CMDB - Strategic Role in IT Services - Configuration Management Moves Front and Center!
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Most CMDB’s have not delivered any real value. Although we have collected and stored lots of data, the CMDB has been a solution in search of a problem. No longer. As IT moves from technical activities to customer centric IT services, the CMBD plays a critical, strategic role. As we build and deliver IT services to our customers (employees), IT Service Owners will be very visible – and intently focused on delivering high quality outcomes, on time, with service availability and cost as advertised. Without effective configuration management, this cannot be done. Please join us as we explore the new strategic role of the CMDB, and how processes, people, costs & technologies converge into services – with the CMDB aligning, connecting and managing the configuration items to make this all possible. We will also demo our always evolving view of a very advanced, self-service catalog & portal, with a focus on the service owner & the role of the CMDB. Full webinar recording available at: http://content.evergreensys.com/cmdb-webinar-it-services-strategic-role
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CMDB - Strategic Role in IT Services - Configuration Management Moves Front and Center!
- 1. IT Services Essentials: CMDB’s Strategic Role in IT Services Configuration Management Moves Front & Center
- 2. 2 Speaker Bios DON CASSON, CEO, EVERGREEN SYSTEMS Don has led Evergreen Systems since its founding in 1997. Over the years he has spoken at conferences, authored white papers and been interviewed for numerous industry periodicals. Contact: dcasson@evergreensys.com JEFF BENEDICT, ITSM PRACTICE MANAGER, EVERGREEN SYSTEMS Jeff manages the ITSM practice at Evergreen and has worked with ITSM tools for 15+ years. Jeff is an active contributor to the Evergreen Blog and Twitter. (twitter.com/JeffSBenedict) Contact: jeff.benedict@evergreensys.com
- 3. 3 Today’s Agenda • About Evergreen • CMDB’s Strategic Role in IT Services • Evergreen’s Self-Service Catalog & Portal (built on ServiceNow) • Possible Next Steps / Q&A
- 4. • 80-person U.S. IT Consulting Firm • Worked with hundreds of Mid-Market, Fortune 1000 Companies and Public Sector Organizations • Full lifecycle firm with deep ITSM / ITIL transformation experience • One of Top 5 ServiceNow U.S. partners • Primary Focus – “Customer-Centric IT Service Management” 4 About Evergreen Systems Sample ClientsQuick Facts
- 5. 5 Traditional ITSM – Where’s the Customer? Incident Change Problem Knowledge Self Service Catalog & Portal Here I am!
- 6. 6 Start With the Customer – Change What You Do Self Service Catalog & Portal Change Problem Knowledge Incident
- 7. 7 Useful Grounding Service Owner. A role which is accountable for the delivery of a specific IT Service. Configuration Item (CI). Any component that needs to be managed in order to deliver an IT Service. CIs typically include services, software, hardware, people and documentation. Configuration Management. The Process responsible for maintaining information about Configuration Items (CIs) required to deliver an IT Service. CMDB. A database used to store Configuration Records throughout their lifecycle. Each CMDB stores attributes and relationships of CIs. ITIL def…
- 8. Why Have CMDBs Not Delivered Value? 8 • A solution in search of a problem • Lack of best practices • Got lost in the details • No clear purpose means no consistency
- 9. Why Have CMDBs Not Delivered Value? 9 • Poor & contradictory data sources • Big bang versus iterative approach • Poor technology & moving target caused by virtualization / cloud
- 10. What Is Different Now? 10 • CEO desire for employee “Amazon like” experience • Pressure of the DevOps cycle • Shared Services opportunity for IT
- 11. What Is Different Now? 11 • IT’s role as Service Provider / Broker vs. Technology Provider • Emergence of services over technical activities • Emerging role of Service Owner Request Outcome
- 12. Why Does This Make CMDB Essential? 12 • Supports modular, reusable services • Enables end to end service delivery & ownership • Bill of IT in a customer-valuable way • Makes variable Service Offerings possible • Supports KPIs the customer cares about • Provides true top to bottom service visibility
- 13. 13 Supports Modular, Reusable Services Build reusable service modules Combine them to create new services Manage each service as a configuration item (CI) to give you accountability A SERVICE SILO SILO SILO SILO SILOSvc Svc Svc Svc Svc
- 14. Configuration Management Benefits 14 • Manage each service or sub-service as a configuration item (CI) • Drives service consistency, accuracy, efficiency, agility, reuse • Promotes customer alignment end to end • Drives 80/20 thinking down into IT • Enables manageability, measurability & change • Improves ability to “think globally, act locally”
- 15. Service Owner SILO Service Owner SILO Service Owner SILO Service Owner SILO Svc A SERVICE Service Owner SILO Svc Svc Svc Customer Service Owner Request Outcome Service Providers Svc 15 Enables End to End Service Delivery & Ownership Customer & Service Owner Alignment See – Learn – Change Owner & Provider Alignment Virtuous Circle of Improvement
- 16. Service Owner SILO Svc Svc Svc Svc Bill of IT in a Customer Valuable Way 16 Cost Elements Hardware Tools & Software Facilities Labor Third Party
- 17. Makes Variable Service Offerings Possible 17
- 18. Supports KPIs the Customer Cares About 18 Customer Service Owner Service Provider Service Provider Service Provider Service Provider Service Provider Service Provider Great Customer experience On time delivery Available & fast when I need it Measure Customer satisfaction Consistently set & meet delivery expectations Service availability Consistently set & meet delivery expectations Service availability SLAs OLAs Continuous Improvement KPIs
- 19. Provides True Top to Bottom Service Visibility 19 Con- sumer SvcSvc Svc Svc Svc Svc Con- sumer Svc Application Service CIs Consumption Mapped Discovered Infrastructure Customer
- 20. Keys to Repurposing the CMDB 20 Pilot the Thinking… • BAD CMDB • Begin top down with a few key services • Assign Service Owners • Roll KPIs / SLAs up and down • Create a pilot Service Owner’s “workspace” – for real time service management
- 22. 22 Evergreen’s Self-Service Catalog & Portal POWERED BY SERVICENOW
- 23. One-Day, Private Service Catalog Workshop $3,950 Demo our “Metro Style” Self Service Catalog & Portal yourself! Possible Next Steps? http://www.evergreensys.com 23 See how our graphical Service Taxonomy Designer works
- 24. 24 • Questions? • Thank you for your time. Wrap-Up
Editor's Notes
- If you are new to our webinar series, welcome. If you are a past attendee thanks for joining us again. Our goal is to share valuable information & insights you can use in your planning and activities right now. The topic we will explore today is, CMDB’s strategic role in IT Services. This is the first time in our series we have focused directly on the CMDB and its role. I think it is resonating with you as there are nearly 300 registered. Here is our agenda- After a very little bit about Evergreen, we will dive into our topic today. Beyond that we will briefly demonstrate some of the concepts we will discuss in our always evolving view of a very advanced, self-service catalog & portal experience, built on ServiceNow. Then we will answer some questions if you have any. At any time during the webinar you may submit a question using the Q&A function.
- Evergreen is a US based consulting firm and we have worked with hundreds of mid market, Fortune 1000 companies and public sector organizations to improve their IT Service Management execution. We are a full lifecycle firm, or in the words of one customer, “you have both process and technology in one company.” We are one of the top 5 US ServiceNow partners and have over a decade of domain experience in each area of the ServiceNow portfolio, but we view all of this from a perspective of customer centric IT Service Mgmt.
- At Evergreen we think Traditional ITSM thinking is just plain wrong, because it puts the customer – the people we are really doing this for – last! Hard to believe but true. In most cases it takes a couple of years to even think about the customer. How can this possibly happen? First – we have walls around our thinking we don’t even see. This is how its always been done – so we don’t think to challenge it. Second – we don’t know how to put the customer first. What does the customer want? What are the best practices? How do we build it? So we put it in phase 3. Third – we DO know traditional Incident – Change – Problem etc best practices REALLY well – so we do what we’re comfortable with. Unfortunately, its wrong.
- We need to start with the customer. The customer should get a BIG WIN in phase 1. Both the technology & best practices CAN support it. Best of all, if we start with the customer, it will change what we do. Here are a few examples: In Incident – rather than thinking about how to handle Incidents, we will focus instead on how to eliminate or prevent the customer from having to contact us in the first place. How can we automate or eliminate the top 5-10 causes of Incidents / Requests? In Change Mgmt. – rather than always thinking about managing change – instead we will think about how to eliminate or streamline changes – to minimize impact & speed to react to customers needs. Knowledge becomes Search & Learn – a place for powerful, social self enablement – rather than just a tired afterthought. Start with the customer and it changes what you do!
- Let’s get started! As we often do, covering a few ITIL definitions are useful for getting us all on the same page. Four are relevant today – Service Owner, Configuration Item, Configuration Mgmt. and CMDB. The Service Owner is the person who owns / is responsible for delivery of a specific service. Now you could say that’s easy – if I am the person who provisions the database, then that is my service and I control it, simple! But what if that is just one element of delivering a complete computing capability in support of a critical application? Who owns that compound service? A Configuration Item or CI is a managed component. Its not just technology, it can be a process, documentation or even people. It is anything we want to track, account for and manage over time. Configuration Mgmt is a process that maintains accurate information about “things” that are used to deliver IT services. The natural extension is that we need to know we can rely on those things to be ready and right, when we need to deliver an IT Service. The CMDB is simply a place where we store this data over time, and how it relates to other data (Cis).
- This question is like the popular cocktail party question in Silicon Valley in the early 90s – Why did Apple fail? That question got answered. So why has the CMDB failed? The reasons are important if we don’t want to make the same mistakes again. The biggest reason by far is – it was a solution in search of a problem. As we often see in IT – we are really good at doing. We tackle big complex things and wrestle them to the ground in a large scale way. But we aren’t really good at asking why, or how will this be used? Does that make sense? and what is the least we can do rather than the most? Even though ITIL defined CMDB – there weren't really any best practices for how to SUCCEED with the CMDB – so we were on our own. The amount of detail we began to capture was massive and we got lost in it. Then – as we involved others in the effort – since we didn’t know why we were collecting the data – we lacked purpose we could share with others to help us all do the same thing.
- It is also fair to say that there was plenty of devil in the detail. Data sources were all over the map – inconsistent, inaccurate, duplicative and contradictory. Our Big Bang approach to collecting and storing ALL the data didn’t help either. Last, I think it is fair to say that manually maintained CMDBs at any other than the highest, most simple levels are not sustainable and shift constantly in a virtualized / cloud future. Without really good application discovery technology, it’s just not viable.
- The fact that we haven’t been successful with configuration mgmt. doesn’t mean it is getting less important. Just the opposite. CEOs are asking, maybe demanding an Amazon like employee experience of IT – which as you know is a beautiful, complete self SERVICE experience end to end. The DevOps ”revolution” is coming to all of us or our companies simply won’t be competitive. In 2014 Amazon made over 400 changes to the world’s largest data center. Twilio – a voice to digital SaaS provider with over 4 million transactions daily, makes 20-25 changes to production…every day. I would not want to compete with them. Last – an opportunity! IT is being asked by the CEO / COO to include the shared services parts of the organization in the Amazon like experience – this is a chance for IT to raise it’s visibility and value across the enterprise, and CIOs want to take advantage of it.
- Here are a few more. Innovative IT organizations are truly beginning to understand that their value is in delivering what the customer needs and wants in a high quality experience that meets the customer’s expectations. But they don’t actually have to provide the technology solution, because the customer doesn’t care about that. This in turn is leading IT to focus on true services rather than technical outcomes – which is fueling the emergence of the role of the Service Owner. Someone who owns the outcome the customer really wants – end to end.
- The differences now make the CMDB essential. Here are 6 foundational elements only the CMDB can bring to the delivery of IT Services. Modular & reusable End to end True cost of service Variable offerings KPIs the customer cares about and Top to bottom visibility Let’s look at each of these.
- We want to build modular services, and manage them as configuration items (Cis) It is important to apply a building block mentality to constructing services, then combine the blocks to create new services and variations of existing ones. If all your services are single threaded, custom built – they will be very expensive to create, impossible to maintain, and confusing to your customer. Think about Amazon – what would it be like if every Amazon department had its own checkout procedure? But this idea has its own challenges too – each service module, say “financial approval process” could be used in hundreds of services. So service Configuration Management is mandatory, with each service being managed as a configuration item (CI), and mapped into any combined services of which it is a part.
- Here are the benefits from using configuration management to manage services. First and foremost – it gives us factory like benefits of consistency, quality, accuracy, and reuse. It gives us agility because we can much more easily and simply create new services. It helps everyone involved to better see their role end to end and relation to their neighbors. It gets us thinking about what are the 4-5 things we deliver 80% of the time – then improving, streamlining, simplifying and automating them. And it helps us think globally and act locally – a huge challenge for large and diverse organizations. Here’s an example. Let’s say we have a global service like e mail that we want everyone to use, but we also have companies in other continents that need certain localized features – what do we do? In a modular fashion – they can use 80% of the core offering the same way we do, ands perhaps create a few specific components that meet their localized need – and we are all still on the same page for 80% - much better than different e mail systems for each country!
- Every service we deliver is made up of lots of little services. And even though one person, say John Smith, owns the “big” service, there are lots of little services being combined from different parts of IT to make up the big service. This is part of what scares John because he doesn’t control those people, they don’t actually work for him, so how can he possibly be successful? He begins explaining to everyone delivering services to him how important they are, how they fit into the big scheme and what the customer really wants. John creates meaningful mission alignment, because just mechanically doing a task is not very emotionally fulfilling, but helping a customer as part of the team – that is! And every day John will work with everyone – giving feedback, helping them improve, streamlining, encouraging the effort – and making sure they see their part in the big picture. How does the CMDB help John? It provides the detail in each subservice – availability, time to provision, quality of service, service issue resolution and service outage restoration that allow John to “see” his service end to end, fix it when its broken and continually improve it for the customer.
- Most IT organizations are at a very low maturity level when it comes to IT costing. This prevents IT from driving customer choice or participating in the fundamental conversation of business – cost / benefit tradeoffs. As we move to IT services – IT organizations are beginning to see this as mandatory rather than nice to have. Whether we actually get cost reimbursement, or just do showback costing - it still affects behavior - creating better customer understanding and decision making. Just as importantly, it allows US to create standard, bundled, happy meal offerings around the 4-5 activities we do most of the time – represented by the little orange services on the left hand side. In this way we simplify the customers decision making AND the work of IT. The CMDB? Can’t be done without it.
- As we move up the maturity scale in service offering creation, we are now able to offer variable service offerings – allowing the customer self service flexibility to configure a service to their particular cost / benefit mix. While not every service has this flexibility, for example SAP might be too strategically critical to have a “Silver” version offered, the CMDB with the CI service components allows us to “see” which service combinations can be created to yield variable service offerings, and which cannot.
- KPIs cascade down in a pyramid –from the customer, to the service owner, to the Service Providers. KPIs become SLAs and SLAs become OLAs as we go down the pyramid. And all the OLAs roll up into the SLAs which deliver the KPIs. Then working as a team, we continuously seek to improve our service delivery as well as the measures of our success, helped with visible alignment to the customer. With the CMDB supporting modular reusable sub-services, we can even trial build “prospective” services – a service we might want to offer, and look at what the performance & delivery might look like end to end by adding up the sub service SLAs / OLAs around delivery times, performance….and even COST!!!
- A lot of what we did traditionally in CMDB was below the double line in the middle – the hardware and software technology components and their relationships to each other. For our purposes today I am calling this the discovered infrastructure. Above the line are the Services. A Service usually consists of people, processes, descriptions, functionality, options and service commitments as well as technology underpinnings. Most of what makes up a Service CI can’t be discovered. But that may not be a huge problem because a service isn't as hard to track as moving technology like a virtualized server. You can see that each orange service above is consumed by some customer – that customer may be another service, or it may be the actual end customer – it doesn’t matter. One of our general principles is, ”Everyone has customers, everyone has services.” It is relatively easy as a service owner to add and track consumers of your service, as well as adding / tracking the sub services you consume to deliver your service. This makes it pretty easy to “discover” your services map in the CMDB. For the example above – the dotted lines going down on the left and right side show our “service” top to bottom.
- I hope we have made it clear that delivering IT Services is impossible without Configuration Mgmt and the CMDB. Now that CMDB has a true, strategic mission – what do we do next? Sounds like a good webinar topic huh? For now though, we can offer some high level guidance in repurposing the CMDB. Pilot your thinking. You will be experimenting with some new ideas & concepts – so keep it safe for learning. Recognize that the term CMBD is BAD. I suggest using the term Configuration Management – a euphemism for sure – but you need a fresh term where you can “define” it for the organization and it doesn’t carry a pre-labeled negative connotation. As you experiment begin top down with 3-4 key services and map the pieces at a high level – down to the applications that support the services, but don’t get lost in the noise below that. Assign Service Owners for the 3-4 pilot services – no risk – just to get a feel for the pieces that make up a service and the expectations around delivery. Identify the sub service “owners” and include them in the pilot activities. Once that is done, it’s not too hard to roll up and down the KPIs / SLAs for each service / sub service and see what they look like linked end to end. Last – if you can do it, try creating a Service Owner’s workspace – the place where they go to manage their service.
- Here’s is a quick look at the Service Owner workspace we have been developing. The idea behind it is to make it the one place where the Service Owner goes to reactively AND proactively manage their service. Today it includes information on customer satisfaction, service quality, service availability and service delivery. We are working to add proactive measures like the ability to respond to customer feedback, propose changes to the service here – that then go thru change control, and to be able to update and enhance features and options directly. That’s it for our presentation today – I will now turn it over to Jeff where he will demo some of these concepts in action.
- If you found this interesting and wonder what might be a logical next step, here are a few options. If you are interested in our advanced Self-Service Catalog & Portal, it is now available as a self-service demo. You can get your own login on our website – follow the front page banner. If you are looking for a better way to organize and categorize services – you can access a short demo video of our Service Taxonomy Mind Map application on our website. Or perhaps you are considering a broader Service Catalog initiative but aren’t sure where to start. Evergreen offers a one day, private Service Catalog Workshop on your site for up to 15 attendees. It is designed to educate your team, uncover key business drivers & roadblocks, and create a common language and direction - to get your team on the same page. You can literally save months of effort in consensus building and get your program moving. We feel like it’s a real value at less than 4 thousand dollars, including travel.