Whether you’re a new ServiceNow customer or have been using the platform for a while, you’ve heard how important a quality CMDB is to enabling desired outcomes for the solutions you’ve invested in. A well-configured CMDB can save you as much as 40% in IT costs, and help you avoid the costs of unplanned outages.
In order to achieve a quality CMDB that’s going to provide valuable outcomes for your organization, the data in the CMDB must be aligned with supporting specific business goals and there must be governance in place to ensure the data continues to meet your evolving goals. The only way to ensure this alignment is to perform thorough planning.
Let’s get started!
Set Your Direction
As the late great Yogi Berra once said, “If you don't know where you are going, you might wind up someplace else.” This quote applies across our work and personal lives, and let’s talk about two examples to truly understand its importance. When is the last time you got into your car, opened up Waze and decided to let it choose your destination? There's a reason why the first thing Waze asks for is your destination and that is to be able to plot the most successful path to achieve your desired outcome (ex. getting to your son’s LAX game on time). Another example would be meeting with a weight loss coach and when they ask what your goal weight is you tell them you don’t have one. In order for the coach to craft a weight loss plan specific for you, they need to understand what goal you are working towards in order to achieve your desired outcome.
By now you must be asking what these use cases have to do with your CMDB. Both of these are very different, but the most important thing they have in common is that each one has unique goals in order to achieve desired outcomes. The same concept applies to CMDB design. When designing a CMDB, there are numerous possible use cases and each use case must have goals in order to provide desired outcomes.
Focus Your Use Cases
In order to set goals for your CMDB, the first step is to narrow your focus to a specific set of use cases that tie directly to the strategic initiatives of your organization. Start with the critical few and add more over time. Here are some of the most common use cases we see our customers starting with:
- Change Impact Analysis – If we need to change something in our data center, how will this affect our business?
- Software License Compliance – How can I see what software is installed across our environment so that I can determine my license compliance position?
- Cloud-First Strategy – How can we keep track of spinning up and spinning down of ephemeral services in the cloud to control spending?
- Information Risk – If there is a vulnerability against a specific operating system, how will this affect our business? What priority should I patch the affected servers?
- Reducing Service Outages – If there is a critical alert on a server, how can I quickly determine business impact to prioritize which alerts to work first?
Define Your Specific Goals
Once you’ve narrowed down your set of use cases, the next step is to articulate well-stated goals. We suggest using this format:
To
• <do what> (expressed in culturally accepted terms)
In such a way that
• <how it must be done> (constraints, assumptions, must haves)
So that
• <why it must be done> (strategic goals and objectives)
And can be measured by
• <how will we know if we are doing it right> (quantitative – not qualitative)
Here is an example:
To
• Implement Configuration Management
In such a way that
• Provides support for cloud computing and a cloud-driven demand model
• Provides underpinning data for demand management as new market segments are identified and implemented
• Provides improved data availability to IT Information Security including a model for understanding the business context of deployed workloads
• Enhances change collision detection/ proactive change management impact analysis
• Provides additional data for Incident Management, Problem Management and Event Management
• Facilitates improved collaboration and cooperation across the organization
• Provides data to support contracts with external service providers
So that
• <company> can expand into market segments
• <company> implements a cloud-first strategy
• <company> is better positioned to support audits / regulatory requirements
• Information security and privacy efforts have information and insights needed to support their goals and objectives
• Provides data to support a cohesive IT strategic planning across every phase of the service lifecycle
• There is a Single Source of Truth describing how the IT infrastructure supports our business
• Provides better insight to IT operational environments
And can be measured by
• Visibility of the number of workloads deployed into a cloud
• Visibility of planned and unplanned changes as a percentage of total changes
• Perceived value-add from the CMDB for the expansion of markets
• Successful change rate increases
• Mean-Time-to-Repair of decreases.
• Improved perception of IT as an enabler of the business
In my last blog, I wrote about the Power of IT & Security Operations on a Common Platform which is aligned to the bottom two use cases above. None of what I wrote about is possible without a CMDB that is designed around specific goals for these specific use cases.
You've Defined Your Goals, Now What?
Goal setting is the first and most important step of getting started with planning a CMDB. This playbook will help you understand the remaining steps to a quality CMDB.
Increase Your Knowledge at Knowledge
If you are attending Knowledge 19, you won’t to miss the breakout session titled “A Successful CMDB Starts here” which will be led by our Senior Outbound Product Manager Drew Hart. This session will provide strategic guidance for your path to an effective CMDB, including organizational change, scoping, design, deployment and ongoing delivery of a positive value-add. Discover how the CMDB is leveraged and how our technologies support configuration management to support the entire service lifecycle. Learn about future trends which will impact the design and features of the CMDB.
In addition to the session hosted by ServiceNow, there are 100 search results for the keyword "CMDB" in the Knowledge 19 Content Catalog and most of these sessions are being delivered by our great customers who are sharing their CMDB success stories. As a former customer and four-time Knowledge attendee myself, I found that attending customer-led sessions is the best way to understand how ServiceNow solutions are actually being used in the real-world and the effort it took to realize value.
Remember, Always Plan Before Doing!
ServiceNow offers several methods to populate your CMDB; from automated Discovery and Service Mapping to integrations with third-party applications to manual updates, and most of our customers will use a combination of these methods. However, before configuring any of these solutions to import data, it is imperative to have a plan.
What are your CMDB Goals?
