In 2016 SIG-NOC began to investigate the creation of a short training course for NOC staff within the GEANT community. We worked with a professional ITIL trainer to develop a training course, based on ITIL, that could give an introduction and methodology around Incident Management, Change Management, Problem resolution etc. The SIG-NOC community felt this course would be useful for existing NOC staff and for new hires.
Market research was carried out amongst this community to obtain more specific information and try to find a price for the training that people were willing to pay.
A business case was prepared for this as funding from GEANT would be required. This funding would cover the initial development of the course and an initial session with experienced NOC staff (including the SIG-NOC Steering Committee) during which the course could be further modified to best suit the GEANT community.
GEANT management chose not to proceed based on the business case presented. They felt that given the price point (of around €700 - €800), this training would only break even over the course of four sessions (once the cost of development and running the sessions was included). This was considered to be too risky.
The SIG-NOC SC appreciate the risk considerations from GEANT management, but we still believe that this training would be a good investment for the community.
With that in mind we plan to investigate other options and come back to the GCC with a business case to see if this committee might be willing to fund the development of the training. This business case would also have to consider the execution of the training.
We would welcome the opportunity to present this to the GCC and to discuss it at one of your upcoming meetings.