So you’ve thought things through now and you think you’re ready to begin working on a CMDB. Whether your motives are centralized change management control, the need for a standard set of configuration items or just improved change governance – you know the organization needs it.

The next question is where to start. As the white rabbit told Alice in ‘Alice in Wonderland’ – “I’ve always found it’s helpful to start at the beginning.”

So start at the beginning - by developing a strategy, one that surveys the industry, defines the critical elements of your CMDB and tailors the process to meet the needs and IT ‘maturity’ of your organization. Who knows, you might even want to develop a ‘model’ that could provide a roadmap towards your desired ‘end state’?

So here are a few ideas about how to ‘start at the beginning’ by developing your CMDB Strategy:

• Review current ITIL Change and Configuration Management ‘best practice’ thinking.
• Review ‘whitepapers’ written by some of the sectors’ leading CMDB software and solution vendors. Just remember that some of the white papers are written by vendors that may have an agenda.
• Review the functional attributes critical to the implementation of a CMDB and evaluate them against the ‘fit’ with your business.

Attributes that you may want to consider include:

• Reconciliation (the ability to rationalize one or more instances of a CI that is discovered and determine that they are the same item and that their relationships are identified are accurate.)
• Federation (which enables multiple data sources to be brought together to represent a coalesced view of a defined level of data.)
• Mapping and Visualization (which provides the ability to illustrate logically and physically the hierarchical and peer-to-peer relationships between CIs.)
• Synchronization (which provides the ability to update the CMDB with approved changes).

Next time we’ll discuss benchmarking your organization against industry best practices. Until then, remember, start at the beginning…

Don

Also, don’t forget to register for Evergreen’s change management webinar and learn how to Take Change Management from Firefighting to Fire Prevention

Are you trying to build a business case for a CMDB? Download Evergreen’s newest white paper on the subject: “The Business Case for Change and Configuration Management and the CMDB”.

—–