Creating a plan of action to mature ITSM and ITAM.

[iamkurt]

Pardon me for this question which might appear to come from a novice but I am hoping for some guidance from the kind people of this community.

ITSM and ITAM modules have recently been launched and the implementation partner has left. The organization is struggling with adopting to these tools.

I need to come up with a plan of action to understand the current state, identify avenues for improvement and implement them. I need to understand the various cogs in the machine - people, process and technology. Where should I begin? What would be the challenges?

I am thinking of starting by educating people on ITSM terminologies (INC/ CHG), reaching out to different teams and asking them what are things they do repeatedly that can be automated via catalog items. For ITAM, I know we need SAM and HAM but where do I start? How do I find all the devices, assets, softwares, CI we have in the org? Is ITOM implementation a pre-requisite for ITAM? Should CI's already be discovered and present in CMDB before ITAM can become operational?

Are there any templates for this, or maybe some presentations/ PDF's which anyone might have that will aid me?

Any help here will be highly appreciated and many thanks in advance for the same.

[Dr Atul G- LNG]

Hi @iamkurt 

Yes, for ITSM and ITAM you can go to Now create site, nowlearning.servicenow.com/nowcreate

in this go to 3rd Tab, i.e. asset and there you can search for Incident , change n HAM, SAM, ITAM process workshop which can guide your team about same. 

Also you can refer my ITSM Playlist

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLi0Ik1xCDEbI5I5ZtWUimuRa-8jJQMc-Y

Where you can get a depth practical as well.  

[Tony K]

I think you should start with the basics, like ITIL training. This way people will start to know the basic terms used. Know the difference between an incident (broke) and a service request (I need something). Organizational Change management is your friend in all of this education. Will take time, training, education etc. I also think you need process owners. An incident process owner, change owner etc. Those people drive their respective areas, make sure people follow the process, they answer questions about that process etc. No one person can be the champion of ServiceNow, it's too big. 

SAM/HAM come when I think you are a little more mature and people buy into ServiceNow. you need a solid CMDB, good processes so that you can add them in to ServiceNow. Getting some small wins I think will help get people hooked and see what the platform can do. Another idea is a solid service catalog for ordering if that is on your radar.

It's a lot and this is just a quick response, but if you have more questions let me know.

[iamkurt]

@Tony K- Thanks for your response. I am focussing on HAM at my current organization. There are a few things I need to be doing.

1. I need to document the current state for HAM through asset lifecycle. Where should I start and what should I cover? Would you please provide step by step instructions assuming I haven't a clue?

2. I have asked for a call with Discovery/ CMDB team to understand what all assets and CI's do we currently have? What are the questions I need to be asking them? Would you please enlist them here?

3. ⁠I want to perform current state analysis. I have decided to analyze foundation data first. I am going to analyze user, user groups, location, cmdb_ci, contract, purchase orders. Is there anything I need to be specifically looking out for? For ex - any field on any table that can be leveraged in further implementation of HAM? Are there any mandatory fields or important fields that need to be populated on any of the tables?

Your response is much appreciated and thanks.

[Tony K]

This document from ServiceNow covers HAM in good detail. https://www.servicenow.com/standard/resource-center/data-sheet/ds-hardware-asset-management.html

In terms of assets, you may have millions but the main question is what are the ones you care about. Meaning you most likely want to monitor servers, workstations, network gear. Printers, mobile phones, random stuff might be in your CMDB but not worth monitoring. That's up to your company to decide. 

In terms of fields, I can speak to fields on a CI. You can make certain fields required and if they aren't populated a remediation task can be opened automatically. Knowing the location, IP address, what team supports a CI (managed by) those are a good start. Which is a good segway into the CMDB health dashboards and remediation tasks for items like stale, orphans, missing required fields. That's also something you'd want to check into.