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. I hope this Q&A will address some of your questions as well.
Q. For the core CMDB team, do you usually see someone that is a discovery admin or expert as part of the Configuration Control Board (CCB)?
A. Initially, yes. This person's expertise will be necessary during the initial build-out. It may be less important after the initial implementation. If the expert does not distract from building a strategy, there would be no disadvantage to keeping that role filled for the CCB.
Q. I have inherited a CMDB that has little controls, lots of duplicates, orphans, broken maps, inconsistent dependencies. Where should I start?
A. Your starting point is data cleanup and begin providing feedback to the business about your limited scope. Depending on how bad the data is, don’t be afraid to flush the data – but again check with the business to see if they plan to use the data even if the quality is poor. The key is to find the right stakeholder who values data quality and driven to achieve it.
Q. Cultural challenges are the hardest. If someone in the organization is identified as a CI Owner, Class Owner, or Service Owner, how do you empower them to provide support of the CMDB?
A. These are the people who care already, you must find what it is they care about. Then, it’s a matter of adding the right role or ACL to the data you would like for them to be able to edit.
Stay tuned for future blogs based on this Q&A.
