Planning and phases of a CMDB implementation
This section helps you understand the best practices for planning the loading, normalization, and reconciliation of data in the .
implementation planning stages
The following information helps you understand the stages involved in structuring a
project and successfully delivering a comprehensive, effective, and useful
. These stages are set forth in the Step-by-Step Guide to Building a CMDB and are summarized here. You can request this book from https://www.bmc.com/forms/cmdb-step-by-step-guide.html.
The stages are further divided into discrete steps, each with specific goals and objectives that help you meet the milestone for each stage. Some aspects of this process are described in more detail in this document and in other BMC Software documentation, as noted in this section.
Stage 1 Assembling the project team
The number of team members that you choose and how many roles each plays depends on the size and structure of your organization, but you should employ project management standards such as including stakeholders and representatives from the user community.
The high-level steps associated with this stage are:
- Step 1, Assemble project team
- Step 2, Obtain
knowledge
- Step 3, Create and agree on
goals and mission statement
- Step 4, Review and define benefits
- Step 5, Build a business case
Your Configuration Management team should collectively be knowledgeable in:
- ITIL Service Support processes and guidelines
administration, BMC recommendations, and integration methods
- The Common Data Model (CDM)
- development
- Project management
- Business management processes
Stage 2: Defining requirements and creating IT service model blueprint
The high-level steps associated with this stage are:
- Step 6, Identify and review governance requirements
- Step 7, Review and select supporting recommendations
- Step 8, Identify requirements to address potential problems
- Step 9, Identify inventory and asset requirements
- Step 10, Define service catalog requirements
- Step 11, Define
requirements to support other processes
- Step 12, Define configuration item (CI) level and IT service model
- Step 13, Define CI relationships
- Step 14, Define CI attributes
- Step 15, Design IT service model blueprint
The result of these steps is a blueprint that models your configuration data requirements.
For information about the complete structure and class details of the Common Data Model (CDM), see the Common Data Model Diagram and the Data Model Help in the PDFs-and-videos page.
Stage 3: Selecting
solution and tools
The high-level steps associated with this stage are:
- Step 16, Select
solution
- Step 17, Plan the
population
For details about this step, see Planning-to-populate-BMC-Helix-CMDB. - Step 18, Select tools to automate
population
- Step 19, Calculate project Return on Investment (ROI)
Stage 4: Constructing and maintaining your
The high-level steps associated with this stage are:
- Step 20, Construct your
- Step 21, Create CI lifecycle management processes
- Step 22, Build supporting processes
- Step 23, Populate your
- Step 24, Train the
team and users
Stage 5: Driving ongoing value
The high-level steps associated with this stage are:
- Step 25, Implement measures and metrics
- Step 26, Create a continual service improvement program
Phased implementation of a
Implementing a
to manage your entire configuration at once is a daunting task, so a phased approach to implementation is usually better. Consider the following alternatives for breaking up the implementation:
- By critical business services or critical business applications
- By company department
- By geographic region
- By support group
- By importance of CI
Regardless of which types of phases that you use, try to keep transition times short. While in transition, you must maintain both your current and former processes, which is difficult to do for long periods.
Your later phases will be less costly if you apply lessons learned in early phases.