This is a continuation to my earlier article CMDB and You! (Part 1)
You should have completed the following steps:-
1. Defined your CI Types in your organization that you want to track (Computers, Laptops, Software, Routers, Servers)
2. Discovered your CI instances (Actual names of devices or Assets)
3. Documented further details (what? Where? How? Why? Who? and If?)– CMDB Expanded List
a. What is the CI?
b. Where is it?
c. Why it is required?
d. Who is using it?
e. How it is linked to other CIs?
f. If the CI is mission critical? (Some organizations have Disaster Recovery plans defined for these CIs)
Again, our mission to build the CMDB is rooted in the desire to build an IT environment towards availability, manageability, and serviceability. Being an IT Administrator it is our top most goal to do it with efficiency!
Service Desk Alignment of CMDB — Why?
Lot of people struggle to improve their service desk performance after achieving certain levels. If you are the ones tracking ‘First-Call Resolution’ and if it remains around ’72′ for a long time, thinking on these lines may help
1. Knowledge base – Quick access to Incidents, Problems, Resolutions, FAQ with some tag lines or key words
2. History Tracking – Information specific to the user or the asset related to the incident and past experiences
3. Expertise – Skill set pertaining to the services that you provide to customers
Easier than said, how do you go about building one? How it is related to your CMDB?
Identify the top CIs (from your CMDB that you already have) and try to align it with the Services you provide.
For example, if you have IT Services –> E-Mail –> Exchange, then the following CIs may be related to the service offered (Exchange Server(s), ISA Servers (if any), Spam Control Server, Firewall Server)
Or let us say, if you have IT Services –> Hardware –> Network Printers, then any network printer in the environment would qualify as related CI
Why this would help?
There is a very close relationship between the user experience and CIs they utilize on a daily basis. Customers generally point to the IT / Helpdesk Department for any kind of problem they experience utilizing any CI. Assume the frustration of anyone who is in a domain environment that
1. experiences delays in user login time
2. limits access to common IT resources in the same network
3. prompts for different login/passwords while accessing different applications
There are multitude reasons why the above listed examples may occur in an environment, but it becomes the responsibility of the IT administrator(s) to take care of them sooner or later.
If you start defining your Services and track the corresponding CI(s) as part of your helpdesk process, you tackle them easily and effectively.
Service Desk Alignment of CMDB— How?
Whether you have an existing Incident Management system, or building one, work out a process that would enable capturing ‘Affected CI’ information as part of the service request submission. Please remember that there may be scenarios when the service request has no corresponding CI relationship. This can be achieved by
a. Customizing your existing system using ‘custom fields’ that would refer to the CMDB
b. Exploring CMDB alignment for your Service Desk
Keep the solution very simple and that is key to derive useful reports out of the system.
You should be able to choose a given CI and see all the corresponding incidents or problems, total time taken to resolve them, cost invested and actual TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) of the CI
Similarly, choose a given user, asset owned, corresponding incidents, IT expenses for that user / department (for any charge backs – prevalent in local government organizations)
Service Desk Alignment of CMDB– Benefits
1. Improved Service Desk performance
2. Increase in First Call Resolution Rate (primarily due to history tracking)
3. Knowledgebase Improvements – techs would be able to relate to similar incidents and also run metrics on similar CIs
4. Vendor evaluation — For example, you will have the ability to compare incidents on DELL / HP for the past 6 months or 1 year and make decisions
5. Decision Support – Contract renewal decisions, budgetary proposals for resources, utilization metrics, asset life cycle planning and several other IT tasks would be supported by the reports generated out of the above designed system
6. Exceed customer expectations as they can see the benefits and value of your IT team
Suri Anantharama, PMP provides ITIL consulting for organizations and assists in building CMDB
