Manage Incidents that does not relate a Business, Technical, or Application Service to a CI Product Success Playbook Manage Incidents that does not relate a Business, Technical, or Application Service to a CI A step-by-step guide to analyze and remediate service relationship in incidents Table of Contents Summary Goal of this Playbook Audience Problem Overview Executive Summary How this playbook can help you achieve business goals How this playbook is structured Problem Analysis Upstream Causes Downstream Consequences Impact on Your Business Engagement Questions Remediation Plays Summary Play 1: Review your data (Optional) Play 2: Review your data with CDMB data foundation dashboard Play 3: Fix Play Data Governance References Summary Goal of this Playbook To help identify gaps in the Incident Management process related to the usage of a Configuration Item and the related Service to help resolve the outage. Additionally, this playbook guides you on how to best record CIs and related Services on the Incident form. Details about this playbook Author Emir Eminovic Date 04/12/2022 Addresses HSD # HSD0003715 Applicable ServiceNow Releases All Releases Prerequisites CMDB and CSDM Data Foundations Dashboards Version 2.0 or above Time Required Approximately 1 to 8 hours (depending on your environment) Audience Configuration Manager or Configuration Management teamServiceNow AdministratorsIncident Process Owner or Incident Management team Problem Overview An Incident should record what configuration item was broken (CI), what Business, Technical or Application Service(s) was impacted by its failure, how long the outage lasted (MTTR) and how it got fixed (Knowledge). It is important to identify the actual IT Infrastructure component (CI) that has failed, as well as the Service it supports, and use its attributes for proper incident routing and resolution to achieve better Busines Outcomes. Services have Service offerings (SO) consist of one or more service commitments that uniquely define the level of service in terms of availability, criticality, scope, and pricing, and other factors. Targets for these cannot be improved/achieved unless the outages are tracked and managed effectively Executive Summary How this playbook can help you achieve business goals This playbook will guide on how to ensure that relating the CI, which was out of service (broken) with the underlying Services it is supporting. How this playbook is structured This Playbook will guide you through 3 plays. Play 1 (a review data play) helps you identify if you have Incidents that do not relate CIs and ServicePlay 2 (remediation) helps you ensure the Service & Service Offering fields are visible on the form, so it can be filled out during the Incident lifecyclePlay 3 (a Data Governance play) lists the guidelines and processes for continuing to ensure your Incident workers are correctly service restoring tickets. Problem Analysis Upstream Causes People/Process - Incident Workflow does not require the CI field to be populated, as users do not know what the CI should be, and the field is not marked mandatory to make Incident submission easier Company should have a catalog of Services which shows a map of CIs to the Services, so that users can identify them when filling out the form. Data Maturity - Services are not mapped and therefore cannot be automatically added to the Incident Process - CI field is not mandatory at the right stage in the incident lifecycle Data Quality - CIs and Services are difficult to locate and hence are not mandatory People - ServiceDesk agents are expected to triage the issue and fill in the CI field, but do not record it on the form Data Migration - Previous ITSM tool did not differentiate between CI and Service and they are recorded in the same field (cmdb_ci) Process - Placeholder CIs or ticket categorization are used instead. Proper Service cannot be identified by the placeholder Coverage – Service CIs are not in the CMDB and cannot be recorded on the incident form Customization- Incident form was customized for other functionalities and the newer updates with Service/Service Offerings fields were skipped Downstream Consequences Data Consequence Data loss - unable to report on Incident trends such as: CI with frequent outages, Service Outages, total cost of Service ownership, total outage timeCompliance failures (internal and external auditors) to identify what was fixed Operation Consequence Inefficient Incident routing from Service Desk causing delays in MTTRManual Process circumvention is prone to errors Unable to predict future outages without previous data Delays in decision making related to the service App Consequence Missing Data - unable to use automation and/or workflows that automatically assign Incidents based on CI support/assignment group or Service Ownership/Assignment information Missing Data - unable to use base features such as to map outages to Services Impact on Your Business Not having the correct CI identified upfront can impact the following: Lower MTTR Data Completeness Data Validation Incident Reduction Process AlignmentService AwarenessIntegrity of Relationships Increase Operational Visibility Service AwarenessLifecycle Management Audit/Compliance Data Governance Process Automation Data Accuracy Engagement Questions: Consider the answers to these questions: How do you find a CI in your CMDB, so it can be added to the incident? How do you know what was broken? How do you route Incidents? How do you evaluate Impact and Urgency of an Incident? Are your Services defined? How about Service Level Agreements? How do you how much time you spend supporting a Service? Are your Services defined? Are your Services mapped? Do your Services have Service Level Agreements? How do you prevent outages form occurring? How do you analyze IT components that break frequently? Remediation Plays SummaryThe table below lists and summarizes each of the remediation plays in the playbook. Details are included later. Play Name Play 1 (optional) : Review Findings (Dashboard version 1.4.0 or below ) What this play is about Review count of Incidents with CI and Service Required tasks Download and commit the update set for dashboard Play 2: Review Findings (with CMDB foundation dashboard version 2.0 or above) What this play is about Review count of Incidents with CI and Service Required tasks Validate the score in CMDB foundation dashboard Play 2: Fix Play What this play is about Identify if you have the Service and Service Offering field visible on your incident form Required tasks Follow outlined step to add the field if it is not present on the form Data Governance What this play is about Helps you establish standard operating procedures, as well as periodic data certification Required tasks Provides detailed advice, best practices and data audit instructions Play 1 - Review your data (Optional) What this Play is about This step I required in case you have CMDB data foundation dashboard 1.4.0 or below. You can optionally upgrade to version 2.0 or above and go play 2. The below steps can be followed if upgrade is not possible. This play helps you to create a dashboard and identify if there are Incidents without CIs and Services in your instance. Required tasks Download and import the Incidents Without CIs and Services Dashboard Dashboard update set. For more information, see Retrieve an update set. Once you have successfully installed the Dashboard, navigate to it The first card will provide the count of Closed or Service Restored Incidents created in the last 60 days that have both a CI and a Service identified The second card will provide the count of all Closed or Service Restored Incidents created in the last 60 days List below the cards shows Incidents where the configuration Item selected is a Service Sample If the two cards match, then this playbook does not apply to you. Otherwise proceed to the next play. Note: Review sample Incidents on the List that displays Incidents where the CI has been populated with a service. It is preferred that you capture the Service in the Service Field instead. This is an improvement opportunity. Play 2 – Review your data What this Play is about Identify if there are Incidents without CIs and Services in your instance. Required tasks Navigate to Configuration CMDB Data Foundations Dashboard. Open the tab ITSM Processes Check the counter for Incidents Not Relating Services to CIIf the count is zero, this playbook is not applicable to you. If its non-zero, click on it to open the Analytics Click on "Show Records" button to list incidents records having CI but missing Services Play 3 – Fix play What this Play is about In this play you will apply recommended fields to your incident process. Additionally, as Infrastructure components can change in real time it is challenging to keep up with non-discoverable data, such as Assignment Group, Ownership, etc. The information can be derived from the Service those CIs belong to, if you have implemented our Common Service Data Model. This section assumes you have your CIs mapped to the services they support. Ensure you are following your internal development practice and make these changes in Dev and move them up to Production following your established SDLC processes. Required tasks Ensure that the Service and Service Offering fields are visible on the form Open Create new Incident form Are the Service field visible? If Yes, proceed to next step If No, right click the Incident Form header, and click Configure > Form Design Drag the Business Service Field above Configuration Item to match our baseline Sample Close the Form Design tab Refresh the Open a new Incident page Test out submitting an Incident with a Service populated in the business_service field The following items are visible once an Incident has been created with a Service populated Dependency View (BSM map) Other Active Tasks affecting this Business Service list Service details If you are using Agent Workspace, once a Service has been chosen, you can then easily view the Service record and see its attributes to help you determine Incident Impact and Urgency, resulting in more accurate Impact/Severity. You can also see all the items identified in the step above Once you have successfully completed the above task, consider also displaying the service_offering field and implementing Incident Assignment based on Service and CI as recommended in our CSDM Lab. This will help you route Incidents based on Service Attributes instead of relying that Infrastructure CIs have accurate information Data Governance What this Play is about This play lists the healthy habits around periodic validation of Incident data. Required tasks Rerun Play 1 periodically, evaluate additional improvement steps to achieve higher compliance with properly tracking Services related to the Incident Review and apply the Common Service Data Model across your organization Implement Service Mapping to better show dependency maps As your organization matures, periodically review your mapped services for accuracy and refresh them as necessary References Install or Upgrade CMDB Data foundations dashboard Below playbook will help in installing/upgrading CMDB Data foundations dashboard. Install and Upgrade CSDM and CMDB Data Foundations Dashboard Congratulations You have completed this Product Success Playbook.