CMDB insights

 

CMDB Insights & Tips

It should be no surprise that the CMDB is a huge thing and that it needs to be treated as such. CMDB is the foundation of other processes. All the business processes rely on it. Without the CMDB things will only deteriorate and become impossible to manage.

In this regard, the CMDB should not be a data dump. Instead, the CMDB should be a strategic asset that enables better decision-making, service delivery, and risk management. This means that the CMDB should be a daily exercise in constantly learning and improving upon defining its direction; defining the business outcomes and how to measure them with insightful KPIs.

Here are some insights and tips from the comments on my LinkedIn post that I find worth sharing:

CMDB should never be considered as a project that is aimed at completion on a particular deadline. It should always be planned as an ongoing program. The initial implementation should be aimed at building a CMDB baseline only which must be followed by ongoing enhancements & monitoring to improve the process and data. It is critical to populate only the CI classes and attributes that will help the organization with any of its business objectives. Also, it is important to define proper governance and processes for CMDB during the initial stages itself. 

~ Ashok Sasidharan

Leveraging OOTB is vital for a successful implementation, and fine-tuning it strategically (rather than just customizing it for the sake of it) is the perfect finishing touch. 

This not only applies to CMDB but to the whole ServiceNow “world”. 

~ Federico Fiume

The majority of organizations implementing configuration management (CMDB) get it wrong. Don't feel bad, it's hard for organizations to implement, and organizational maturity is a factor. Throw in CSDM and most people are up in arms. 

 ~ Juan O.

The real reason is everyone wants to achieve automation on the second day of the project without understanding the client infra properly which leads to wrong implementation methods. Not every client needs to use the default port but people blindly run the discovery jobs just on assumptions. There are many similar examples for the same. 

~ Ankita Murarka

I'll try to update this article with all the interesting insights & tips as much as I can.

Thanks for reading.