.  Enhance employee motivation by providing them with information on how well they are doing.

14 Financial Controls Traditional ControlsTraditional Controls  Ratio analysis  Liquidity  Leverage  Activity  Profitability  Budget Analysis  Quantitative standards  Deviations

15 Exhibit 18–9 Popular Financial Ratios ObjectiveRatioCalculation Meaning

16 Exhibit 18–9 Popular Financial Ratios (cont’d) ObjectiveRatioCalculation Meaning

17 Tools for Measuring Org’l Performance (cont’d.) Balanced ScorecardBalanced Scorecard  Is a measurement tool that uses goals set by managers in four areas to measure a company’s performance:  Financial  Customer  Internal processes  People/innovation/growth assets  Is intended to emphasize that all of these areas are important to an organization’s success and that there should be a balance among them.

18 Information Controls Purposes of Information ControlsPurposes of Information Controls  As a tool to help managers control other organizational activities.  Managers need the right information at the right time and in the right amount.  As an organizational area that managers need to control.  Managers must have comprehensive and secure controls in place to protect the organization’s important information.

19 Information Controls (cont’d) Management Information Systems (MIS)Management Information Systems (MIS)  A system used to provide management with needed information on a regular basis.  Data: an unorganized collection of raw, unanalyzed facts (e.g., unsorted list of customer names).  Information: data that has been analyzed and organized such that it has value and relevance to managers.

20 Benchmarking of Best Practices BenchmarkBenchmark  The standard of excellence against which to measure and compare. BenchmarkingBenchmarking  Is the search for the best practices among competitors or noncompetitors that lead to their superior performance.  Is a control tool for identifying and measuring specific performance gaps and areas for improvement.

21 Contemporary Issues in Control Cross-Cultural IssuesCross-Cultural Issues  The use of technology to increase direct corporate control of local operations  Legal constraints on corrective actions in foreign countries  Difficulty with the comparability of data collected from operations in different countries

22 Contemporary Issues in Control (cont’d) Workplace ConcernsWorkplace Concerns  Workplace privacy versus workplace monitoring:  E-mail, telephone, computer, and Internet usage  Productivity, harassment, security, confidentiality, intellectual property protection  Employee theft  The unauthorized taking of company property by employees for their personal use.  Workplace violence  Anger, rage, and violence in the workplace is affecting employee productivity.

23 Contemporary Issues in Control (cont’d) Customer InteractionsCustomer Interactions  Service profit chain  Is the service sequence from employees to customers to profit.  Service capability affects service value which impacts on customer satisfaction that, in turn, leads to customer loyalty in the form of repeat business (profit).

24 Contemporary Issues in Control (cont’d) Corporate GovernanceCorporate Governance  The system used to govern a corporation so that the interests of the corporate owners are protected.  Changes in the role of boards of directors  Increased scrutiny of financial reporting (Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002) –More disclosure and transparency of corporate financial information –Certification of financial results by senior management