For those of you who attended my session at the K23 conference in Las Vegas, this is a brief cut-down version of what Varun and myself discussed, where I focused on ServiceNow's leading practices for configuration management.
A Configuration Management Database (CMDB) is a centralised repository that stores information about all the components of an organisation’s IT infrastructure. This includes hardware and software assets, their relationships, and the services they support. The CMDB is used to track and manage the configuration of these assets over time and is an essential tool for IT Service Management (ITSM).
To deliver value through a healthy CMDB, you will need to create a configuration management plan that will help guide you through the implementation and address all your needs, including why you are implementing a CMDB, what it will be used for, how it will be populated, and most importantly how will it be maintained. In my experience, I frequently observe that unsuccessful implementations can be attributed to the absence of a well-structured configuration management plan.
Below I outline my experiences and the five key steps to ensure you deliver value with a CMDB.
Five key steps to delivering value with ServiceNow CMDB.
1. Identify areas where your CMDB can deliver business value
There are several areas where a CMDB can deliver business value:
IT service management: A CMDB can be integrated with other IT service management (ITSM) processes, such as incident management, problem management, and change management. This gives organisations a complete view of their IT infrastructure, which can help improve incident resolution times and reduce the impact of outages.
Compliance: A CMDB can track and manage IT assets, which can be useful for compliance with various regulations and standards, such as ITIL, ISO 20000, and COBIT.
IT operations management: A CMDB can be integrated with IT operations management (ITOM) tools to view an organisation’s IT infrastructure comprehensively. This can help organisations to identify and resolve issues more quickly and to optimise their IT operations.
Asset management: A CMDB can track and manage IT assets’ lifecycle, from purchase to retirement. This can help organisations control their IT costs and ensure their assets are used efficiently.
Business continuity: A CMDB can identify critical assets and services, which can help organisations ensure that they can maintain business operations during a disaster or other disruption.
Cyber security: A CMDB can track and manage the IT assets critical to an organisation’s cybersecurity posture. This can help organisations identify vulnerabilities and ensure security controls are in place to protect these assets.
It's important to note that to get the most value out of the CMDB, it should be aligned with the business objectives of the organisation and integrated with other IT service management and IT operations management processes and tools.
2. Set your direction and align with business priorities
Setting your direction when implementing a CMDB on the ServiceNow platform is important because it helps ensure that the CMDB is aligned with the organisation’s needs and can deliver real business value. In addition, a clear direction will help ensure that the CMDB is tailored to meet the organisation's specific needs and that it can support the business objectives.
Below is an example of how you can clearly define the goals of your CMDB implementation. Feel free to try this yourself with your organisation.
To:
Implement a CMDB on the ServiceNow platform.
In such a way that:
Reduces the number of Service outages across the organisation.
Reduces the time to resolution of incidents.
Improves impact analysis for change management planning.
Provides quality data to IT Security Operations teams.
So that:
Improve performance against SLAs.
Improve customer service.
Provide better quality services.
Better insights into IT Security Operations.
And can be measured by:
Change success rate increase.
Reduced SLA breaches.
Reduced number of Priority 1 Incidents raised.
Time to resolution decrease.
Improved perception across the business.
*Tip - use the out of box CMDB Health Dashboard and process dashboards to set a baseline and measure future performance.
3. Build a team and governance model.
Governance can be understood as the set of processes, policies, and procedures implemented to ensure effective management and control of an organisation or system. Governance is like the rudder of a ship, guiding its course and ensuring it stays on track.
Ideally, if you are a large organisation, you will want to set up a Configuration Control Board (CCB), a formal group responsible for managing and controlling changes to a system or product's configuration. The CCB is responsible for reviewing, approving, and implementing system configuration changes, including hardware, software, and documentation changes. The purpose of the CCB is to ensure that changes to the system are properly planned, tested, and implemented and that the system’s integrity is maintained. Click here to download ServiceNow's sample CCB Charter which provides more information on roles, meetings and guiding principles.
Building a team and governance model for your CMDB implementation will involve several key steps.
Identify key stakeholders: Start by identifying all the key stakeholders who will reply to the data contained within the CMDB implementation. This should include representatives from IT operations, IT service management, IT security, and other business units that use the platform.
Assign roles and responsibilities: Clearly define the roles and responsibilities of each team member. This should include who is responsible for data entry, data validation, data maintenance, and oversight of CMDB governance.
Establish a governance structure: Establish a governance structure that includes clearly defined policies, procedures, and standards for data management. This should include data entry, validation, maintenance guidelines, and procedures for data quality checks and regular audits.
Create a change management process: Establish a clear change management process to ensure that CMDB changes are properly planned, tested, and implemented. This should include procedures for change requests, change approvals, and change testing.
Regular review: Review the governance model & CMDB health dashboards to ensure the data is accurate and meets the organisation’s needs. Adjust as necessary.
Based on my experience working with various organisations, it has come to my attention that many overlook the crucial step of investing time in governing their Configuration Management Database (CMDB). This failure to fully grasp its true value leads to subsequent issues that need to be addressed when the organisation finally recognises the significance of good CMDB governance and its integral role in supporting nearly all processes on the platform. Throughout my professional encounters, I have frequently come across this common scenario.
4. Design your data model.
Creating a data model for your CMDB may seem overwhelming, especially if you need to familiarise yourself with the terminology and concepts of CSDM (Common Services Data Model). However, the right guidance and approach can make the process simpler and more manageable.
The CSDM can be thought of as the blueprint for a house. Just as a blueprint lays out a house's foundational structure and design, the CSDM lays out the foundation and structure for your services within ServiceNow. It provides a consistent and organised way to store and access data, like how a house's blueprint ensures all the rooms are in the right place and the plumbing and electrical systems are properly installed. Overall, the CSDM serves as a foundation for a well-built CMDB to enable you to manage the performance of any service on the ServiceNow platform.
Two common questions I often receive from customers looking to implement a CMDB correctly and in alignment with the CSDM are "How long will a CSDM project take?" or "How long will it take to reach the walk phase?". The truth is that the time it takes to implement a CMDB completely depends on the intended usage of the CMDB and the method of population. It is important to understand that the implementation process should begin slowly, focusing on building a solid foundation, prioritising use cases, and setting realistic expectations. For example, I have one customer who has implemented over 1400 services, and this process has taken over three years. This customer is driving true digital transformation with their CMDB, and they have seen value since day 1.
5. Operationalise your configuration management.
Now that you have established your configuration data model, it is important to focus on maintaining the integrity of your CMDB. This ongoing process requires implementing procedures and tools to keep your CMDB accurate and up to date. Documenting these processes in your Configuration Management Plan is crucial to prevent the CMDB from falling into disrepair. Some important questions to consider include:
How are we going to populate the CMDB?
How are we going to maintain the accuracy of the data?
CMDB Population:
Many tools are available, both out of the box and in the ServiceNow store. Still, I am going to give you an overview of the most popular that I find are implemented with 90% of my customers and the strategy in which I deploy using out-of-the-box tools in ServiceNow, including:
Service Graph Connector: Configure Service Graph Connector to import all desktop PCs and Servers; this will help populate a large portion of your compute CIs and can contain important data such as last logged in, last restarted etc. This can be useful in hardware asset management. It can also help you with designing your Discovery schedules for Discovery.
Discovery: Configure Discovery in ServiceNow to automatically populate the CMDB with assets across an organisation’s IT infrastructure. It involves using automated tools and technologies to scan networks and collect information about devices, software, and services. This will enrich the data you already have from Service Graph but can also include other devices such as network switches, firewalls, and routers. Discovery can be scheduled to update these devices daily, weekly, or monthly, depending on the number of CIs.
Service Mapping: Service Mapping takes the tools used in Discovery to the next step. After discovering your assets, you will have a CMDB, an asset inventory. Service Mapping now takes a Service centric view of this data by determining what assets support a particular service. You start by supplying an entry point to your application service. Then, Service Mapping takes care of the rest, crawling across your network to find the devices and relationships that support this application Service. This data enables your teams to deliver proactive rather than reactive services since you can now become aware of issues as they happen rather than when a user is impacted.
Manual: Finally, there are any CIs that are not discoverable. In that case, you can populate these manually, but to keep these CIs current and up to date, you use data certification tasks which are automated tasks that audit the data in the CMDB and schedule tasks for the data owners to update regularly.
These tools should have you on your way towards your CMDB goals.
CMDB Heath
Once your CMDB is populated, you must monitor and maintain its health. Monitoring the health of your CMDB is crucial to ensure that your data is accurate, up-to-date, and useful. Your ServiceNow instance is equipped with a CMDB health dashboard, which will help keep you on track. In addition, the dashboard gives you the ability to identify quickly:
Completeness of CIs with unpopulated mandatory or recommended attributes
Correctness of orphaned, duplicate, and stale CIs
Compliance with the results of CI audits
The CCB should closely monitor the metrics on your CMDB health dashboard in each governance meeting. This will ensure that your data stays current and that you can continue to provide value across the platform.
Wrap up!
Let’s recap what we learnt in this post. First, a CMDB can provide value to almost all processes on the ServiceNow platform and can transform your business from being a reactive one to a proactive one. This enables you to provide better services to your employees and customers. Key steps in this journey are:
Identify the areas of the business you want to target with your CMDB.
Set your targets, remembering the goal-setting framework I gave you. This will ensure you stay on track and deliver on business priorities.
Remember to pay attention to the governance of your CMDB and create a CCB if necessary, making sure any changes to the CMDB have thoroughly considered leading practices.
Design your data model with alignment to the CSDM, and you will ensure upgrades are easy and you can continue to provide value across the business.
Ensure you deploy the right strategy to populate the CMDB with accurate information and use the tools available to keep the data up to date.
One final recommendation that I will leave you with. I recommend you work with a ServiceNow implementation partner to support you in implementing and governance your CMDB project. They can help you define the best approach for your organisation and provide you with best practices and guidance on establishing a successful CMDB team and governance model.
I'd love to hear your thoughts! Share your comments below, explore my other articles for more insights, or contact me for personalised advice – I'm here to help you succeed!