SERVICE MANAGEMENT MATURITY PROGRESSION
This is my "effort poast" regarding some of the observations I've made on organizational attempts to automate IT environments with IT service management being at the center of that effort. This is by no means complete (that would be book length) and only covers a few highlights. But, I thought if it could be of help to someone that it was worth posting. Let me know your thoughts.
IT Service Management - What Is The Goal?
At a high level, the goal is to ensure that IT resources are aligned to business requirements. More specifically, this means the applications in the critical path of revenue and profitability are functioning at maximum efficiency. Maximum efficiency means that the applications, AND the infrastructure supporting those applications, are available and functioning as intended at all times. There can be a lot of variables in that equation. The good news is the number of variables is finite.
Having worked with many customers in the area of service management I have seen some successes in building a solid service management organization that maximizes operational efficiencies and maintains high application uptimes. Here are a few of the observations I have made:
Identifying Current State
As mentioned above in point number two, it is crucial that IT service management stakeholders understand where they currently are in the maturation process. Once this is understood goals can be set to reach the next level of maturity and projects defined to meet those goals.
Below is an example of a typical IT service management maturity model.
Most organizations today are in phase one with remnants of the previous state still present in the current environment. Phase one's fundamental challenge is understanding what exists in the current environment supporting critical path applications. What inventory is being managing in the environment that supports application availability and performance for users? Stated more technically, what configuration Configuration Items (CIs) are in the Configuration Management Data Base (CMDB) that support critical business applications?
The Softball Analogy
When my daughters were young and first started playing softball the goal was to have them experience what it was like to win games in a team environment. The coaches had to inventory the player's talent to understand who the hitters, catchers, runners and cheerleaders were. Only after understanding the "inventory" of talent could the coaches put together a strategy to achieve the goal.
The same is true for IT service management in an organization and CMDB purity is fundamental to understanding what needs to be managed to achieve the goal of maximum uptime for critical path applications. This is why CMDB purity is so crucial to companies that rely heavily on their applications for revenue generation and capital preservation. Additionally, the IT service management organization also needs to have process, governance and automation around managing the CMDB so that CI purity remains consistently high. When this is accomplished the organization has now moved squarely into level one of the maturity model and can begin preparing for level two.
Level two in the maturity model focuses on creating a map between the critical path applications and the CIs supporting each application. Each application is dependent on specific pieces of connected infrastructure in order to deliver the outcomes necessary for successful application business transactions. Application dependent infrastructure includes things like routers, switches, cloud service providers, firewalls, IaaS, storage arrays or possibly a few dozen other components (CIs) in the CMDB for any single application.
The goal of service mapping is to create a traceable, visible connection between the application user experience and the application itself. This grants the IT organization, and the business application owners, real-time visibility into application health and performance. It also enables support teams to rapidly understand what CIs in the chain of supporting infrastructure are creating user experience application degradation or outages.
Prioritizing what applications are most critical to the business is the starting point of phase two. Once this is understood, IT and the business stakeholders can decide which one of the applications from the priority list to begin mapping. The first selected application doesn't have to be the most critical to the business. Instead it can be one that is dependent on a smaller number of CIs. This approach can provide a good proving ground for the process and execution of future, more critical application mappings.
Visibility
As maps to the business critical applications are created, building real-time visibility of the maps is an important part of the project. The service management tool used to manage the CIs in the CMDB should have visualization and dashboard functionality for creating real-time visibility into application as well as CI availability and health. It is only with this centralized visibility that the service support organization, and the business units themselves, are able to understand application health in real-time and quickly restore degraded application performance. Visibility is what can let the IT organization know there is a service impacting issue before the customer even knows. Granular, real-time visibility in a service mapped environment is also what enables service management to quickly pinpoint what CI or CIs are causing service degradation thereby reducing mean time to resolution (MTTR). Rather than spending hours on end in "war room" calls, involving sometimes dozens of different IT stack stakeholders, the IT service management group can quickly identify what stakeholders need to be involved and quickly resolve the issue. Visualization of environmental health is what helps facilitate this outcome.
The Application of AI in a Service Mapped Environment
Levels one and two of maturity are important milestones but, from an operational perspective, they are still reactive phases of the maturity model. These phases provide a rearview mirror view of the managed environment. Granted, the time it takes to resolve issues is much less than it was prior to these levels of maturity being achieved, but IT is still reacting to a failed link in the chain of CIs supporting a business application. In the third level of the maturity model predictive and preventative maintenance can be suggested by the IT services management solution to avoid a future outage or application degradation.
More and more organizations are striving for this kind of outcome as tools they use to manage their complex IT environments begin releasing these predictive feature sets. Although AI predictive features are relatively new in the IT service management space the prospect of predictive maintenance being able to significantly reduce unplanned outages or prevent application performance degradation can make a compelling business case.
AI enhancements in CMDB tools will apply remediation models to CMDBs lacking CI purity allowing organizations to move much more quickly from phase one to phase two in the maturity model. AI driven templates for service mapping will likely be available for accelerating the application mapping process facilitating a faster adoption of the predictive AI feature sets in phase three of the model.
AI Operations Tools
Today there also are third party AI ops tools that have advanced capabilities eliminating the immediate need for high CMDB purity essentially shortcutting a temporary path around CMDB remediation. Some organizations have evaluated the complexity, and resulting time and cost of CMDB remediation, and decided that they need to do something in parallel to address MTTR as they begin their CMDB remediation process. These third party AI operations tools can be a good fit for these scenarios as they are not dependent on CMDB purity and integrate with the existing service management tool for seamless, bi-directional data exchange.
Where to Start
Since so much of an organization's ability to provide efficient execution on enterprise wide objectives is dependent on managing the variables in the IT equation, it makes sense to begin the IT service management maturation process sooner than later. A lot of intermediate progress can be made towards enabling a "service aware" environment that can efficiently and dynamically support existing and new business critical applications. The graphic above is an example project roadmap for an organization beginning this journey in phase one (or phase two if CMDB remediation has either not yet taken place or is still in progress).
PROJECT 1: CMDB REMEDIATION
CMDB remediation is fundamental to an agile environment where dramatically improved, data driven decision making can be made. The CMDB should mirror the environment being managed so that an accurate representation can be presented for better, more aligned business decisions.
A few key elements of CMDB remediation are:
? The identification of inaccuracies or gaps in the CMDB data.
? Configuration of tools that help maintain CMDB CI accuracy and purity.
? The establishment of governance to ensure standards around both CIs and CMDB management are maintained.
Many times it is helpful to have an outside consulting organization familiar with the CMDB remediation process to help develop standards, conduct remediation, set up the tools to maintain CI purity in the CMDB and help establish governance around CMDB policy and management. The duration of a CMDB remediation project varies on the size of the organization but can sometimes take as much as three to five months to complete.
PROJECT 1A: AI OPERATIONS TOOL DEPLOYMENT (Optional)
As already mentioned, sometimes the complexity of existing CMDB remediation will demand significant time and resource. If the need for much better MTTRs is urgent then the deployment of a third party, specialized AI operations management tool can bridge the gap while CMDB remediation is planned and executed on. In some cases organizations may even retain the AI operations management tool even after successful CMDB remediation. Typically, there is an integration of the third party AI operations tool into the IT service management tool so that a bi-directional flow of information can be shared between the two. This enables the tickets to be managed and updated seamlessly for IT service management teams. The IT organization can assess whether or not migrating from the third party AI operations tool to something native within the IT service management platform will deliver more value to the organization.
Typically, there is a compelling ROI for the deployment of an AI operations tool particularly in environments where MTTR has significant value attached to the down time and/or the number of annual outages in an organization is above average.
PROJECT 2: SERVICE MAPPING or ASSET MANAGEMENT
Once project one is complete an organization has the option of moving a few different directions depending on what their organizational priorities are. If the organization is more focused on application availability then service mapping can be prioritized as the second project. However, if the organization is experiencing considerable loss of profitability due to asset sprawl, or is in need of tighter asset management standards for regulatory or compliance reasons, then asset management could be a better project two option. These two efforts can also be run in parallel.
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ASSET MANAGEMENT
Asset management of IT assets enables an organization to track the "cradle to grave" lifecycle of IT assets. Implemented properly, this feature provides an organization with inventory and cost transparency, improved service management of owned assets, improved CMDB purity and a better ability to maintain compliance and governance. Although 3rd party AI operations tools generally do not depend on CMDM purity to operate effectively, they can operate more effectively with higher CMDB purity.
Because there is generally a very compelling business case and ROI for asset management, but not a clear cut ROI for CMDB remediation, some organization choose to combine CMDB remediation (project one) with asset management (project two) or with the deployment of an AI operations tool (PROJECT 1A). In doing so these organizations are using the business case ROI of asset management and reduced MTTR to help fund CMDB remediation.
Some of the key aspects of the asset management remediation project are:
? Asset Lifecycle Management:
Tracks IT assets from acquisition to disposal, including procurement, deployment, maintenance, and decommissioning.
? Asset Inventory:
Maintains a comprehensive and up-to-date inventory of all IT assets, including hardware, software, virtual assets, and cloud resources.
? Integration with ITSM Processes:
Links asset data with processes like incident management, problem management, change management, and configuration management to improve IT service delivery and decision-making.
? Compliance and Governance:
Ensures assets comply with licensing, regulatory, and security requirements.
? Cost Optimization:
Monitors and manages the costs associated with IT assets, including purchase, maintenance, and operational expenses.
? Risk Management:
Identifies risks associated with asset failures, security vulnerabilities, or non-compliance, enabling proactive measures.
The hardware asset management tool will also help maintain higher CMDB purity levels by adding and removing devices from the CMDB as they move through their lifecycle.
SERVICE MAPPING
Some organizations consider CMDB remediation and service mapping phases of the same project with service mapping following CMDB remediation.
Typically, an organization will map services one at a time, or in small groups when services are interrelated.
Most of the time there is a demonstrable ROI connected to fewer outages and greatly improved meantime to resolution (MTTR) of service degrading issues. This can help make project business justification and budget approval a more clear cut case.
PROJECT 3: SOFTWARE ASSET MANAGEMENT or APPLICATION RATIONALIZATION
Software Asset Management
Software sprawl is a common enterprise challenge. Many organizations will have procured more software than they need from a variety of different vendors. The cost of over-purchased software can quickly become a considerable expense to the organization and, at a certain point, accurately managing software inventories on a spreadsheet becomes impractical if not impossible.
Gartner has stated that a 70% reduction in year one software costs can be achieved by utilizing a software asset management (SAM) tool. The savings are less significant in subsequent years but can still be as high as 20% of the annual software budget. In addition, features like instantly auditable software inventory can reduce audit preparation times by 80% or more and stabilize cost un-forecasted licensing overages. A SAM tool also feeds more accurate data about current software inventories into the CMDB helping maintain higher CI purity levels.
Application Rationalization
Application rationalization, which is a separate project, enables an organization to analyze what software is being utilized, or in many cases under utilized. Significant cost reductions can be realized when application use rationalization is applied to the application portfolio of an organization. Applications that are under utilized, or perhaps not even utilized at all, can be right sized for the environment or, in some cases, eliminated entirely.
Application portfolio management is regarded as a highly valuable tool not only for IT organizations managing operating costs but for business units who are trying to understand application adoption and usage within their BU.
Procurement Integration
Integrating procurement can also help feed the automation of the CMDB with real-time procurement inventory thereby increasing CMDB purity. Once an asset is purchased and is then deployed it can automatically be registered as a CI in the CMDB where it begins it's lifecycle management journey within the hardware asset management tool. When the device has been decommissioned it can be automatically removed as a CI in the CMDB.
SERVICE AWARE PROJECT TIMELINE EXAMPLE
The example below shows how an organization can roll out successive projects all cumulatively essential to the goal of providing maximum uptime to business critical applications as well as real-time visibility to the metrics most important to each organization. Each of the projects in this example support the subsequent projects bringing the organization to an automated, service-on-demand state.
Each project also has an element of dashboard visibility built into the outcome so that everyone from senior leadership to individual contributors can clearly understand performance metrics in real-time.
Universal enterprise portals with AI chatbots on both desktop and mobile devices are also important outcomes enabling all users a consistent, self-service, user based experience.
The timeline above is only an example. Different organizations have different priorities and are at different levels of service management and IT maturity. I have seen this timeline successfully executed at organizations, but have also seen modifications based on a variety of organizational differences including budget and resource availability just to name a few.
The automation in these finished deployments can create a more "Uber like experience" that employees and customers all but demand these days while providing the business with improved profitability and visibility into the environment.
Conclusion
Although this endeavor is challenging the outcomes drive significant cost savings to the business while providing the opportunity for increased automation and visibility. It requires buy-in at senior leadership levels, adequate funding and support resources as well. In some cases this effort will also require unprecedented cooperation and collaboration of internal business units, something that some organizations are not used to doing.
Globally, organizations are making the effort and investment to remain competitive in the marketplace. Having service aware delivery environment with high application availability, automation and environmental visibility is key to keeping this competitive advantage. The great news is that each successfully executed project on the journey delivers tangible results as the organization builds a mature environment.
This post is a very high level overview of the service aware model. If you have any questions or comments I would love to hear from you.