A few weeks behind this was our podcast from Week of May 10th.
Our special guest for this podcast was David Mainville, CEO and founder of Consulting Portal, a 30 year veteran of IT Service Management. David brings a great perspective on the industry, and helps clarify the confusion on achieving IT Service Management vs. instrumenting a framework.
Configuration Management Systems (CMS) = VALUE... not for most people.
In fact most IT shops I've spoken to over the past 6 months have abandoned their CMDB/CMS strategies. Why? ‘No immediate value’ has been their biggest complaint. They are not seeing the benefits of having the relationships of assets.
The clear distinction, between the organizations that are moving forward with their CMDB and CMS strategies and those who have thrown in the towel, has been the ability to effectively tie in their visual operations to their CMS.
These successful organizations are leveraging the relationship information to show which apps are running on which pieces of the infrastructure and are providing a view of this relationship to their 1st and 2nd tier support teams. Empowered with this information they are finding their troubleshooting process of elimination faster and more efficient.
As any of us in the support arena know, the work to get systems back on line consists of 80% finding the problem and 20% fixing it. So armed with this visual aid to help root out and verify the components that are working, the practitioner is closer to finding the one that is not.
So here is my advice if you are on the verge of blowing up your CMDB:
First: Verify that you have the right grouping. If your CMDB is grouped by technology, then it will not help Tier1 and Tier2 teams, who are getting complaints about applications.
Second: Create a visual element for the application and show logical relationships to the systems that support it. Link those elements to your existing CMDB for more current and accurately collected data.
It's by no means the Nirvana that ITIL V3 pictures for us, but it will at least allow you to leverage the work that you have done, and to start making the data and information you have more meaningful and relevant.
Check out these tools for a quick start and easy deployment:
Of course, BSM tools can be leveraged, but they are not going to be quick and easy to deploy.
Special Note: I am doing a weekly Internet Radio show called "ITSM Weekly" with Chris Dancy (ServiceSphere) and Matt Beran (Service Desk Manager). Please check it out. Would love to hear your feedback.
What is a Service Catalog? Simply put it is system or documentation that allows people to preview the services they can obtain from you and the expectation they can have of getting those services (time, cost, quality, etc...). Do we need a Service Catalog? Do you need a resume to get a job? No, but if you want the right job, and want to get paid fairly for the abilities you can bring, and want to set the right expectation, then you will want to have a clearly articulated resume. Same thing with the IT Service Catalog. If you want the business to appreciate the value IT brings to the organization, and you want to ensure that staff, suppliers, and costs are adequately budgeted for, then you must present to the business your capabilities. The Service Catalog is where you will publish and present what IT will do, and thus what they will not do. At face the business will not necessarily want IT to have this. If you do not currently have an IT Service Catalog, then currently the Business can ask you for whatever they want, and IT has to scramble to either try and justify why they can't do it, or figure it out. If there is no cost allocation in place for IT resources, then in the eye of the Business stake holder IT is a free resource, and we all know what the value of free - zero - free has no value.
Thus to really drive the value of IT services, IT must put in place a definitive "what we do, how we do it, and how much it costs" communication platform. More advanced organizations are using this information to build an on-line IT ordering site where people can order account setups, email boxes, new laptops, PDA's and Blackberries, and other enablement services. These sites will typically hang-off the Service Desk platform so that people can get services ordered without having to interact with a service request person. This can lead to tremendous cost savings and it also leaves the business in more control. So many organizations are finding the business more willing to fund the Service Catalog under the umbrella of Self-Service optimization and cost efficiency.
Next blog: "Is the customer always right?" I'll share some tech support stories to show the difference between a customer focused support person and a person who answers the phone and follows a script.
