Step-by-Step Guide toBuilding a CMDB - RightStar

Stage 1. Assemble the Project Team and Define the Project
Task-by-Task Guide
Figure 4.1 shows the tasks for reviewing and defining the benefits of the CMDB.
Task 1.
Research
Potential Benefits
Task 2.
Link Specific
Benefits to
Project Goals
Task 3.
Review and Refine
Benefits with
Key Stakeholders
Figure 4.1. Tasks for reviewing and defining the benefits of the CMDB
Task 1. Research Potential Benefits
A CMDB can create a broad range of potential benefits. Knowing the potential benefits will help
the CMDB project team identify the specific benefits of the CMDB project in your organization
as you work with key stakeholders in various IT functions. You need to understand how the
CMDB changes and improves organizational practices, so that you can articulate the benefits
of a CMDB as they relate to your specific goals.
In general, the benefits of a CMDB are related to better access to information. The CMDB helps
consolidate and federate data that previously was distributed across the IT organization. Through
a federated CMDB, the project will connect those who consume information with those who
produce the information.
The CMDB also helps improve data accuracy. The ongoing collection, reconciliation, and maintenance
of CI data make the data dependable and usable. Putting supporting processes in place
is mandatory. Identifying owners of specific types of CI data also helps. Finally, a federated CMDB
can provide information to improve existing processes and also enable new capabilities that
were not previously possible with disparate data stores.
To understand the potential benefits of a CMDB, you should research various sources of general
information about how a CMDB enhances IT processes. Consider hard and soft benefits for each
process. The following summary describes the potential benefits you can expect from a CMDB.
Incident management. The CMDB provides a rich source of information that you can use to
turbocharge incident management. Incident managers can quickly access CI status, determine
impact by reviewing the relationships between CIs and the business applications they support,
and identify related CIs to restore service. CMDB data can automatically populate incident records.
Also, the ability to roll back to a known good configuration baseline enables an effective service
restoration strategy.
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Potential hard benefits: Higher first-fix rate, less time and aggravation asking questions to
assess the situation with the impacted user, reduced mean time to restore, lower incident
management training costs
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Potential soft benefits: Improved customer satisfaction because you can avoid asking them
questions about the configuration of their system and you can provide faster response time,
improved service-personnel morale, and improved business perception of IT at a key
interface point with business users
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