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Showing posts with the label Service Assets

Service Asset & Configuration Management (SACM)

Service Asset & Configuration Management (SACM) is the one process that touches all of the other ITIL processes. SACM’s purpose is to deliver accurate and up-to-date data and information to every other process across the lifecycle.  The fascinating fact about SACM is that in many cases it depends on those other processes through their defined, documented and agreed to activities, to insure that the data and information about those assets is up to date, accurate and properly recorded through the Configuration Management System (CMS),  No organization can be truly efficient and effective without having a configuration management process to insure we understand how and where that infrastructure, application, tools, documentation and sometimes even people are being utilized in delivering business outcomes and creating value. SACM ensures that CIs (configuration items) are properly identified; baselined and that changes made to them are properly controlled a...

Release, Control and Validation (RCV) – Service Management Secret Ingredients

In today's dynamic business climate, service outages cause real bottom line impact to the business. There are documented best practice processes and known critical success factors and yet outages that throw support organizations into reactive firefighting turmoil are far too common. Mature processes with just enough control are needed to smoothly transition new and changed services into production, helping to ensure stability for IT and the business.  Most organizations will confirm that they do have Change and Release Management processes in place.  Service Providers will usually have some level of Service Asset and Configuration Management control.  There is generally a lot of buzz and focus on three core processes for Service Transition and the success and integration of these three are critical to business success.  Three Core Processes for Service Transition are: Change Management Service Asset and Configuration Management Release Management Most IT...

Asset Management or Configuration Management - Which Do I Need?

I once heard an IT manager say… “We do not need Service Asset and Configuration Management”!  We have Asset Management and we can add a few more fields of information for IT in that database.”  Is this true?  Would this give the service provider the same value as a Service Asset and Configuration Management Process and System?  Asset Management Most organizations have a process that tracks and reports the value and ownership of fixed assets throughout their lifecycle. This process is usually called Fixed Asset Management or Financial Asset Management.  Activities in traditional Asset Management include such things as documenting the cost of the asset and projected life of the asset.  Other bits of data captured might be the cost of maintaining the asset.  For the most part this is financial information.  Being able to determine the depreciation of an asset is year over year, Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and Return on Investment (ROI) are ...

Where to start with SACM? Service Asset and Configuration Management

I often get asked the questions, "Where do I start with SACM? How do I implement this process?" In my experience, this is one of the most difficult processes to implement correctly. Let’s discuss the first activity of the SACM process of Planning . In this activity, decisions will be made about the scope of what needs to be controlled in your organization. What level of configuration management is required? How will that desired level is achieved? Do you gather information about a service or about specific components? Do you need to control assets which are causing your customers the most pain points? When do you establish a controlled configuration, how do you change a controlled configuration, and what amount of resources are you going to expend to manage configurations? All of these decisions must be documented and formalized within the configuration management plan. Configuration Management Plan: · Context and Purpose · Scope · Requirements · Applicable policies and stand...