A CMDB is only as valuable as the processes it supports. Your Challenge Without a configuration management database (CMDB) or formal configuration management, there is no way to obtain information about the assets that support IT services or the relationships between them. This makes it difficult for IT departments to successfully execute more client-facing service management activities, particularly incident and change management. Most organizations recognize the value of investing in a CMDB, but are wary of the cost involved and assume that the CMDB must contain information about every IT asset. Clients who do decide to invest in a CMDB often jump straight to solution selection and design, without ever considering the business case for building or purchasing a CMDB. Our Advice Critical Insight ITIL’s version of configuration management will be too expensive and costly for most small or medium-sized organizations to implement. Without proper scoping and planning, organizations risk wasting time and resources procuring and maintaining an overly complex system. You do not need a system to record and monitor every asset in your environment in order to reap the benefits of configuration management. You just need to consider what your CMDB will accomplish before you invest. Configuration management, executed with a CMDB, is an enabling process. You cannot build or purchase a CMDB until you know which processes it will be supporting. If you do not gather the necessary requirements up front, you risk deploying a CMDB that is not useful to the people and processes who should benefit from it. Impact and Result Gather comprehensive stakeholder requirements in order to accurately define the organization’s configuration management objectives and identify the IT processes that will be redesigned to integrate with a CMDB. Choose an appropriate technology target state. Configuration management can be achieved with a homegrown spreadsheet or vendor solution; the choice of solution will be driven largely by the complexity of your current environment and the availability of resources. Estimate the cost and benefit of re-designing the processes identified during the requirements gathering stage and prioritize them accordingly. Create a complete roadmap of initiatives that can be presented to stakeholders to obtain buy-in for selecting and implementing a CMDB and formal configuration management process.

1. Create a Configuration Management Roadmap
A CMDB is only as valuable as the processes it supports; select these before you invest.
Without a CMDB or formal Configuration Management system, there is no way to obtain accurate information about IT assets and the relationships between them. A Configuration Management Database (CMDB) ensures that IT decision makers have access to valuable information about
the IT environment, and enables better decision making and service delivery. However, CMDB projects can be difficult to right-size, and it can be difficult to ensure that the benefit of the system outweighs the cost of recording, maintaining, and analyzing the data.
Do not let stories of CMDB failure prevent you from deploying something with the potential to vastly improve IT’s service delivery. The potential for reward is significant. You should consider investing in a CMDB, but do not build or purchase a solution without first considering what the
CMDB will be used for.
Configuration management is an enabling process. Without defining what you want the CMDB to enable, it will be difficult to design a CMDB that gets used to realize tangible benefit. Decide which processes the CMDB will support and then build or purchase a solution that will meet
your needs.
Do not overthink it! A CMDB is simply a repository of configuration information. It serves one central purpose: to provide information about IT assets, their components, and the relationship between components.
When you know what is in your environment, and how it fits together, you can make smarter decisions, perform work faster, and deliver better service.
With a CMDB, you can rely less on the knowledge held by individual staff members and maintain more sustainable, accurate sources of truth. Every decision maker will have access to the same knowledgebase and they will be able to work faster because they are not starting from scratch
each time a request is received. Increasing access to information with a CMDB will enable repeatability of process and should drive significant service management improvement. Consider these practical applications:
The CMDB can be used to perform faster and more accurate change impact analysis, identifying dependencies before they cause incidents. This will also decrease the change turnaround time, increasing IT’s ability to meet business demands for new functionality.
The CMDB can be used to accurately determine the pre-requisities that must be in place for a target system to accept a release and avoid failures when the change goes live.
The CMDB can be used to perform quicker and more accurate root cause analysis of problems, preventing incidents before they occur.
The CMDB can be used to map reported incidents to the source, reducing incident resolution time and restoring service faster regardless of how familiar the technician is with the impacted component.
The CMDB can be used to proactively determine which assets are nearing the end of their useful lives and stay ahead of impending capacity shortages.
The scope of the CMDB can be easily managed. It will only contain the depth of information required to render it useful, nothing more and nothing less. Creating a solid roadmap that details the processes that will integrate use of a CMDB will help you design a solution that gets used and
drives value.
• Learn about the challenges associated with CMDB projects and understand Info-Tech’s approach to successfully implementing a CMDB and formal configuration management.
• Consider the potential benefits of implementing a CMDB and ensure that you are ready to kick-off this project.
• Many organizations skip this important objectives setting step and suffer when the CMDB does not provide any value.
• Avoid this pitfall by committing a small team to creating a roadmap that sets you up for CMDB success down the road.
• A CMDB is only as valuable as the IT processes it enables. The first step to creating a configuration management roadmap must be to select the processes the CMDB will support and decide how these processes will be improved through use of a CMDB.
• This should be done by identifying process pain points that can be directly reduced through use of a CMDB.
Step 2: Launch the Project: Pick the right group of explorers for the job!
Step 3: Gather Requirements: Identify your pirates! Pick the processes that will benefit most from a CMDB
Each pirate should be labelled with a process name, and should be dreaming of a benefit that his process can capture from the CMDB:
Change Management: Assess change impact more accurately and reduce change-related incidents
Incident Management: Identify impacted components faster to reduce incident resolution time
Problem Management: Identify root cause faster to prevent incidents before they occur
Release and Deployment Management: Verify configuration pre-requisites to facilitate more successful deployments
Capacity Planning: Proactively address shortages
Technology Obsolescence Assessment: Replace equipment before it becomes a problem
Financial Management: Cost Service more easily
Step 4: Select a Technology Target State: Equip your pirates with the appropriate key to maximize your CMDB’s value:
Each key represents a different technology target state: Excel spreadsheet, homegrown database, open-source CMDB, or vendor solution
Step 5: Build a Roadmap: Create a treasure map that will get you the treasure fast.
Step 6: Sell the Roadmap: Obtain stakeholder buy-in and get ready to unlock the secret to better service management!
• Vendor solutions are only one option – ideal for some, but too costly for others.
• Depending on the size and complexity of your environment and your configuration management needs, something as simple as an Excel spreadseet may suffice.
• Ensure that you strike a balance between cost and benefit when selecting a CMDB solution.
• The cost of achieving the benefits of a CMDB depends heavily on the level of data you need to record in the CMDB for a particular process.
• Process benefits wil be more costly to achieve for initial initiatives because a high level of data will need to be collected.
• Once one process, like change management, is re-designed and integrate, it will become easier and cheaper to integrate the next.
• The support of senior executive stakeholders is critical to the success of your roadmap roll-out.
• Focus on the ways in which the CMDB will support service management and increase SLA fulfillment.
• Don’t let this come across as a “boil the ocean” project – this will diminish your chances of obtaining approval and resources.