BSM Views

I am often asked by organizations how they should start on the path to building a CMDB. There are multiple approaches, some companies take a top down approach, starting small with critical systems and gradually getting more complex. Others do the exact opposite, taking a bottom up approach of populating their CMDB with all assets, then sorting them to make sense. Whatever the approach, there are many fundamentals that are needed to ensure success. In his podcast, The CMDB Architect’s Toolkit, Paul Buffington discusses many tips, tricks, and important rules for project teams starting a CMDB.

Knowledge management, at times, seems to be the orphan of ITSM, left behind in the ITIL race. Why is this? Knowledge management, properly backed and implemented, can provide impressive cost benefit, maybe greater than the other ITIL disciplines. At 80% process and 20% tool, knowledge management is a comparatively small expense on the technology side, but as with many other processes, has to be properly implemented to achieve the results.

This heavy leaning on process could be one of the largest hurdles. Knowledge management has traditionally received a bad rap from IT Administrators because of the amount of maintenance required to keep a system healthy and efficient. Often, as an alternative to real knowledge management, organizations have created simple web based databases to store their articles, but this duct tape and chewing gum approach hinders success. Just like self-service, users have a short fuse for bad data. If, on the first few trys looking for a solution, poor results come back, user adoption plummets. To avoid this, investment in intelligent content with proper authoring and QA processes is needed. Prove the knowledge base internally, and then let the end user have it.

The cost of a service desk ticket is estimated at around $15-20, and there are many success stories where companies effectively cut their tickets by 50% through effective knowledge management, so the savings can be impressive. Further, once it catches hold in IT, it can spread to other non-IT departments.

I received an email from the IT Service Management Federation a few days ago calling for Speakers for their Annual Conference in Vancouver, May 4th-8th. If you have done some interesting things around Service Management, this might be a great opportunity. If you don’t know the ITSMF, they are well run an national industry group that covers Service Management topics and holds frequent events to foster greater knowledge among its membership. They had the last annual conference in Toronto last September and it was well organized event with about 300 members from across Canada attending. You can find out more at www.itsmf.ca.

Here is there invitation: ITSMF National Conference Call for Speakers