By Robert E. Perrine.
Smashwords Edition.
Copyright 2010 Robert E. Perrine.
Copyright
Copyright held by Robert Perrine and Marlene Weldon, Long Beach, California. You may not copy or distribute this document without advanced written permission from the document authors. Contact Robert E. Perrine at http://www.robertperrine.biz.
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Acknowledgements
I want to thank all of the friends I have worked with over the years who helped me learn about project management and about people. Special thanks go to Brian, Franklyn, Lesley, Nisi, Sharon and Tom for their support and encouragement while I was working on this book.
Disclaimer
The purpose for this ebook is education. This ebook is a collection of exercises that Robert Perrine has used when teaching about Version 2 of the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL). The purpose for this ebook is to share information. No warranty is made or implied as to the suitability of the description contained in this ebook. It has been helpful to me. I hope it is helpful to you.
Table of Contents
Introduction
The Case Study
Question 1: Capacity Management
Question 2: Availability Management
Question 3: Service Level Management
Question 4: Problem Management
Question 5: Release Management
Question 6: Financial Management
Question 7: Continuity Management
Question 8: Incident Management
Question 9: Change Management
Question 10: Configuration Management
Implementing Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) require teamwork. ITIL disciplines are like trees in a forest. We look at each tree and see a symbol of strength. What we do not see is the intertwined mesh of roots under the ground. No single tree can withstand the blast from a winter storm. Trees entwined at the roots, however, form a solid wall.
ITIL works the same way. Each discipline must be strong, and yet, no discipline can stand on its own. Incident Management quickly resolves events – but those same events keep recurring. Incident is on an endless treadmill unless Problem Management get at the root cause.
The goal for these exercises is to help you think about the relationships between these disciplines. I chose a case study format. This is a traditional teaching technique. It is also similar to the testing technique used for the advanced certifications in ITIL. This ebook is not sold as a test preparation guide. I created these exercises while I was studying for advanced certification. These exercises were helpful to me and have been helpful to a few others. But that is not the purpose for this ebook. This ebook is simply a tool to help those who love ITIL learn more.
I work as a consultant. It am often called upon to quickly create a proposal to explain the benefits my employer can give to a potential customer. I recommend you think of yourself as an ITIL consultant as you work these exercises. This customer needs your assistance. But unless you write a convincing proposal they will not be motivated to find the money to fund your project. So write your answer to each question as if this was your way to justify a new project. But do not spend too long on any question. Remember, there are a lot of questions – just like there are a lot of opportunities. So put just enough time into each to ensure that you have learned something through the process.
I also give you point breakdowns on each question. Requests for Proposal (RFPs) sometimes tell you the grading criteria. And sometimes you need to just read the request and decide how best to approach the situation. I use the point breakdowns here to help guide your focus.
I hope you enjoy these exercise.
A large oil company named Unified recently relocated their primary data processing center from Los Angeles to Phoenix. Rather than move all of the servers they bought new blade servers and executed a series of fail-overs so that the primary systems are now in Phoenix. The older systems were left in Los Angeles and that data center will become a disaster recovery center for the company.
Many of the employees in Los Angeles have been with Unified for more than twenty years and there is apprehension about whether or not Unified will keep them or lay them off. Many of these employees came to work at Unified when the only system in the data center was a mainframe. Since those days these employees have learned to work with UNIX and Windows software. Most were eagerly looking forward to an opportunity to work on the new blade servers.
Unified management has not always been pleased with the results from their data processing teams. When there was one large mainframe it was difficult to make changes. When the business requested an update, it always took longer than expected and cost more than was budgeted. The migration from the mainframe began when one department manager decided that it was cheaper to buy a computer and hire contract programmers than it was to continue to pay the monthly allocation he was charged for using the mainframe. Soon other managers followed that example. Some of those managers realized that there were talented people working on the mainframe and they brought some of those people into their departments to support these new systems and new applications. This trend continued for several years.
About five years ago a new CIO came to Unified. He looked at the dispersant systems, duplicated projects and excessive fees paid to consultants and began a major effort to consolidate systems back into the central data processing organization. There was considerable opposition to that move and few of the business managers agreed to migrate their applications over to the central IT organization. With the move to Phoenix all of that has changed. Only employees from the central IT organization are allowed administrative access to the new servers. While application development is still managed by the business managers, application updates must go through the new change management process. Only the members of the central IT organization can move code from the development environments over to the production environments in Phoenix.
In addition to the two main data centers in Phoenix and Los Angeles, each refinery has an independent IT organization. These groups have evolved over the years and now support between thirty to over one hundred personal computers along with email servers and file servers within each refinery. The new CIO has repeatedly asked the board of directors to grant him authority to manage these remote IT organizations. While the board of directors is in favor of consistency in process they have not yet taken action to initiate this organizational change. Today the IT employees in each refinery continue to take orders from the vice president responsible for that refinery. And the money to pay their salaries comes out of the refinery budget. The largest of those refineries is in Plano. Additional refineries are located in Pasadena, Pittsburgh and Podunk.
The CIO is in a bind over this situation. Whenever there is an interruption in service, the refinery managers blame the central IT organization. But the CIO does not have the authority to manage the IT employees within those locations. These situations are frequently escalated to the CEO and have been discussed in board meetings. The CEO is eligible for a large bonus based on the performance of the refineries and the Vice President for each refinery is eligible for a bonus that is equivalent to their annual salary if they achieve production, sales and profitability goals. The CIO is also in a bonus pool that is tied to the results from the refineries.
Last year the CIO brought in a group of consultants to find ways to increase reliability of the systems deployed within the refineries. Those consultants recommended converting all of the systems in the refineries from Windows to Linux. The CIO asked another consulting group for an opinion and they recommended converting the Linux servers to Windows. The CIO considered this advice and thought it best to not make any changes as this would certainly create more outages and require additional training. Even so, several of the refinery managers decided to act on the consultant’s recommendation and they have been slowly converting key applications from Windows to Linux.
This conversion worries the CIO. In the past Unified Oil has suffered outages when major systems were damaged. The CIO is proud of the work that went into creating a fail over site for the corporate systems and feels that the refinery Vice Presidents should do the same. This issue came up in a recent board meeting and the CIO again asked for authority to manage the IT staff within the refineries. Again, however, the board decided to give the refinery Vice Presidents an opportunity to first demonstrate their resourcefulness. In response, the refinery Vice Presidents hired a consulting group to prepare a disaster recovery plan for each refinery. Their goal is to leverage the fact that each refinery runs a similar set of software applications on similar hardware.
From the point of view of the CIO all of this effort at converting operating systems is distracting the company from focusing on a critical business need. All of Unified Oil’s major competitors now have an online web based portal so that the oil distributors that buy refined products can place their orders in advance. This gives those customers confidence that their price is locked in and will not climb unexpectedly. This also gives those competing refineries an advantage because they are better able to plan production so as to minimize shortages and overages that often occur in the refinery business. One of Unified’s largest competitors has gone so far as to announce a goal of achieving just-in-time, zero inventory processing within five years.
When that announcement showed up on the front page of one of the trade journals, the CEO called the CIO and told him to select a vendor and start building a web portal immediately. This is going to be a major initiative and any delays are likely to increase the tensions between the different parts of the organization.
The CIO, realizing that there is a gap between what is expected and what the resources in the newly formed central IT organization are prepared for has asked your advice and is searching for a unifying framework to improve overall operational efficiency. He is interested in ITIL and wants to explore each of the disciplines when the right opportunity arises.
Question 1: Capacity Management
The Pittsburgh region recently signed a purchase agreement to replace their existing 4 TB of disk storage with a high performance array. The CIO in Phoenix was caught by surprise and now needs to respond to this news. You are a consultant trusted for your objectivity. You have been asked to prepare a strategy document that will outline how the central resources in Phoenix should respond to this autonomous action in Pittsburgh.
In your white paper you need to outline how the deployment of this new hardware provides an opportunity to improve upon the rudimentary Capacity Management in place in Pittsburgh. Focus on key artifacts that should be created to support this effort and the value those artifacts will provide to the CIO. (12 points)
Also outline opportunities for Phoenix resources to assist Pittsburgh with this effort. Describe key benefits that will be derived from an ITIL-focused effort. (8 points)
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In response to each question I am going to tell you an approach that I might take. I will use the graphic “My Approach” as a separator so that your eyes do not accidentally stray into the answer while reading the questions. There are several ways to answer each question. The key points are to give your customer something of value and find ways to strengthen the bonds between the different ITIL disciplines.
I like to start with a bit of brainstorming.
I know there are three sub-processes in Capacity Management: Business Capacity, Service Capacity and Resource Capacity. I can name a key artifact from each. For example: the Capacity Plan, user response time measurements, and resource utilization metrics. And I know there are other ITIL disciplines that are closely tied to Capacity Management. For example:
Availability Management often shares monitoring tools with Capacity Management.
Change Management needs Capacity Management to check resources for impact.
Release Management is dependent upon sufficient capacity on the target systems.
And IT Service Continuity Management cannot plan without capacity numbers.
Think about the case study. What else is going on in this company? The refineries are planning significant changes. There is a push for better Continuity Management. And there have been outages in the past. But, maybe the topic that the CIO is going to be most interested in hearing about is the cost of this change.
Next, I like to organize my thoughts with a brief outline. Consider the following.
Overview
Opportunity to Upgrade Capacity Management
-Resource Capacity
--Metrics
--Link to Availability
-Service Capacity
--User experience to demonstrate value of purchase
--Measure web site remotely from Phoenix to mimic customer experience
-Business Capacity
--Anticipation of growth
--Trendlines
--Project when to do upgrades in other locations
Resource pooling
-IT Service Continuity
--Opportunity to use old hardware for fail over
-Financial Management
--Document the cost-justification for this purchase
--Potential to make same upgrade in other locations
Do you get the idea? This exercise helps you process what you know about the discipline. And then this exercise helps you think about how the disciplines depend on each other.
Question 2: Availability Management
The CIO loved that white paper you sent him. But over the weekend the refinery in Plano went offline for six hours. No one realized there was a problem until the truck loading facility ran out of orders to process. The CIO heard that this was an availability issue. He wants you to write another white paper. He wants you to define Availability Management and describe the role Availability Management fills in supporting the IT infrastructure. Describe the benefits of Availability Management and document the supporting role Availability Management fills in supporting the service delivery framework. (8 points)
Also, he thinks they already do this. So he wants you to compare and contrast Availability Management with two other closely related ITIL disciplines. That way he hopes to clear up some confusion amongst his staff. (12 points)
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I gave 8-points to the first part of the question and thus I imply that this part is less important than the second part. I would try to get 4-points on the definition and purpose and then 4-points on how Availability Management supports one other key ITIL discipline. Keys ones to consider are Service Level, Capacity and IT Service Continuity. Looking ahead, the second part of this question requires two closely related disciplines. I think of Capacity and IT Service Continuity as the most closely related so I will use them in part two. That means I will use Service Level Management in part one.
The 12-points allotted to part two means this is going to need to be more extensive than normal. Since you are limited to two disciplines, you need to get 6-points on each discipline. You can try to expand on Availability Management in this section, but that was already requested in part one so you are not likely to gain any points by elaborating further in this section.
My outline
1. Part 1
a. Describe Availability Management
i. Monitoring is a key tool
ii. Feeds into Service Level Management for SLA compliance
iii. End-to-end monitoring to match user’s view
iv. Single-point-of-contact to end debates about network vs database, etc
v. Needs to be proactive and design into upgrades not retrofit
b. Essential support from Availability to Service Level
i. SLM does no monitoring, relies on Availability and Capacity
ii. SIP is an SLM tool used by Availability to improve on SLA compliance
iii. SLM is more people focused with Avail is more technical
2. Part 2
a. Compare and contrast with Capacity
i. Both measure but Avail focuses on user perception which is Cap service
ii. Cap also monitors low-level resources
iii. Recommend sharing monitoring tools to minimize load on target server
iv. Both have “Plans” to define strategy for maintaining and improving
v. Avail is proactive in designing availability into upgrades while Cap specifically has Business Capacity as a sub-discipline
vi. Both need to be proactive but are likely to be reactive initially
b. Compare and contrast with IT Service Continuity
i. When Avail succeeds, ITSCM is not invoked
ii. Simple disk drive redundancy in scope for Avail not ITSCM
iii. Even data center redundancy can be absorbed into Avail when the network and resources are truly distributed, like multi-presence DNS
iv. Both are scoped to focus on IT, not full business. Servers not paper clips
v. Typically ITSCM interfaces with BCM, while Avail goes through ITSCM
vi. Avail provides daily feedback on user perception while ITSCM might remain perpetually invisible to users and customers
Question 3: Service Level Management
Last month the Sales team in Podunk achieved 99% of their sales goals. This means they did not achieve their target and thus missed their sales bonus. As the Sales Manager reviewed the month he noticed there was a four-hour network outage at midnight on the second Saturday of the month. He sent an email to the CIO in Phoenix asking for a rebate on the charge for that month as the service did not achieve 100% availability.
As an ITIL consultant, the CIO often calls on you for advice. During your conversation you discover that this four-hour outage is in a scheduled monthly maintenance period. While no disruption to network traffic had occurred in the previous six months, there was an IOS upgrade this month that did impact the users. When you ask about the Service Level Agreement, the CIO replies that there is nothing in writing.
The CIO has asked you to prepare a draft response that he will update before sending to the Sales Manager in Podunk. (8 points)
The CIO also wants you to create an outline that can be used to document a formal Service Level Agreement for the centrally maintained network services. (12 points)
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I love Service Level Management. But I know that it cannot solve this type of problem all by itself. Therefore, I am going to link this with a couple other disciplines. And, one point to always remember about companies – they are all different. Therefore, I am going to use the phrase “in my experience” to cover the gap between what I have experienced and what is actually going on in this company.
My outline:
1. Part 1
a. Define SLA
b. Define %Unavailable
c. Note that %Unavailable excludes published scheduled maintenance windows
d. Clear need to communicate better – SLM responsibility
e. Use Service Desk to notify users of pending maintenance
f. Publish Planned Service Availability schedule
g. Also publish Forward Schedule of Changes
2. Part 2
a. Describe the Service
b. Hours of service
c. Hours of planned maintenance
d. Percent Unavailable target
e. How to measure the Unavailability
f. Costing model
g. How to request Rebates and credits
h. Rebate and credit schedule
i. Communications plan – user notifications
j. Change Management plan for this SLA
k. Change Management plan for this Service
l. Response times on Incidents
Question 4: Problem Management
Unified Oil has spent six months reviewing proposals and finally selected a vendor to build the customer facing web portal. In order to support the specialized needs in each region, this application will be deployed in three locations – Phoenix, Pittsburgh and Los Angeles. All of these instances will share a common code base but each will have unique customizations to fit the local markets.
The newly hired project manager is very interested in your opinion. She needs to evaluate whether to channel all customer problems to one location or let each regional office manage their own communication with the software vendor. As an ITIL consultant, your opinion is highly valued and viewed as being objective. The project manager would like you to prepare a written response to the following questions.
Since you believe that this is an opportunity for Unified Oil to implement Problem Management, please describe three areas where Problem Management is relevant to the rollout of this new web interface. (12 points)
Also, provide a concise justification that can be included in a proposal to the board of directors. Will this initiative cost the company more money on top of the software contract or can Problem Management be implemented without additional expenditures? (8 points)
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As I look at this, I see that part 1 is focused on the discipline. I know that Problem Management has three sub-disciplines, so that seems like a good way to approach part 1.
Part 2 is simply asking for a list of benefits in order to support a justification. I would recommend throwing in a few potential problems as well. Remember, ITIL is never free. There is always a cost, especially at start up. But, the cost can be justified and offset by benefits.
My outline:
1. Part 1
a. Problem Control
i. Need a known errors database
ii. Best to have one database to avoid redundant efforts
b. Error Control
i. This is going to rely heavily on the vendor
ii. Better communications to have single-point-of-contact to vendor
iii. Better manageability to have single-point-of-contact to users
c. Proactive
i. Need to document incidents, problems, known errors, resolutions
ii. Then do trend analysis
2. Part 2
a. Single-point-of-contact vital during rollout
b. Trending to focus on reducing recurrence of incidents
c. Excellent tool for managing the vendor relationship
d. Expect resistance to change from regions who prefer to have their own vendors
e. Going to require one dedicated person, possibly support staff depending on volume and some tools like the Known Errors database – expenses
f. Benefits, accomplish the rollout more effectively and deliver higher quality of service to both internal users and external customers
g. Alternative is to spend the money anyway by pulling regional people away from their defined jobs to be the defacto problem manager for their region and then continue to fund the project manager or other as a vendor coordinator