David Stefferud, from Walmart gets the full credit for this blog. The content of this and subsequent blogs is based on his Q&A from CMDB best practices webinar. You can read CMDB best practice on ServiceNow Success Center. See the first part of this series here. I hope this Q&A will address some of your questions as well.
Q: Who champions delegation of individuals to support CMDB audits or verification of discovery data?
A: It’s a matter of the class owners. Audits can be automated. Verification can be simple and manual by asking the CI owners to validate periodically. You can also automate Verification with most recent discovery date along with the source that can tell you what’s not been seen within a reasonable amount of time.
Q: What are the core processes that need to be documented and communicated post installation of your CMDB?
A: Validation and verification are core; they must be agreed upon. Be sure to make those processes as automated and easy as possible to remove any overhead burden.
Q: You mentioned Discoverable vs Undiscoverable CIs. What is the best way to connect logical CIs (Services, Applications, etc) to physical CIs (Servers, Networks, Printers, etc)?
A: We use a service request to create a dependency relationship from Business Application (from APM) to the Automated Business Service (for those modeled with Service Modeling) or Manual Service (which is to be manipulated by hand). Conceptually it makes the most sense to use Business Service as Business Capabilities, but there is a lot of work to do before that is necessary.
Q: How often should the Configuration Control Board (CCB) meet?
A: At first it should meet often (we started with 3x/week) then taper over time (we now meet every couple of weeks).
Stay tuned for future blogs based on this Q&A.
