Service Matters! ITSM & IT Management: Have you built the right foundation for your ITSM tool?

I was recently watching a re-run of Apollo 13, arguably one of the most successful space expedition movies based on an actual event. One sequence that caught my attention was when Tom Hanks and his crew are faced with the challenge of fitting square CO2 filters from one module into the round hole of the other module in order to bring the CO2 level down in the space craft. To everyone’s relief the ingenious NASA engineers find a solution to the incompatibility problem and save our Heroes. What is the relevance of this story to an ITSM blog….read on.

Most organizations start their ITIL implementation with a sub-set of the complete ITIL process framework. While which specific processes to start with is a topic of discussion on several online forums and advice from experts like Brian Johnson from CA; there is no doubt that the best way to start your implementation is by narrowing the scope down to a few processes. This brings the magnitude of change to a more manageable level. However starting your implementation with a few processes also increases the challenges in building a long term integrated solution.

Taking cue from the integrations between processes as recommended by ITIL, leading IT Service Management tool vendors today offer an integrated product suite covering most of the ITIL processes. And though it is possible to start the implementation with one or two modules, the important thing to remember is that the foundation for all the modules is common. With this background there exists an even greater need to build a solution where you have thought through the requirements from all the relevant processes some of which may not even be on your radar currently. After all you don’t want to be stuck in a situation like the Apollo 13 crew was! Based on my experience, three areas that are most prone to short sightedness and mistakes when starting the ITIL implementation with few processes are:

Foundation Data: The data that is common to and used by more than one ITIL Process. A good example is Classification schema used to categorize Incident, Problems, Changes or CIs. Other examples are People data and Organizational Hierarchy.
Solution Architecture: The way you have architected your ITSM solution. Most people consider User and Transaction load but there is more to consider while designing the solution architecture for an ITSM tool from a long term perspective.
Customizations: The changes that you do to the base functionality offered by the tool in order to meet a current requirement. You may not realize but the changes that you do today may come and bite you at a later time.

More details into each one of these areas in the next blog. And those of you who are wondering what did the NASA solution for the square filter, round hole problem look like - see the picture here.