ITIL missed the opportunity to provide an easy to use, pragmatic, best practice model. But customer demand, project failures, retrials, re-thinking of affected show that such an easy to use, transparent and simple model is the key for successful configuration management projects. We propose a “Service Configuration Tree” Model as a sound base to work with. (more…)
Archive for the ‘Process’ Category
Service Configuration Tree – the key to success
Tuesday, March 29th, 2011Presentation on the ITSMF Germany Conference in Darmstadt (8.12.2010)
Monday, January 3rd, 2011I had the pleasure to talk about Configuration Management in the Darmstadtium. (http://www.itsmf.de/kongress2010.html). The title of my presentation was “How to make your configuration management fit for the future” and I covered ”Five areas where one can improve your configuration management”. The audience was great and the discussions were lively.
Below the GERMAN presentation including script of my speach: CoM_ITSMFDE_Bandi_Life
If you are interested in an English Version, please do not hesitate to contact me.
What is the purpose of Discovery / Discovered data ?
Friday, December 10th, 2010According to ITIL, the main purpose of a discovery solution (such as HP Discovery and Dependency Mapping, BMC Atrium Discovery and Dependency Mapping, IBM Tivoli Application Discovery and Dependency Mapping) is to provide data to the Configuration Verification and Audit process to compare discovered data with the data in your CMDB/CMS. Within this quality assurance process you create discrepancy reports and incidents in case that inexplainable differences are found. So far, so good. But is this all that data can be used for? (more…)
Key areas to improve Configuration Management
Wednesday, November 10th, 2010Most of the bigger companies today, have some kind of CMS / CMDB / Configuration Management. It is often something inventory and/or asset management system like with no or stepmotherly managed relations and limited control. These current systems often do not meet new requirements stated from Availability Management, Capacity Management, IT Financial Management Service Level Management. (more…)
What are the most important aspects when buying a Tool to support Configuration Management?
Monday, September 20th, 2010Of course, when doing a proper configuration management tool evaluation you get about 25 – 50 requirements. In this article I focus on the three most important points:
1. Diligence of prudent definition of what the tool should do
2. Integration with other processes
3. Structure of your CMDB/CMS/Configuration Tree
(more…)
Why Configuration Management? the unusual answer
Thursday, September 16th, 2010- How save do you feel entering an airplane?
- Why do we have confidence that a medicament causes only its defined effects?
- Do you know a company not relying on strict financial accouting?
We know, that within these three areas clearly defined controles are applied and enforced. So to speak, strict Configuration Management is applied – only difference – the Configuration Items (CI) are not IT Objects but screws, engines, pharmaceuticals, money. (more…)
Why should I raise an incident when finding a discrepancy in my CMS
Tuesday, June 29th, 2010You don’t have to, but there are some reasons you should consider it:
Reason Nr. 1: because the ITIL Manuals state: What is an Incident? ”An unplanned interruption to an IT Service or reduction in the Quality of an IT Service. Failure of a Configuration Item that has not yet affected Service is also an Incident. ” (more…)
What are the five Configuration Management Processes?
Sunday, June 20th, 2010- Configuration Management + Planning
- Configuration Identification
- Configuration Control
- Configuration Verification + Audit
- Configuration Status Accounting (more…)
Where does Change/Release-Management depend on accurate Configuration Information?
Thursday, June 3rd, 2010Where in the process of Change/Release/Deployment Management is an interface to Configuration Management and what exactly is the content of information required?
a) first of all in the Request for Change, who is required to initiate and document any change. There it has to be specified which components / relations are to be changed. It is beneficiary to select the affected components from a predefined fixed CI-list rather than enter the components name as free text.
Do I have to apply strict Configuration Control?
Sunday, May 2nd, 2010It depends !
It depends on what you intend to do with the CI/CI-Relation data. (more…)