Determining the impact of changes in Smart IT

Impact analysis helps you evaluate and manage the risks of a change request by identifying the services and configuration items (CIs) most affected by the change. Relating the services and CIs found in impact analysis to the change request also helps you identify and manage collisions. You can run an impact analysis from the change request details at any time, including when you submit a change request in Smart IT.

Overview of impact analysis

Impact analysis searches BMC Atrium CMDB for CIs and services with impact relationships to CIs related to the change request. The impact relationships among CIs and services must be defined in BMC Atrium CMDB before you run impact analysis, as explained in "Creating relationships between CIs". If you relate additional CIs to the change request after the impact analysis job has started, the new CIs will not be part of the analysis. You can choose to discard or cancel an impact analysis and try again.

The universal client shows relationships among all impacted CIs in a graphical format with various display options. Mobile clients show the first 100 impacted services and CIs in a list view only, with the most impacted services prioritized at the top.

If you relate services and CIs that were found in the impact analysis to the change request, additional collisions might appear in the alerts banner in change request details based on change requests that exist for the newly related items. You can manage the new collisions as explained in Managing change request collisions in Smart IT.

After you relate one or more CIs or services from an impact analysis, the impact analysis job is no longer active in the system. You can run impact analysis again after relating new CIs to the change request. Items related to the change request from an impact analysis have a relationship type of Impacts , so they are not considered in subsequent impact analysis jobs.

Before you begin

To access impact analysis functionality, you must have the required permissions. See Smart IT Permissions.

Impact analysis example

As a change coordinator in his organization, Allen wants to manage collisions for a change request. Before doing so, he wants to make sure an impact analysis has been completed, so he can identify and relate all impacted CIs and services to the change request.

1. Allen opens an existing change request in the Ticket Console in the universal client. 
   The alert banner has a message about collisions, but there is no indication that an impact analysis was run at the time that the change request was saved.
2. From the More menu on the change request, Allen clicks Initiate Impact Analysis.
   Allen continues working in a new window until he receives a notification that the impact analysis is complete.
3. Allen opens the impact analysis results from the notification.
   The results show a total of 50 CIs (including 2 services) that are impacted by the change. The CIs and services are arranged in a graph so that Allen can see the relationships among them.

4. Allen clicks Expand all and chooses the landscape layout to get a better view of the impacted items. He chooses Relate All > Relate All CIs to relate both CIs and services.

   Note

   On mobile clients, you must select and relate individual CIs.

5. He saves the change request
   The alert banner on the change request details shows more collisions than before the impact analysis.
6. Allen works with the other change coordinators in his organization to manage the collisions.

To relate impacted services and CIs to the change request

After the impact analysis is completed, tap Take Action on your mobile device and then choose an option to relate CIs to the change request or to discard the results. CIs found during the impact analysis are shown in a list format with the most impacted services at the top, up to a total of 100 services and CIs. You can select individual services and CIs, or you can select all services or all CIs and relate them to the change request.

In the universal client, click Relate All from the alert on the change request to relate all services and CIs to the change request without viewing the results, as shown in the following figure:

Alternatively, click Conduct Impact Analysis from the alert to display the impact analysis results in graphical format. The graph shows all CIs and services that are related to the change request at the top, as starting nodes. Impacted CIs and services at the end of the relationship chain are shown along the bottom. Impacted services and CIs in the middle of the relationship chain are shown in blue boxes that you can expand or collapse by double-clicking, or by using the Expand all and Collapse all buttons near the top of the display.

You can use various display options to explore the impacted services and CIs. For example, you can zoom in and out, toggle to full screen mode, choose portrait or landscape layout, or manually drag CIs on the screen to optimize the view. Click the Recenter icon to restore the original display after zooming or manually dragging CIs.

  Click each service or CI individually to select it. Optionally, s elect the Box Selection control and drag your mouse over a group of CIs and services to mark all of them as selected. Click Clear Selection to deselect all services and CIs.

Choose Relate All near the bottom of the display to relate all impacted services, CIs, or both to the change request. For individually selected services and CIs, click Relate Selected.

Troubleshooting inconsistent results in a server group

Atrium Impact Simulator shows inconsistent results in server group environment and does not support server group failover mechanism. For the workaround of Atrium Impact Simulator issue, see Knowledge Base article KA408259 (Support login ID required).