Troy's Blog

ITIL Implementation Roadmap (Configuration Management) – Part 7

Configuration Management a Life Long Journey

While not recommended as one of the first processes, you will eventually discover the basic truth that all IT Management process deal in a currency of data and information. Consider that the acronym “IT” stands for Information Technology and that we live in an age where the accurate management and use of information will either enable strategic advantage or its loss will bring about financial ruin. While reality is not quite so dramatic anyone who works in IT would have to admit that we know how to delivery on the technology but the information part is a bit more challenging.

This challenge is no where more obvious than in your typical Change Management meeting where 10 – 15 of the key players in the IT function have to be present to correctly assess the risk of any proposed change. In most organizations the CMDB is stored in the grey matter of our subject matter experts and has to walk into the room each time we need to make an important IT Management decision.

So if the creation of a CMDB is so important why would this logically not be one of the first parts of ITIL an organization should implement? The answer to this question is that logic has nothing to do with it!

Very few people once informed of the purpose and the need for a CMDB will not agree that it is a good idea which we should do one day. Current technology and tools make the implementation of a CMDB more realistic than ever. Yet still many organizations put the creation of a CMDB off or fail miserably the first time they attempt a Configuration Management project due to the nature of IT Culture, organizational design and domain focused tool procurement practices.

I have written several posts on the nature of this subject but for a summary I refer you to a post called Not Ready For The CMDB

However I do believe that all IT shops will eventually come to the place where a CMDB is a recognized core business requirement.

For those Organizations I offer a high level description of key project elements of Configuration Management:

CMDB Planning:

Planning for Configuration Management should include the following main tasks:

• Establish the objective of Configuration Management for the IT organization
• Establish the scope of the Configuration Management process
• The definition of policies, standards around control and administration (Centralized vs. Decentralized)
• Define the process ownership, management and coordination roles
• Define the functional tool requirements and selection criteria for the CMDB
• Developing the process and tool related procedures for performing the Configuration Management activities:  identification, control, status accounting, verification and audit
• Interfacing the CMDB with other processes (e.g. Change Management)
• Design of the CMDB Data Model
• Define CI naming conventions and labeling procedures
• CMDB customization and population
• Development of a Performance Management Framework including group and individual key performance Indicators (KPI’s)

While there is much to be said about the Configuration Management project in the end it all comes down to who gets to keep this database up to date. For this reason I thought at the risk of making this post too long you would be interested in the key roles of this process.

Roles And Responsibilities:
The initial planning phase of the project must include the establishment of the role of a Process Owner for Configuration Management. This key role will be accountable for the overall quality of the process, the management of, and organizational compliance to, the process flows, procedures, data models, policies, and technologies associated with the Configuration Management process. 

Process Owner:
The Process Owner for Configuration Management plays the important role of Champion, Design Lead, Advocate, Coach and Protector. The Process Owner who is accountable for Configuration Management should be a senior level manager who carries prestige, credibility and authority across the various areas affected by the process implementation. Positional power is particularly important to the selection of the Configuration Management process owner due to the distributed nature of administration and number of cross-organizational groups and departments integrated with the process. The Process Owner will be required to have the ability to influence and assure compliance to the policies and procedures put in place across the cultural and organizational silos of the IT organization. Depending on the size of the organization the Process Owner may or may not be the Configuration Manger.
Configuration Manager:
The Configuration Manager is responsible for managing the operational activities of the process. The Configuration Manager is involved in ensuring integration with the other Service Management processes such as Change and Release Management. The Configuration Manager is also involved in developing the CMDB data model, core policies, maintenance processes and procedures, key performance indicators and producing ongoing management reports.

Examples of the responsibilities involved Include:

• Facilitates the negotiation of the scope of the Configuration Management process in collaboration with the project steering committee, Process Owner and IT and business stakeholders
 
• Identifies which CIs need to be managed and controlled from this basis of Inventory, Asset and Configuration Management
• Proposes and agrees to the CI types and level of detail at which CIs are to be identified
• Ensures that the CMDB reflects the real-time state of the IT infrastructure
• Produces and distributes management reports for Configuration Management
• Defines integration requirements to support other IT Service Management processes
• Audits the CMDB against the infrastructure to measure and report on data integrity and compliance
• Updates the logical CMDB Service Structure when an IT Service is implemented or changed
• Continually reviews the Configuration Management process for efficiency and effectiveness
• Plans and executes the population of the CMDB (manual or automated)
• Leverages system management tools to assist with CMDB data integrity
• Performs regular housekeeping on CMDB and plans for growth

Configuration Management Coordinator:
Each technical domain is traditionally responsible for maintaining a record of the assets under their management and control. Typically, these areas are maintaining various data repositories in spreadsheets and databases, which need to be transferred or federated to a central CMDB. It stands to reason that due to the complexity of the infrastructure and the sheer number of CIs to be managed these technical domains should maintain the data within the physical layer of the CMDB data model under their control. A key recommendation of this post is the establishment and formalization of this role for each technical domain responsible for the update of the CMDB.

That being said, logic would dictate that while the maintenance of this data would be basic activity for each of these groups, very few keep their existing repositories up to date to a level that would be useful for management decision-making and support for the other ITIL processes. Unless reward and measurement systems are changed to raise the profile of this activity in order to measure the compliance to the Configuration Management processes, the CMDB will end up in the same state as most of the existing data repositories the organization has today. For this reason, it is critical the Configuration Manger keeps a close eye on and reports on the integrity of the data and the compliance by various groups involved. When areas of concern are identified, it is up to the Process Owner to provide the necessary influence to facilitate the cultural changes required to maintain the database.

Examples of the responsibilities involved:

• Define which CI types are to be tracked within their technical domain
• Define what attributes will be tracked for each CI type
• Upload the data from existing data repositories into the central CMDB
• Update the CI records under their control on an ongoing basis
• Maintain the system and service relationships of the CIs under their control
• Assist with periodic integrity audits on the CIs within their domain

Troy’s thoughts what are yours?

On this topic I also reccomend the following posts:
The Federated CMDB
CMDB As A Resort Condominium
Not Ready For The CMDB

 

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