Creating the Mindset for BSM from C-level to System Administrators

The first step to a successful BSM strategy should be building consensus from the Executive suite down to the Network Operations Center (“NOC”), this consensus will help get everyone thinking and positively contributing to the project.   This positive momentum is crucial as you will be asking many of these people to change the way they manage the IT operations from a reactive, siloed nature to a proactive real-time environment.  This change is not trivial and should be addressed from the start.  As the old adage goes “We built a paperless environment and made it mandatory, yet most everyone is back using their old paper-based processes.”  This is true for many technologies…so be pro-active…because if you get buy-in and implement correctly you environment will be.

A key ingredient to this mindset is to start considering everything from the perspective of the business.  At the onset of every IT project, every IT incident, every change plan, the first question that should be answered is “How will this impact the business?”  This isn’t just for the CIO to answer; every member of IT needs to understand their role in supporting the business as a whole.

Planning your IT/Business Strategy

When planning your strategy be sure to define the Key Performance Indicators (“KPIs”), so that you can gauge the results and value of the project on an on-going basis.  This will allow you to measure and address any shortcomings or capitalize on any potentials opportunities.   One thing about BSM; if it is implemented effectively…more people and business areas will want inclusion as it should deliver highly visible results that are clear to members outside of IT.  So, including capacity planning is another important component during your planning stage.    Additionally, it is important to change the way you talk and describe your service management capabilities, as it is a different paradigm…it is important to describe the benefits and evangelize them to your organization.

Traditional IT metrics have focused on the negative: number of outages, incident response times, policy violations.  With BSM, the focus needs to change to how IT is driving the business and enhancing revenue.  This will create a positive image of you and your IT Operations team as you begin to see the positive results and report using the KPIs on the positive benefits being derived through your correctly deployed BSM solution.

If you are using a Configuration Management Database (“CMDB”) for the storage of your Assets/Configuration Items (“CIs”), it would be advantageous to integrate and pull the CI information describing the assets connected to your network from the CMDB and integrate into your BSM product, thereby ensuring the latest information and any changes to those assets are reflected in your KPI(s).   BSM rules the day!

Model Your Services

This is one of the most important steps in a successful implementation as it provides the baseline for success.   By modeling and logically grouping services, you can have all of your assets grouped geographically because each location is managed by a different group of people. Or, you may combine disparate systems that interoperate to provide a single business service.  There are numerous ways to logically group assets or CIs, so they can reflect dependencies and/or have SLA(s), as well as, other guidelines associated with the logically grouped service thereby reducing complexity and ensuring expanded availability, performance and security.  Be sure that you model each service as completely as possible so no unexpected issues arise.   An ideal starting point for modeling your services is ask members outside of IT to describe how they consume IT and identify what IT assets are required to deliver these services.  Strong modeling = Great results!

Implement tracking and reporting

It is important that whatever BSM solution you go with delivers full tracking and auditing, so any changes that might affect or may have impacted a given service can be reviewed or captured accordingly.  The importance of this capability cannot be overstated…don’t buy a BSM solution without it.  Buyer’s remorse is the worse sort of Scorn! ☹

In today’s world anything other than AJAX-enabled real-time reporting is just not acceptable.  Having reports that continually update themselves so the latest information is available to augment your decisions or enhance your reporting needs is the key to making you’re the king of your domain.  There is nothing worse…than going to a meeting and having your peer or boss legitimately question the integrity and validity of your data.  May times it is due to expired or outdated information based on report creation or inability to retrieve the latest updates prior to going to a meeting or presentation.   Be a star…go real-time!

Btw…our head of marketing co-authored this post…as he needed to contribute on feels strongly about this subject.   It is greatly appreciated…enjoy!

The goal of BSM is easy to state and understand: To manage IT investments in alignment with business priorities in order to create competitive advantage.

Notice something different about this statement, compared to traditional IT management practices? To begin with, there are no technology buzzwords, nor any acronyms describing some new technology that’s going to replace everything you’re currently running. In fact, this doesn’t even look like it was written by a technologist. Instead, this represents what line of business leaders want to achieve with technology in a way that enables organizations to communicate and measure IT just like every other department of the business.

In order to accomplish this, the following must happen:

1. Identify business objectives.
While this may seem to just follow common sense, the number of IT leaders who are fully aware of the objectives of the business they support is small. Critical to achieving this is good communication between Line of Business and IT leaders. Let’s take an example. Company XYZ Inc is a wireless phone company with store fronts in 15 states. Over the course of the next two quarters, one of the primary objectives of the business is to streamline the sales process to reduce the time to complete a transaction by at least 20 minutes.

2. Align IT with business objectives and processes
The concept that a single server delivers a complete user experience is past. Instead, multiple servers, applications, point solutions and networked assets all come together to deliver the services users consume. With this in mind, our objective here is to logically group each networked asset (e.g. servers, applications, network equipment, etc.) into the services delivered to the client. In our example, we’re going to create an Account Processing service that includes the backend database servers, application-tier servers, core network equipment and any other networked asset that contributes to the account processing application used by the sales consultants at each storefront.

3. Meaningfully measure IT in relation to these objectives
While still useful, SLA’s, incident response times and other traditional metrics used to measure the effectiveness of IT can be meaningless to non-technical people. In order to prove the value of IT, BSM requires a new set of metrics that prove the business impact of IT in a way that’s meaningful to line of business leaders. Monetary metrics tend to communicate the best. In our example, we’re going to calculate average revenue generated per hour by our Account Processing service to develop a dollar figure for down time. However, we don’t just want to focus on mitigating the negative, so we’re also going to calculate the average time to complete a transaction and average revenue per transaction. These will be used to measure the positive impact to the business if we can significantly reduce transaction times, more transactions during business hours and therefore increased revenue resulting from managed change within IT.

4. Manage the business impact, not the technology
Using the new grouping and metrics developed in the previous steps, BSM enables organizations to prioritize response and monitor their assets from the perspective of what impacts the business the most. While the underlying technology is important from an operator’s perspective, being able to see the big picture in regards to how the technology is impacting the user and the bottom line of the business enable improved prioritization of work and improved visibility into how each of these disparate assets affect each other.

5. Adapt to change in the business and technology
Armed with meaningful metrics that prove IT’s value to the business, communication between line of business and IT leaders should become significantly better, but cannot end with that first meeting. As the business changes direction, IT must have the ability to change with it and shift its focus accordingly. Additionally, as new technology purchases are considered, the decision is made in light of where IT wants to be in order to support these larger business objectives and when alignment is identified between a new technology and business plans, gaining buy in from the organization as a whole becomes simpler as well.

This gives you a high-level overview of what is required to achieve effective Business Service Management. Over the coming weeks, we’ll dive deeper into each of these key elements and include some guidance into how to fit these into your unique business and IT environment. One key to keep in mind is that unlike traditional IT management practices, BSM is not a one-size-fits-all model, but must be tailored for each organization to achieve full effectiveness.

Please note that even the analysts are having a hard time determining  a single concise definition of BSM.  This is because th idea of strategically aligning your IT organizations operational goals with the Company strategic goals in an actionable way has been a trial of errors till recently.   There are numerous vendors out there now trying to come up with a definition of BSM that closely relates to their current management or monitoring products versus producing a solution that aligns itself with the idea of true BSM.  So when selecting a BSM product be careful and do your homework.

So, after reading this post and my definition of BSM…it is easy to understand
how important BSM is becoming for IT organizations around the globe. The linking of corporate strategic goals and
objectives with the IT operations in a measurable and actionable way is quickly
becoming another major step in maturization process for world-class
organizations.

So, I’ve put together with any luck, a more cohesive guide of key concepts,
best practices, and innovations around BSM and converted it to a blog
series that will seek to organize and point out things that are important when
considering BSM for your IT organization.

Over the next couple of weeks, I will be posting thoughts, ideas and
concepts to make it more this series more useful.  I will kick the series
off with some definitions ( areal source of confusion for many);
fundamentals and early history regarding BSM’s evolution out of monitoring and
network management, then go over the blueprint and concepts for improving IT
operations using BSM, covering frequently asked questions and discussing ways
to limit the areas of confusion, and noting best practices, innovations, and
helpful tips for success along the way. Discovering the power and value of BSM
through this series should arm you with the appropriate knowledge to ensure
your IT organization realizes value from any proposed BSM deployment.

Here’s a summary preview of what we will cover in this series:

• The definition of BSM; Intro to BSM fundamentals
• Early history regarding BSM’s evolution out of monitoring and network management
• BSM blueprint and concepts for improving IT operations
• Key factors when choosing a BSM solution
• BSM best practices and innovations
• Frequently asked questions about BSM
• Final Thoughts about BSM

Hopefully, this series will help you and your organization down the BSM
path. So let’s get to it.