General
Where do I get assistance to start using Green Points™ in my organisation?
Business
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Green Point Analysis
Are regulatory initiatives reflected in Green Point Analysis?
Can change initiatives claim green points?
How is the maintenance life calculated when more than one technology is being upgraded?
What can be done if the number of transactions is unknown?
When should green points be calculated?
Why is the number of items of hardware (e.g. servers) not considered?
Why is whole life cost used in financial assessments?
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we are interested in all endeavours that lead to a wider use of green points and welcome any proposals that will encourage this. Please get in touch via our contact form
It is not expected that maintenance initiatives will be prioritised solely on the basis of Green Point Analysis, and regulatory commitments will take precedence. The regulatory nature of a system will, however, be reflected by the tiering coefficient and, more than likely, the strategy coefficient. That is not to say a regulatory coefficient cannot be used. This is discussed further in Green Points: The Definitive Guide.
If an initiative leads to the extension of a service’s maintenance life, then it can be seen as claiming green points. It should, however, be noted that when the introduction of a new system leads to the decommissioning of a legacy system, then the start of the new system’s maintenance life coincides with the end of the maintenance life of the legacy system.
Green Point Analysis can be performed on each technology upgraded and then totalled to demonstrate the green points claimed by the whole maintenance initiative. It may, however, be simpler to view the initiative as a whole. In this case the shortest maintenance life should be used in the calculation of green points, to give a conservative total.
The number of transactions processed by a system is a key input to Green Point Analysis and the calculation of green points. In cases where the number of transactions is not known, an estimate can be determined using the T-shirt sizing method described Green Points: The Definitive Guide.
Green Point Analysis can be used throughout the project / programme life cycle. It may also be applied after project implementation in the analysis of historical data. If applied early on, at project inception, planning assumptions may need to be made with respect to the parameters used in green point calculation. Note if Green Point Analysis is to be used in comparisons, such as those which may be performed on historical data to produce performance metrics, then it must be applied consistently.
There is an expectation that the level of hardware provision will correlate to the number of transactions processed by the service; consequently the number of hardware items is not explicitly considered. The removal of the need to know how much hardware is involved allows Green Point Analysis to be applied much earlier in the project life cycle.
Organisations that have a real need to consider hardware items could include a hardware complexity weighting coefficient in their Green Point Analysis.
Whole life cost (i.e. the capital cost of the project plus the operational expense incurred throughout the course of the maintenance life) is used in order that changes to operational costs resulting from maintenance activities are considered. An example where this would be relevant is when a service is moving from a dedicated physical to a consolidated virtual environment.
