Over the past couple of weeks, this 'ITIL - does it really work?' series has explored the objectives of ITIL, and some of the challenges organisations can face in ITIL adoption. Here, in the final part, we'll take a look at how emerging technologies can not only drive greater ITIL process efficiency and effectiveness, but also maximise the value gained from existing people and technology in the organisation.
These emerging technologies are closely allied with the core objectives of ITIL. IT Process automation tools (ITPA) are essentially a means of capturing, modeling and automating IT operations processes providing benefits around the reduction of operational cost and risk as they help to offload repetitive, manual tasks from overburdened IT operations staff. They bring control and automation to IT operations by ensuring consistent process execution and improving run books and ITIL-based processes.
ITPA tools can bridge the gaps between existing systems, ensuring (as an example) that the systems management platform is tied to the service desk system resulting in a streamlining of processes between the infrastructure and the service teams, leading to even greater efficiencies.
Automation can operate at two distinct levels; a macro or micro level. At a macro level, ITPA spans multiple disciplines, silos and technologies. Macro level automation would be the overarching processes of incident, problem or change management. Micro level automation fits within a single silo or technology. It is typically a routine, individual process performed by administration staff, such as alleviating the problem of known errors. It defines the set of processes needed to identify and communicate the problem to the relevant staff and to determine the appropriate response and implement the fix. The micro level process automation is also commonly referred to as Run Book Automation (although Gartner tend to use this term to encompass both Macro and Micro level ITPA).
ITPA not only increases the value of existing technology investment but can also help to ‘liberate’ data traditionally trapped in silos of different technology areas - which can then be used to implement improvements and to enable more effective service delivery.
By modeling and automating responses a company can minimise risk and improve the consistency of response to common incidents. Human nature dictates that people may attempt to circumvent a process, so automation enforces a means of process execution that is not reliant on people following a set of procedures. It also allows an organisation to capture tribal knowledge and prevent information flight caused by people leaving an organisation.
From a compliance perspective this level of automation also provides an audit trail when it is essential to demonstrate that a task is undertaken in a consistent process. Automation tools can build in a set of checks so that managers can be confident that these are completed to a satisfactory level, in addition to eliminating the risk of human error. This also means that, for all auditing that is carried out on IT processes, the company can demonstrate that the procedure has complied with best practice.
In this way, ITPA crosses the three ITIL pillars of people, process and technology, bringing with it demonstrable cost savings. We ourselves are working with a number of organisations to build workflows to automate and orchestrate operational IT processes that involve multiple types of data, applications and company departments. Administrative and labour intensive tasks which address processes such as disk space clean up, server re-boots, new system releases or password resets, can be a considerable drain on an organisation’s time. Automated remediation of these tasks can free up considerable man hours; an end user could interact with a process rather than a person to obtain a password reset, if the process and the supporting technology is put in place, thereby freeing up the people to concentrate on other essential tasks.
We also work with numerous organisations to provide Incident Enrichment. We integrate the knowledge with the technology – incidents are recorded and fully populated with timely and pertinent information at the time of incident creation, then appropriately updated through the incident lifecycle. This detail can be gathered by using technology to capture and query the information. This additional level of detail allows an individual to then make a much more informed, faster decision about how to resolve the incident in the most timely manner and with minimal impact. This detail also allows root cause analysis and moves an organisation on from Incident Management into Problem Management.
These examples demonstrate the natural synergies that exist between process automation and ITIL in improving service quality, without increasing headcount, delivering process consistency and saving costs and resources.
It’s probably fair to say that many organisations do not yet have strong adherence to ITIL and nor have they yet reached the level of documenting all IT processes and determining what information needs to be shared with whom and who is responsible for managing which aspects of the overall process. Yet it would be a mistake to dismiss the framework as another level of ‘process for process’s sake’ and in this cost- conscious era. In a climate where organisations are being forced to focus on driving ever greater efficiencies, most can derive some benefit from re-assessing the way in which they deal with processes and considering areas in which automation can deliver time and resource savings.
Posted
Jul 20 2009, 03:51 AM
by
David Mount