Understanding the processes that support an organization's systems management approach is critical to the long term effectiveness of a systems management solution. Whether an organization chooses to go full-bore ITIL, use a more lightweight ITSM approach, or implement the Microsoft Operations Framework (MOF), it all starts with process. Implementing a systems management product that does not support a process-driven approach would be short-sighted, unless that product integrates seamlessly with another product that provides the process management component.

Process management can be a joy. When you understand how people need to work for maximum effectiveness, and you implement systems that support the efficient accomplishment of the work, you save money and time, offer a higher level of support to the organization, and reduce IT costs.

Many IT groups, in our experience, are challenged with process in the systems management area. Systems may exist that enforced process but were too difficult to customize, so workarounds have been developed. Folks don't know why things are done a certain way. Training programs don't exist. Nothing is documented. Multiple people have administrative privileges and "just do things" to the network without considering the ripple-down effect (change management). Whether ITIL or ITSM or MOF or some other flavor of IT process, procure and implement products that will work together to support an all-up IT process improvement initiative.

I hope you find this helpful.
Margaret

Scott Baxter

Posted on Dec. 11, 2010

It depends...

First, you need to take a very frank look at your current state process maturity. ITIL may get in the way if your shop is not structured to leverage it. Having a low CMM or MOF maturity score does not mean you can't run the shop, it only means you are on a certain point in a path to optimization and more efficient operation.

Once you know where you're starting from (and have also decided if ITIL or some similar operations/service management framework is right for you), what do you want to do with a "systems management product"? Do you want to keep servers alive, know when to add disk or memory or add other resources to serve growing resource utilization, patch the servers and distribute software packages, manage security and track configuration alteration...?

What you want to really do with a systems management technology will point you to the corresponding processes within a given framework for you to review. They may be 'too much' for your shop right now, in which case you then take a purely technical approach (contrary to the protestations of Service Management priesthood it's not all that bad) and drive your value proposition based on increased uptime with monitoring agents, less hours burned distributing software, etc. and not sweat the big ITIL V3 circle of life. There's no question that once your organization is ready politically and culturally for a structured approach to service and operations management a framework like ITIL can be a godsend, but don't try and shoehorn something your people and organizational culture can't swallow. I've seen the sordid results all too often, and it's not pretty.