Maximo Health Check & Heal
The report, taken apart before you commission it.
A health check across seven areas of your IBM Maximo or MAS estate, measured rather than discussed, in ten to fifteen working days on a single estate. Below is the artefact itself: its six parts, the seven fields on a register row, the severity basis, and who acts on each.
The deliverable, part by part
Six parts, and the role each one is written for
Different people read different parts, which is why they arrive as six named documents rather than one report. The fourth column is the test of whether a part is worth producing at all.
| Ref | Part | What it contains | Evidence behind it | Who acts on it |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| P1 | Executive summary, one page | A single verdict on the estate as good, acceptable or fragile, and the three findings that most deserve funding this year. | The severities in P2, counted and weighted by operational consequence. | The senior sponsor, who takes the page to a board rather than the register. |
| P2 | Findings register | One row per finding, with the seven fields set out below. Typically 40 to 90 rows on a single estate, sorted by consequence and not by area. | Measurement, then corroboration with the person who lives with it. | The platform owner, who works the rows and assigns each one an owner. |
| P3 | Evidence appendix | The extracts, response-time samples, interface error counts and SQL behind every row in P2, exported as files you keep. | Read-only access to the environments, the database and the interface logs. | Your DBA and support lead, who re-run the same query in six months without commissioning us again. |
| P4 | Remediation roadmap | Findings grouped as quick wins within a fortnight, structural fixes within a quarter, and platform work that is a programme. Each item carries a cost band and its dependencies. | The effort estimate on each P2 row, plus the dependencies between them. | The programme board, which sequences and funds it. |
| P5 | Readiness statement | A direct answer on whether the estate as measured can carry the decision you named at commissioning: a MAS upgrade, a mobile rollout, a new sector, an acquisition or a regulator visit. | Area seven of the framework, judged only once the other six areas are on the table. | The decision owner who asked the question. |
| P6 | Unassessed list | Every area we could not measure, with the reason: access refused, log retention too short, or the named person unavailable inside the window. | The access log and the interview schedule from the engagement. | Your project sponsor, who decides whether any of it is worth reopening. |
Codes P1 to P6 are stable, so you can cite one in an email or a scoping paper. The framework behind them is published in full in the Maximo health check audit guide.
Inside P2
One register row has seven fields
The register is where the engagement is won or lost, so every row carries the same seven fields and a row missing any of them does not ship.
- 01
Area
One of seven: data quality and the asset hierarchy, work-management discipline, integrations, performance, security and access, operability and platform health, upgrade-readiness. Order is fixed because data quality decides what every later measurement means.
- 02
Severity
S1 to S4 on the scale below, set on operational consequence rather than on how easy the finding was to detect.
- 03
Evidence
The extract, sample window or counter that produced the finding, filed in P3. A row with no evidence reference does not ship.
- 04
Corroboration
The named role who confirmed it matters in practice, and what they said. A slow screen counts only if someone uses it at that hour.
- 05
Recommended action
One change, stated so that a change board can accept or reject it. Not a theme, and not a workstream.
- 06
Effort
A band in days, and whether it needs a change window, a code release or only a configuration edit.
- 07
Owner proposed
The role on your side we think should hold it, which you overwrite. The register arrives with proposals rather than assignments.
The severity basis
S1 to S4, graded on consequence rather than on effort to find
Published so you can challenge a grade rather than accept it. Every row in P2 carries one of these four.
- S1, operational consequence now
- Work is being lost, delayed or done outside the system today, or a control the estate is relied on for is not working. An interface silently dropping records, or an audit trail with gaps.
- Often read as An outage. An S1 finding is usually running quietly, and has been for months.
- S2, consequence on the next event
- The estate copes until a load peak, a month end, a failover or an upgrade. Untested backups sit here, as does an escalation set colliding with the morning login peak.
- Often read as Something for next year. S2 is defined by an event, and the event has a date.
- S3, cost and friction
- The estate works and costs more effort than it should. Duplicate asset records, unusable failure coding, a report rebuilt by hand each month.
- Often read as Cosmetic. S3 is where most of the recoverable time in a maintenance operation sits.
- S4, note for the record
- No consequence found, and worth recording because it constrains a later decision. A database version that will limit a MAS upgrade path, for instance.
- Often read as Padding. S4 rows are the ones a programme cites two years later.
The engagement in four figures
What is fixed about a health check
- 7
- Areas examined, in a fixed order
- 10 to 15
- Working days on a single estate
- 1
- Page for the sponsor
- Zero
- Changes made to your estate
The published framework, with what good looks like in each area, is in the Maximo health check audit guide.
With read-only access granted up front and an hour each with the named people. Multi-estate work multiplies per estate.
P1 above. The register, appendix and roadmap sit behind it for the people who work them.
Access is read-only for the whole engagement. Anything that would touch production configuration is written up as a P2 row instead.
How the artefact is produced
Five stages, each with an owner
The order is the argument. Measure before interpreting, corroborate before triaging, and hand over the queries so the measurement can be repeated without us.
- 01
Scope and access
The estate in scope, the environments we may read, the decision the report has to support, and an hour each with named people.
Owner Your platform owner and MaxIron lead engineer Typically Before day one
- 02
Measure
Evidence collected rather than requested: data-quality extracts, response-time samples on the busiest screens at the busiest hour, interface error and retry counts, cron and escalation overrun, access and audit coverage, backup and patch posture.
Owner MaxIron engineers, read-only Typically 4 to 6 days
- 03
Corroborate
Each measurement goes in front of the person who lives with it, and their words become the corroboration field on the row.
Owner Your planners, supervisors, DBA and support lead Typically 2 to 3 days
- 04
Triage
Severity, recommended action, effort and proposed owner against each row, then the register sorted by operational consequence rather than by area.
Owner MaxIron lead engineer Typically 2 days
- 05
Hand over
P1 to P6 together with the extracts and queries. We walk the register with your platform owner and your sponsor separately, because they read for different things.
Owner MaxIron lead engineer and your sponsor Typically 1 day, plus a follow-up
Read one before you buy one
A redacted specimen health check report
24 pages, PDF
- A real P1 executive summary with the estate, client and figures redacted
- Twelve P2 register rows across five areas, showing all seven fields completed
- Two P3 evidence pages, including the SQL and the sampling window behind one row
- The P4 roadmap for those rows, with cost bands and dependencies intact
Sent by email to a named contact, with no gated form. The framework it is built on is already public in the audit guide.
Scope of the engagement
Three limits on what the report can do
Each is normally discovered in week two. Settling them now is cheaper for both sides.
The report is a diagnosis, and remediation is a separate purchase
P4 is a costed route, not work in progress. The estate changes when remediation is commissioned, with its own scope, change control and price. Some registers sit on a shared drive two years later, which is why P2 proposes an owner per row and why the first quick-win batch is worth commissioning alongside the report.
Part of the register will confirm what your own people already say
Expect that, particularly in integrations, access and close-out data quality. What the report adds is the extract, the timing and the comparison that let a long-standing opinion survive a change board and a budget round.
Findings extend exactly as far as the access granted
Where access is refused, log retention is too short or a named person is unavailable in the window, the area goes in P6 as unassessed rather than being estimated. The report says which, and why, so confirm who grants read-only access before a date is set.
Maximo health check, frequently asked questions
- What exactly do we receive?
- Six parts, listed as P1 to P6 above: a one-page executive summary, the findings register, the evidence appendix with the extracts and queries, the remediation roadmap, a readiness statement against the decision you named, and a list of anything left unassessed. Not a 200-slide deck.
- How is severity decided?
- On operational consequence, using the S1 to S4 scale published above, and never on how hard the finding was to find. An interface quietly dropping records is S1 even though nobody has raised it. A cosmetic defect somebody complains about weekly is S3.
- How long does it take, and what access do you need?
- Ten to fifteen working days on a single estate, with read-only access up front and named people available for an hour each. Read-only is all we ask for: configuration, data extracts, interface logs and performance counters. Multi-estate and pre-acquisition due-diligence work takes longer, because the integration and data-quality work multiplies per estate.
- What does the health check look at?
- Seven areas in a fixed order: data quality and the asset hierarchy, work-management discipline, integrations, performance, security and access, operability and platform health, and upgrade-readiness. Upgrade-readiness comes last because it can only be judged once the other six are on the table. The full framework, with what good looks like in each area, is published in our Maximo health check audit guide.
- Can the health check turn into ongoing work?
- Yes, and usually does, on one of three routes: a stabilisation programme against the S1 and S2 rows, an upgrade prepared on real evidence under Maximo to MAS upgrade, or a transition into MaxIron Cloud where we operate the estate and the measurements stay live. The remediation is quoted separately either way.
Bring the three complaints you cannot prove.
The screen everybody says is slow, the interface that fails on a particular day, the data problem raised at every review. In thirty minutes we say which of the three we can put a number on in the first week, and whether a full health check is warranted at all.
Bring this to the first call
- The three complaints your own people raise most often, and roughly when each started
- Your Maximo or MAS version, the database vendor, and the environment list
- The interfaces that must keep working, and who owns the system at the other end of each
- The decision the report has to support, and the date it is needed by
- Who can grant read-only access, and how long that usually takes in your organisation