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A RACI chart is a simple matrix used to assign roles and responsibilities for each task,
milestone or decision on a project. By clearly mapping out which roles are involved
in each project task and at which level, you can eliminate confusion and answer the
age-old project question, Who’s doing what? RACI stands for Responsible,
Accountable, Consulted, Informed. Each letter in the acronym represents a level of
task responsibility.
KPI – the Key Performance Indicator
a Change is "the addition, modification or removal of any authorized, planned, or
supported service or service component that could have an effect on IT services."
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The number of emergency changes has increased during the last 3 months. At the
same time the percentage of successfully closed changes remains still very low.
The ITIL® Glossary defines an emergency change as "A change that must be
introduced as soon as possible – for example, to resolve a major incident or
implement a security patch.” E.g. emergency release “Normally contain corrections
to a small number of known errors, or sometimes an enhancement to meet a highpriority
business requirement.” The source of this requirement whether it is from an
incident or a service request is not specified.
ITIL® 2011 Service Transition Section 4.2.5.11 on Emergency Changes states that:
“The emergency change procedure is reserved for changes intended to repair an
error in an IT service that is negatively impacting the business to a high degree.
Changes intended to introduce immediately required business improvements are
handled as normal changes, assessed as having the highest urgency."
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These are the basic steps ITSM
recommended to perform first
as necessary preconditions to
solve the situation. .
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First step – to fix “visibility of the upstream and downstream relationship of
components that were undergoing changes” by implementiung the
Configuration Management System based on CMDB – Configuration
Management Database.
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Standard changes are low-risk, pre-approved changes that happen frequently and
have a quick turnaround time. Standard changes can be implemented quickly and
help manage risks.
Examples of a standard change:
- Desktop or standalone equipment movement.
- A standard patch that is applied to the servers once a month during the agreed
maintenance window.
What is a standard change?
When a normal change is successfully implemented a few times, the associated
processes like planning, scheduling, and implementation are established and
become predictable and controlled.
That is, the change becomes a routine task and therefore standard.
A few examples of normal changes:
• Upgrading the exchange server or any other hardware
• Setting up high availability or cluster for vital business functions (VBF)
• Roll out of a new release to address the reported issues
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Expedite changes are raised due to a pressing need such as a legal or a business
requirement.
These changes are not related to restoring a service.
The change advisory board (CAB) defined clear rules and regulations to qualify
emergency and expedited changes and communicated these rules across the
organization.
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KPI’s theory will be explained later during this session.
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During its discussion with stakeholders, the core team observed that about 20% of
the changes were completed without authorization, mainly because the
infrastructure team was under pressure to get the changes done quickly. As a result,
many changes were done without a request for
change or going through the review and approval processes.
To deal with this situation, stage gatekeepers were appointed for infrastructure,
application, and database teams to ensure that the steps were not skipped when a
change is made. The stage keepers had a go-ready list that comprised the test
results, approvals, signatures from all the concerned teams, and a back-out plan. In
case of violation, the stage gatekeepers owned responsibility that affected their
appraisal and performance measures.
Another reason for the unauthorized changes was because the application teams
updated the CMDB or CMS after the roll out of the release.
The core team ensured that audits were performed every week to compare the
current state of CMS with the associated RFC and any deviation was highlighted to
the CI owner and service owner for immediate action. In turn, the service owner
closed the loop and took firm action. This process went on for four to six weeks, and
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the team made it a habit to follow the rule without exceptions.
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• The bank’s IT team understood that building a robust configuration management
system with up-to-date information of all IT components is essential for a successful
change and release management process.
• Forward schedule of changes, planned maintenance window, and release plans are
critical to manage the volume and duration of changes and to ensure smooth
deployment.
• Enforcing a policy requires practicality, diligence, and buy-in. The new policies were
fewer in number but were important for the success of the change management
process (for example: CAB, unauthorized changes, and PIR).
• Relevant and practical KPIs help teams become efficient and effective.
• Process and tools have to work in tandem and absence of one or the other will
severely impact continual service improvement (CSI).
• Post-implementation review of key changes and implications provided valuable
insight on potential areas to improve and control changes.
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ITSM provides a process framework for managing every aspect of IT operations, but
it can also enable organizations to implement tools that help to automate workflows
in ways that drive efficiency. ITSM software solutions help to streamline IT
management by automating key processes. ITSM tools help infrastructure and
operations (I&O) organizations manage the consumption of IT services, the
infrastructure that supports the IT services, and the IT organization’s responsibility in
delivering business value with these services. These are most heavily used by IT
service desks and IT service delivery functions to support the tasks and workflows
for processes including incident, request, problem, change, service level, knowledge,
and configuration management.
To define ITSM tools, Gartner states: “ITSM tools facilitate the tasks and workflows
associated with the management and delivery of quality IT services.” Since modern IT
services are often tremendously complex, modern ITSM tools provide over 600
unique functionality points to support them.
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Why Use ITSM Tools?
There are five main reasons why organisations implement ITSM tools:
1) To provide structure
For a busy IT service, structure and consistency is everything. They simply can’t allow each helpdesk
Put simply, a well-implemented ITSM tool enables an IT service to enforce its ITSM systems and proc
1. The organisation can ensure its IT systems and services are consistent and in line with its
2. Customers — both internal and external — know exactly what level of service they will re
2) Record management and evidence
An effective IT service must be able to identify and learn from its mistakes. This is only possible if all
This has obvious applications for managed service providers, who must be able to evidence perform
3) Automation
A large proportion of the work completed by a typical IT service is repetitive. For example, when new
• Setting up a new user account
• Setting up a new email account
• Ordering and delivering a mobile phone
• Ordering and delivering a laptop
• Prompting the user to complete mandatory training
Depending on the size and function of the organisation, there could easily be a dozen or more activi
Imagine that the manual tasks associated with a new starter take 45 minutes to complete. Now, ima
By automating these processes — which a powerful ITSM tool can easily do — an IT service can repl
And new starters are just one area where ITSM automation can play a significant role. Others include
• Creating, updating, and closing tickets.
• Recording IT user activity.
• Process documentation.
• Sending email notifications and prompts.
Carefully-implemented automation can save busy IT services thousands of hours
each year while avoiding the very real risk of human errors.
4) Performance
History abounds with powerful quotes about the futility of standing still. Simply, if
you stop trying to move forwards, you don’t stay static — you fall backwards.
Confucius said: “It does not matter how slowly you go so long as you do not stop.”
Abraham Lincoln said: “I walk slowly, but I never walk backwards.”
Dwight D. Eisenhower put it more plainly: “Unless we progress, we regress.”
This is why Continual Service Improvement has been a major component of ITIL for
so many years. If an IT service doesn’t dedicate itself to continuous improvement, it
will inevitably stagnate and become less effective over time.
By keeping track of all IT activities and providing readily-accessible reporting, ITSM
tools make it easy to identify areas for improvement. An IT service can use such a
tool to ensure SLAs are hit consistently and implement new systems and controls
when they aren’t.
Without this information, it is extremely difficult to identify where improvements
are needed, making continual service improvement all but impossible.
5) ROI and cost savings
Nearly every organisation that implements an ITSM tool hopes to realise a financial
ROI through direct cost savings. An MSP may also plan to realise ROI by expanding to
support more customers, or by improving the efficiency (and consequently
profitability) of its operations with existing customers.
In general, ITSM ROI comes from four main areas:
1. Efficiency gains, e.g., from improving or automating manual processes.
2. Reduced workload, e.g., by implementing user self-service options.
3. Governance improvements, e.g., reminders to avoid overpaying or
retaining unnecessary contracts.
4. Continuous improvement, e.g., reducing the average time taken to
resolve incidents.
To accurately determine ROI, you must first know what your current costs are. This is
often difficult if you don’t already have an ITSM tool, and is something you’ll have to
overcome when creating a business case for implementing your preferred tool. If
you’re struggling to identify your current costs, ask your ITSM vendor to provide case
studies and documentation to support your business case.
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This is the block scheme of the ITSM tool fiunctionality. In most of the cases it
reflects the ITSM framework usually ITIL as the base to allow seamless
implementation.
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ITSM tool functionality does not need to cover all 100% framework
processes/functions. Here is the example how some of processes are covered by the
new tool (green) and some vere left in old solution (white). The important here is to
assure reliable and correct linkage between those two solutions.
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This is the diagram from one of the leading global research and advisory company. It
relates to the capabilities of the ITSM tools and it’s vendors.
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One of the leading ITSM tools in the market from company BMC.
Strengths
■ BMC has a broad ITOM software portfolio, making it a viable partner for mature
I&O organizations that need to extend their ITSM tools.
■ BMC’s containerized BMC Helix ITSM product offers a broad set of deployment and
licensing options, including SaaS, co-sell partnerships with public cloud providers
(Amazon Web Services [AWS] and Azure), and on-premises, giving customers
flexibility in how and where their instance
is deployed.
■ Gartner’s Critical Capabilities research determined that BMC scored highest for the
advanced I&O maturity use case, indicating it is strongly suited to meet the
requirements of high-maturity I&O organizations.
Cautions
■ BMC’s rebranding of its Remedy product into the Helix family has yet to resonate
with customers who still associate the product with legacy experiences.
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■ BMC Helix ITSM bundling and pricing options require customers to purchase addons
to get advanced capabilities such as location tracking, virtual chat and some
service catalog features. This increases the true cost of the solution, as BMC requires
customers to purchase Digital
Workplace Advanced.
■ BMC has reduced investment in its FootPrints and Track-IT products, but is still
offering them to customers.
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ServiceNow offers one ITSM product, ServiceNow IT Service Management, targeted
at organizations with various levels of I&O maturity.
Strengths
■ ServiceNow has global reach with local sales and support organizations and strong
recognition. It dominates customer shortlists, and its ITSM tool revenue market
share has grown to more than triple that of its closest competitor.
■ Although many of its competitors rely on third-party partnerships for AI and
machine learning, ServiceNow has made several platform-level acquisitions (for
example, DxContinuum, Qlue and Parlo) to add native functionality and successfully
sells AI and ML functionality as add-ons to its
ITSM product.
■ As a result of ServiceNow’s dominant market position, its platform has helped
build a strong partner ecosystem, including professional services and integrations.
Cautions
■ ServiceNow has restricted support to the current and previous versions of the
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product, which requires customers to perform an upgrade at least once every year.
This can strain customers with limited resources to support their ITSM
implementations.
■ Interactions with Gartner clients indicate that organizations with low I&O maturity
struggle to demonstrate sufficient value from their ServiceNow investments.
Functionality to track improvement initiatives that drive maturity requires an ITSM
Professional license, which comes
at a significantly higher cost.
■ Gartner clients report that frequent changes in licensing policies and bundling
make product renewals challenging.
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Jira is a flexible issue tracking tool that helps teams plan, manage, and report on
their work. There are different versions of Jira depending on your usage needs. What
are some benefits of using Jira? Jira is highly configurable and flexible to allow for
usage in a wide variety of environment and processes.
Originally, Jira was designed as a bug and issue tracker. But today, Jira has evolved
into a powerful work management tool for all kinds of use cases, from requirements
and test case management to agile software development.
Jira software is popular in the agile world due to its well-managed workflow
mapping and issue tracking ability. To support agile development cycle it has Scrum
and Kanban boards along with various reports. ... In short, a perfect tool to manage
your agile project at one place with lots of features and add-ons.
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Enhanced IT support
A major benefit of an ITSM solution is enhancing access to IT Support. The future of
ITSM and IT operations will bring the expansion of IT support, and the framework of
ITIL will enhance the ability to provide consistent support. ITSM will become the
default way to reach the IT department over traditional methods, like email or
phone calls, and the move to self-service integration will bring forth a greater shiftleft
initiative, allowing IT to provide more in-depth support for the problems that
cannot be resolved with self-help. Ultimately, this will bring forth better and more
thorough IT experience utilizing the same number of people and resources.
Expanded ITSM Automation
Just as enhanced IT support will be brought through ITSM, increased use of
automation will be adopted, which leads to a more successful shift-left initiative and
ultimately an increased deflection of tickets.
Automation is made from a set of repeatable steps that can be done without human
intervention. This can be workflow automation, automatic password resets, or even
automated updates within an organization. Overall, automation works to deflect
tickets, resulting in the reduction of service desk call volume by as much as 30% and
can majorly impact service desk metrics for the better – all of which helps lower
costs and increase productivity.
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Added IT Chatbot Support
Chatbots are not only the future of ITSM, but the future of communication in
general. In fact, Gartner predicted that “by 2020, the average person will have more
conversations with bots than with their spouse.” That sounds crazy, right? And yes,
maybe it was a little bit far-fetched (especially since many of us have been at home
with a spouse during Covid-19 lockdowns). But, with major growth and change in
artificial intelligence (AI) technology, chatbots are now able to lend support like
never before.
Working with a knowledge management database, chatbots can now access data
and knowledge articles, create tickets within the ITSM system, and help users find
the right support. Plus, chatbots programmed with a Natural Language Processing
(NLP) layer can understand a wider range of people from a variety of regions, making
it perfect to support remote workers across the world as they interact with IT
support. Additionally, an NLP engine customized to personalize interactions with
employees can further brand culture for a better experience and increased user
adoption.
Increased Use of Knowledge Management
Knowledge management is the process of creating, sharing, using, and managing the
knowledge and information of an organization. It refers to a multidisciplinary
approach to achieving organizational objections by making best use of knowledge.
Being able to engage users through a contextualized knowledge approach will play a
key role not only in the creation of knowledge, but also in its use.
This can be achieved through a knowledge management solution or self-service
portals that allows you to go beyond the knowledge article and offer an engaging
knowledge experience that will reach anyone within your organization. There are so
many benefits to knowledge management including increased efficiency with
reduced costs, a superior employee experience, reduced duplication, and so much
more. For this reason, knowledge management will only continue to grow in the
future.
Increased AI Adoption
AI applications in the consumer world are becoming more common and adoption
continues to rise in the B2B space. IT and business leaders are talking more about AI
technologies but have challenges when it comes to developing and implementing
the right AI applications for ITSM tools. This is why we should look at specific AI
technologies than supplement ITSM rather than AI as a whole.
For example, conversational AI, which powers messaging applications like chatbots,
can automate intelligent conversations between your customers and virtual support
agents. The development of AI technology will also lead to better knowledge
insights in the form of recommendations and predictive analytics. The coming
months will bring a wave of AI adoption with more emphasis on personalization and
accessing unique bits of knowledge specific to each user.
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