Introduction to work management

Work management supports the commands and internal functions necessary to control system operation and the daily workload on the system. In addition, work management contains the functions that you need to distribute resources for your applications so that your system can handle your applications.

The purpose of your system is to perform work. Work enters, work is processed, and work leaves the system. If you think of work management in these three terms, work management will be easier to understand. Work management describes where work enters the system, where and with what resources work is processed, and where output from work goes.

Are you new to work management? The topic collection under the subject Introduction to work management is designed to provide you with several different overall perspectives of work management. In this way, you should be able to get a solid foundation in the underlying principles of work management, regardless of your systems background.

• Your system as a business
  To make grasping the overall concept of work management easier, try comparing your system with a business.
• A job's life
  To understand the basics of iSeries™ work management, follow a simple batch job as it moves through the system.
• How work gets done
  Use this information to learn about what work is, what needs to be set up before work can begin, how work travels through the system, and what happens to work after it is done running.