AI? We need to mature our foundation first...

''AI? We need to mature our foundation first...'' that is one thing we often hear when we talk with customers about the stunning features around automation, AI, Generative AI, and using Virtual Agent as a hyper-automation channel, for example via MS Teams. When double-clicking on what is meant by that we hear 7 out of 10 our CMDB, and 3 out of 10 our knowledge base.

Let's start with the CMDB (and don't forget about CSDM). Of course, we have a lot of advice and materials to help with this, but I want to start with an external source, Chat GPT (3.5). The question we used was ''What’s the best approach to setup my ServiceNow CMDB?''.

For today's article, we will focus on the answer of Chat GPT and I will try to provide some extra information, with ''WR".

Here we go:

Setting up your ServiceNow Configuration Management Database (CMDB) effectively requires careful planning and a structured approach. Here are the key steps to consider:

1. Define Your Objectives: Clearly define your CMDB goals and objectives. Understand what you want to achieve with it, such as improved IT asset management, better change management, or enhanced incident resolution.

WR: Having a CMDB just for the fun of it doesn't make a lot of sense, right? ;-), and it doesn't provide you with a direction to go to, or the level of detail that you need to focus on. You can think about;

- What is needed for my IT Service Management processes?

- Enhanced decision-making, like for planning for upgrades, or optimizing resources, or responding to incidents (with the correct priority).

- Having accurate and up-to-date information at your fingertips improves decision-making.

2. Scope and Categorization: Determine what types of configuration items (CIs) you want to track in your CMDB. This can include hardware, software, network devices, and more. Create categories and classes for each CI type.

WR: Which types of Configuration Items (CI's) do you want to track in your CMDB? Hardware, Software, Network devices, only IT, or also OT?

3. Data Population: Decide on the data sources for your CMDB. Integrate with various tools and systems like discovery tools, asset management systems, and manual input. Ensure data accuracy and consistency.

WR: Which external tool do you have already running in your landscape that can tell you something about the CI's running in your landscape? Can you use a ServiceNow Service Graph Connector to load that data into your CMDB, or do you need to build a custom integration? If you still have white spots in your network, (probably, but you don't know what you don't know) that aren't visible in other tools, that you run ServiceNow discovery?

4. Data Model and Relationships: Define the relationships between CIs. Understand how they interact with each other. Use ServiceNow's data modeling capabilities to establish these relationships.

WR: Having the CI's in your CMDB is a good start, and even more powerful is having visibility of the relationships between the CI's. This will accelerate your incident management process and will provide an end-to-end view of the chain that delivers your Business Services.

5. Naming Conventions: Establish naming conventions for CIs to maintain consistency and make it easier to identify and search for items in the CMDB.

WR: Very important as various processes depend on this. Think about Consistency, Readability and understandability, searchbility, documentation, maintenance and updates, automation, version control, data integrity, security, scalability, compliance and governance and cross-team collaboration.

In summary, naming conventions are essential for maintaining order, consistency, and clarity in various domains, from IT and data management to software development and collaborative work. They simplify processes, improve communication, and contribute to the overall efficiency and effectiveness of organizations and projects.

6. Automation: Implement automation to discover and update CIs. Utilize ServiceNow Discovery or third-party tools to automate data population and reduce manual effort.

WR: Automation is key to keep an up-to-date CMDB, at all times. Having someone manually update the CMDB is a recipe for disaster. More than once I've talked with customers where someone was responsible for populating the CMDB. Once I even spoke person who was traveling 4-6 months a year around the globe, to various locations, to update the CMDB. And with more and more companies embracing DevOps doing none-automated CMDB management is even more impossible. Running the CMDB Health dashboard quickly exposed the many problems.

7. Change Management: Integrate CMDB with your change management processes. Ensure that all changes are recorded in the CMDB to maintain a comprehensive view of your IT environment.

WR: Besides this is a requirement for many organizations with an ISO27001 certificate. We often see companies not utilizing the CI in their change management process.

Linking a CI to a change request helps in assessing the potential impact of the proposed change. By knowing which CIs are affected by or related to the change, you can understand how the change might impact your IT environment.

It aids in the planning and execution of changes. When you link CIs to a change, you can create a clear roadmap for implementing the change, including the order in which CIs will be modified or updated.

Identifying and linking CIs allows you to manage risks effectively. You can anticipate and mitigate risks associated with changes, such as service disruptions, by understanding the dependencies and relationships between CIs.

Linking CIs to a change provides transparency and facilitates communication within your IT team and with stakeholders. It helps everyone involved in the change process to understand what will be impacted and why.

It serves as documentation of the change's scope. This documentation is valuable for auditing purposes, compliance, and for maintaining a historical record of changes made to CIs.

Many change management processes require authorization or approval before implementing a change. Linking CIs to the change request provides the necessary context for approvers to make informed decisions about whether to authorize the change.

Knowing which CIs are associated with a change enables you to plan and execute testing and validation procedures more effectively. You can focus your testing efforts on the CIs that are most critical to the change.

In case the change results in unexpected issues or failures, linking CIs helps in planning rollback procedures. You can identify which CIs were modified and need to be reverted to their previous states.

After a change is implemented, you can use the information about linked CIs to analyze the performance and behavior of your IT environment. This can help in identifying performance improvements or additional changes needed.

Over time, analyzing the relationships between CIs and changes can provide insights for continuous improvement of your IT processes and infrastructure.

In essence, linking CIs to changes enhances the overall effectiveness of your change management process. It promotes transparency, risk management, and efficient planning, ultimately leading to smoother and more controlled changes in your IT environment. This is especially critical in organizations where IT services are central to business operations and where any disruptions can have significant consequences.

8. Access Control: Implement access controls and permissions to restrict who can view and modify CMDB data. Ensure that only authorized personnel can make changes.

WR: let's summarize this one as simple as it is, you put a lot of effort in a reliable CMDB, and you don't want anyone to mess around with it.

9. Data Quality and Governance: Continuously monitor and improve data quality. Set up data governance processes to validate and update CI data regularly.

WR: Think about how you want to keep the data up to date. How often do you want to re-run your discovery method? Are you working in a DevOps environment where you want to run discovery maybe every hour. Or do you want your Cloud provider to send you an update over the ServiceNow Service Graph Connector when a new CI has been created through a DevOps pipe?

10. Reporting and Analytics: Create dashboards and reports to gain insights from your CMDB data. This can help in making informed decisions and identifying areas for improvement.

WR: By leveraging the CMDB Workspace you can use the power of the platform to manage and improve your CMDB.

11. Documentation and Training: Document CMDB processes and train your staff on CMDB best practices to ensure proper usage.

WR: It is recommended to train your responsible people. Check out the various training we offer on NowLearning.

12. Continuous Improvement: CMDB is an evolving system. Regularly review and refine your CMDB setup based on feedback and changing business needs.

WR: The CMDB Workspace supports owners in the decision-making. CMDB management isn't done over night and is never completed.

13. Integration: Ensure that your CMDB integrates seamlessly with other ITSM processes like incident, problem, and asset management to provide a holistic view of your IT environment.

WR: Like managed above on Change Management, the same applies to processes such as Incident, problem and asset management. How often is there an event on a CI. Does it happen often? Does it cost a lot of company resources to keep ut up and running? Isn't it a good idea to sunset and replace with a more stable solution?

14. Audit and Compliance: Regularly audit your CMDB to ensure compliance with industry standards and regulations.

WR: The Best advice I can give you here is to talk with your CISO, they are often the biggest supporters of a reliable CMDB. Without visibility of the company assets, they cannot perform their job.

15. Scalability: Plan for scalability as your organization grows. Ensure that your CMDB can handle an increasing volume of data and users.

WR: See automation, without this you cannot scale. Resulting in an unreliable CMDB.

16. Backup and Recovery: Implement robust backup and recovery procedures to prevent data loss.

WR: Make sure you have a good B&R process. Not only because it's the heart of the organization, but also because you have put so much effort into it, you don't want to lose it ;-).

17. Security: Protect your CMDB data with robust security measures to prevent unauthorized access and data breaches.

WR: The CMDB (should) contain all CI's and their attributes. This is sensitive data, so protect it!

Remember that the successful setup of a CMDB is an ongoing process that requires collaboration among different teams within your organization. It's essential to have a well-defined strategy and commitment to maintaining the CMDB's accuracy and relevance over time. Additionally, consider seeking assistance from ServiceNow experts or consulting services to ensure a successful CMDB implementation.

Investment Yes, it does require a sizeable investment both from a finance and efforts point of view, but this is something I guarantee you, you earn back, in multiples, downstream on various process within ITSM, but also Security, Risk, Portfolio, Asset Management and more.

Thanks for today. See you next week!