IMPLEMENTING ITIL BEST PRACTICES

Transcription

1 IMPLEMENTING ITIL BEST PRACTICES How to Develop Operational and Product By: John Neels

2 Introduction The categorization of events is probably one of the most important aspects of tracking IT Service Management (ITSM) processes and activities. The categorizations are used to assist an organization in a) measuring and documenting the efficiency of the people processes (Operational Categorization), b) the reliability and performance of IT configuration items (Product and c) the corresponding metrics that will measure the health and responsiveness of the IT organization. The categorization matrix is often the hardest aspect of any ITSM implementation. It will require a consensus among the entire IT organization that a) the operational categorizations represent the process steps and activities of the organization and can be utilized to measure the business critical key process indicators and b) that the product categorizations represent all of the business critical configuration items both physical (hardware) and logical (software, circuits and applications). There often political ramifications and legitimacy that are intertwined with operational categorizations that document a departments processes and work activities and the product categorizations that define the organizations configuration items. The overall organizational process strategy document is necessary in the development of categorizations. The CIO and directors of an organization will usually have developed a number of high level key process indicators (KPI s) that they feel are important to monitor. The KPI s are most often developed as a result of an ITIL, six sigma or ISO certification initiative. The goal of determining an organization s KPI s is to determine how well the IT organization is meeting the needs of its business customers on a daily, weekly, monthly and yearly basis. The KPI measurement tools and reports will utilize use the Operational categorization information for determining the efficiency of the processes. The organization also has KPI s for product and vendor reliability that are tracked using the Product categorizations. The presentation of the KPI scorecard is often done through a graphical dashboard with positive and negative thresholds

3 Introduction (continued) If an organization does not have its processes documented the development of the operational categorization matrix is very difficult. They should develop at least some high level process step/task diagrams for the processes that the applications utilizing the categorization will support. Once the process diagrams are established then it should establish some KPI s to measure the efficiency of the daily, weekly, monthly and yearly organizational processes. The IT organization should then establish how the KPI s will be presented to the CIO and higher management levels within the organization. The most common method today for managers and directors of an organization to monitor the KPI s is through a management dashboard. The management dashboard is a collection point for the organizations performance as monitored by its IT service management (ITSM) application, project and portfolio management application (PPM), and IT infrastructure monitoring tools. The dashboard concept gives the organizational management both real time snapshots and longer term trending as to how the IT organization is doing in its support of the business organization. The operational activities strategy of the IT organization is another aspect that must be considered in the development of the categorizations. The operational activities strategy should document how the organization is interpreting the KPI results for operational efficiencies both positive and negative and operational work tracking of incident, problem, change management and project activities. The goal of any organization in implementing and tracking KPI information is operational process improvement through trend analysis. The KPI metrics are most often grouped into the IT Information Library (ITIL) processes a) Incident b) Problem c) Change Management/Change tasking d) configuration management. Some examples of metrics of each grouping are Incident Percentage of First Call resolutions Percentage by Operational Categorization Tiers (Tier 1, Tier 2, Tier 3) of high frequency incidents Percentage by Product Categorization Tiers (Tier 1, Tier 2, Tier 3) of high frequency incidents Open Incident aging by Urgency, Impact and Priority Mean time to resolution by Operational Categorization Tiers (Tier 1, Tier 2, Tier 3) Mean time to resolution by Product Categorization Tiers (Tier 1, Tier 2, Tier 3) Problem Number of Root causes identified versus total problems Number of problems related to Change requests to eliminate root cause Number of problems related to Known Errors with documented work arounds Mean time to resolution by Operational Categorization Tiers (Tier 1, Tier 2, Tier 3) Mean time to resolution by Product Categorization Tiers (Tier 1, Tier 2, Tier 3)

4 Change Management Number of changes by Operational Categorization Tiers (Tier 1, Tier 2, Tier 3) Number of changes by Product Categorization Tiers (Tier 1, Tier 2, Tier 3) Number of successful changes by Operational Categorization Tiers (Tier 1, Tier 2, Tier 3) and Product Categorization Tiers (Tier 1, Tier 2, Tier 3) Mean time to resolution of Change Requests Number of Incidents related to Change Requests Configuration Management Number of discovered configuration items that do not match authoritative state Number of incidents and changes related to a configuration item. Number of Problems and Known Errors related to a configuration item. Total cost of ownership for high cost configuration items Categorization Creation Tips When creating the actual categorizations there are some basic rules that should be followed during the process. 1. The Tier 1 categorization levels should be limited to a maximum of ten (10) with the ideal being seven (7) to eight (8). 2. The Tier 2 categorizations are a further refinement of the Tier The Tier 3 categorizations are the final refinement of the Tier 1 and Tier 2 categorizations. They may not be necessary, but it must be determined if they are necessary for ticket routing or reporting. The people that should be involved in the initial and ongoing categorization maintenance are: 1. Business Process team: to build the structure and ensure flow between the ITSM Incident, Problem, Change, and Tasking applications 2. Operations team: include Incident Managers, Problem Managers, Change Managers, Service Desk Mangers and Analysts to help build and verify/validate the structure from an operations and product level 3. Service Level Manager: to ensure that the structure supports the services being provided and to verify the mapping against the SLA and OLA defined within ITSM 7 Incident, Problem, Change and Tasking applications 4. Configuration Management team: to help build the structure that will be used to map directly against he Configuration Items within the CMDB.

5 Incident Management Categorization Incident management operational categorizations will be used to track the efficiency of the incident management processes. The main considerations when determining the incident management categorizations are: 1. Defines the initial reason for the incident event- A) Operational Categorization (Human activity/service)-what is going wrong that initiated the phone call, initiated the , initiated the web entry to create an incident, or the (network software) creation of a ticket (smart ticket creation) from an event monitoring system, inquiry. Also, what actions are necessary to figure out the cause of the incident. B) Product Categorization What is the hardware, software, logical and physical configuration item that is effected 2. Utilized to search knowledge base for probable resolution What application interactions were going on at the time of the incident? If this has ever happened before and there is a known error work around or solution then the categorizations (operational and product) are used to match similar records in the knowledge base 3. Defines skills based routing to appropriate IT groups The first line support people cannot remediate the incident to resolution. They are only able to route the incident to the groups that have the skill set to initiate and remediate the incident. This minimizes and can often eliminate any confusion as to who and where to route the ticket for the fastest mean time to resolution (MTTR) 4. Addition of resolution Operational tiers (Tier 1, Tier 2, Tier 3) and Resolution Product Resolution tiers for training and trending The utilization of the resolution categorizations allows the organization to review the efficiency of its initial incident diagnosis. This is an area where the comparison of initial diagnosis categorizations Operational and Product and the resolution Operational and Production categorizations can identify possible training to improve first call resolution. The cross referencing of these categorizations in a knowledge base will also help an organization to develop decision tree type of matrixes to increase first call resolution of incidents. 5. The Operational categorizations (Tier 1, Tier 2, Tier 3) document the activities and processes that are performed against the Products in the Product categorization. They can be one word or two words and are usually a noun for Tier 1 and Tier 2 with an activity/action verb for Tier 3. There are some instances where Tier 2 is the activity/action verb and Tier 3 is a noun. Some examples are Operational Example #1 Example #2 Example #3 Example #4 Tier 1 Reset Reinstall Tier 2 User Database User Desktop Tier 3 Account - Backup Password Printer

6 Problem Management Problem management operational categorizations will be used to track the efficiency of the problem management processes. The main considerations when determining the problem management categorizations are: 1. Defines the initial reason for the problem ticket creation Incident Operational and Product are utilized to define trending and to group incidents to identify problems. The goal of problem management is identify those incident categorizations and then categorize the problem ticket in a manner that reflects the possible operational and product root cause. The incidents will be related to the problem 2. Defines skills based routing to appropriate IT groups The problem manager that can remediate the incident to resolution. They are only able to route the problem to the groups that have the skill set to initiate and remediate the incident. Operational Example #1 Example #2 Example #3 Example #4 Tier 1 Investigate Tier 2 Database Network Desktop Tier 3 Account - Locks Windows Service Outage Windows Patch Known Error And Solution The known error (KE) and solution operational and product categorizations will be used to match incidents and problems with their corresponding known error work around or solution. The goal is to synchronize the categorizations for the known errors and solutions with the incident and problem categorizations. This is a critical piece of increasing the organizations first call resolution rate. The empowerment of the first line support organization with the ability to match the incident and the known error and solution is very powerful. It will lead to them being able to troubleshoot and resolve rather than acting as a dispatcher to second level support. The main considerations when determining the known error and solution categorizations are: 1. The known error and solution categorizations must be synchronized with the incident management operation and product categorizations to enable support personnel to search the knowledge base for probable resolution scenarios 2. The known error and solution categorizations must be synchronized with incident and problem categorizations on either an operational level or a product level to increase the chances of a correct match.

7 Change Request Change management operational categorizations will be used to track the efficiency of the change management processes. There are usually two type of changes that will exist in most organizations a) Standard changes pre-approved and b) major changes that involve a large amount of planning and build time to implement. The main considerations when determining the Change management categorizations are: 1. Defines the type of change or service- A) Operational Categorization (Human activity/service)-what change activity is the person going to do when they execute the overall change and not the sub-tasks that may be associated with the change. Also, what human actions or services are necessary to complete the change. B) Product Categorization What is the hardware, software, logical and physical configuration item that is going to be changed. 2. Defines skills based routing to appropriate IT groups The categorizations will identify the IT support groups and people that have the skills to execute the specific type of change. They will be taking ownership of executing the change correctly and in a timely manner once it has been approved. This minimizes and can often eliminate any confusion as to who and where to route the ticket for the change. 3. Scheduling in the Forward Schedule of Change (FSC) - The categorizations will be displayed in the Forward Schedule of Change (FSC) calendar to define the type of change being proposed, scheduled and executed. The categorizations should be definitive, so that the change manager and the change activity board (CAB) can make informed decisions about the changes for an organization by looking at the FSC. Operational Example #1 Example #2 Example #3 Example #4 Tier 1 Install Mount Upgrade Reconfigure Tier 2 Server Server Desktop Network Tier 3 Operating System Hardware Operating System Router

8 Task Task management categorizations will be used to track the efficiency of the task management processes that are required to complete associated Incident, Problem and Change Management processes. The main considerations when determining the Task management categorizations are: 1. Defines the type of task- A) Operational Categorization (Human activity/service)-what task activity is the person going to do when they execute the task. There will be some common, but also some unique categorizations for Incident tasks, Problem tasks and Change tasks. Also, what human actions or services are necessary to complete the task B) Product Categorization What is the hardware, software, logical and physical configuration item that is going to be changed by the task. 2. Defines skills based routing to appropriate IT groups The categorizations will identify the IT support groups and people that have the skills to execute the specific task. They will be taking ownership of executing the task correctly and in a timely manner once it has been approved. This minimizes and can often eliminate any confusion as to whom and where to route the ticket for the task. Configuration Item Configuration item categorizations (Product ) will be used to define the types of configuration items that exist within the organization. The configuration items will already be defined into configuration item classes similar to the Data Management Task Force (dmtf.org) Common Information Model (CIM). The CIM data model classes will be more finitely defined by the configuration item categorizations. The main considerations when determining the configuration item product categorizations are: 1. Defines the type of configuration item- How do the discovery tools identify the configuration item. How do the application and network monitoring tools identify the configuration item. The configuration items can be hardware, software, logical (Telco and software Circuits) and physical configuration items. 2. The Product are to measure Product Oriented Metrics such as Vendor and Product reliability. i.e. Server availability, Server reliability, Server Component Reliability (Processors, Hard Drives, etc) 3. Synchronize the categorization with the organizations other tools The goal of a configuration management database (CMDB) is to be the central point for how all of the configuration items including people, services and applications are interconnected. It is important the categorization is synchronized with all of the other possible data sources that may be integrated with the CMDB to keep it up to date. This will result in a more user friendly CMDB that will be more fully utilized by the organization as it links the incidents, problems, changes and tasks with the effected configuration items. Product Example #1 Example #2 Example #3 Example #4 Tier 1 Enterprise Software Network Systems Hardware Desktop Software Tier 2 SAP Hardware Desktop Microsoft Tier 3 Accounts Payable Router Network Card Word