ENTERPRISE MANAGEMENT ASSOCIATES®
Analyst Corner
June 2008 EMA Analyst’s Corner:
CMDB Requirements: The Hidden Killer
2008 appears to be the tipping year for CMDB implementations. After watching adoption rates slowly climb for the past three years, three independent EMA research surveys in 1Q 2008 validated the claim that CMDB adoption has reached the mainstream. More than 65% of enterprise IT shops surveyed are now in the process of implementing a CMDB solution. Furthermore, of the two hundred respondents (many from the world’s largest companies), none are undecided about taking the plunge.
For those of us who are CMDB evangelists, this is an exciting time. EMA has interviewed some outstanding success stories - companies with jaw-dropping return on investment metrics. A US Healthcare Service Provider was quoted as saying, “We were throwing money willy nilly at our service assurance effort without rhyme or reason. We have reduced outages by 40% through our CMDB system, which has brought us a 300% ROI in three years.”
For many companies, the focus today has shifted to the nitty-gritty details of CMDB implementation: application dependency mapping, automated discovery, end-to-end application monitoring, and federated integration challenges. Another sign of the rapidly advancing maturity is the focus on CMDB metrics for success. In March, EMA published its own thoughts on the subject in Defining Value for CMDB Systems – Some Internal and External Metrics to Help You Get Started.
However, for all the initial CMDB successes, there is a dark side to the story. When asked to rate the overall success of their CMDB effort, the average enterprise grade is a disappointing “B-,“with 44% marking their efforts as “fair” or “poor.” Why this dichotomy from the successful to the mediocre? What trends does EMA see in the research data that can explain this Jekyll-and-Hyde situation?
Cross-indexing the results with a very strong correlation from EMA consulting engagements on CMDB, the answer becomes clear: over 50% of all CMDB implementations are on a collision course with failure because they don’t understand the project’s detailed requirements. While other variables, like the process maturity of the organization, showed only moderate to low correlation, the numbers for detailed requirements were shocking. None of the companies that marked themselves in the lower three choices (neutral, fair or poor) had detailed requirements. All but two of the companies responding at the highest level (very successful) did have detailed requirements. Clearly, detailed requirements are a key component of successful CMDB implementations.
Now, let’s first define what EMA means by a detailed requirement. A good CMDB detailed requirement clearly states the need for IT data necessary to perform a defined process that spans technology silos or is otherwise only manually available. For example, a detailed requirement might be “the need to understand the mapping between an Investment Banking application and the underlying infrastructure so that Level 2 support personnel can pinpoint performance issues.” In this case, that work might be done manually today and stored in an Excel spreadsheet.
So why is it important to map out the CMDB to this level of detail in advance?
First of all, the sum of the detailed requirements define what the CMDB is going to provide, and more importantly, what it is not going to provide. Ask ten random IT specialists what a CMDB is going to do for them, and I guarantee that you will get ten very different answers. Defining the CMDB at the ground level without the ambiguity of the “market speak” is critically important. It also provides clarity to IT management who has the unenviable job of selling the CMDB to line of business executives. Finally, on this point, good detailed requirements prevent scope creep, a deadly and sometime fatal disease which has plagued large enterprise projects for years.
Second, good detailed requirements are tied to success metrics and, ultimately, dollar savings across the organization. From our example above, if it took 15 minutes and a phone call to get dependency mapping the old fashioned way, and it only takes 3 minutes using the CMDB, you have a measurable cost benefit for undertaking the effort. In this case, the sum of the detailed requirements defines the minimum ROI expectation.
Finally, detailed requirements form the basis for the CMDB project roadmap, allowing for discrete, well-understood wins in the short-term while providing a yardstick to measure long-term progress. In a particular timeframe, typically six months, a CMDB implementation team is tasked with installing software, providing integration, and shoring up process definitions. But why? The answer is to meet specific project detailed requirements. Without this guide, risks increase and, as we have seen above, the chances of a “fair” or “poor” implementation go up dramatically.
So how do we get started with writing good CMDB detailed requirements?
EMA consulting engagements have shown that most enterprises end up with between 200 and 750 detailed requirements. A patent-pending methodology and taxonomy facilitate gathering information at the right level of detail and organizing the information efficiently. Enterprise Management Associates’ full-service consulting engagement, the CMDB Solution Design service, provides an end-to-end offering delivering a completed detailed requirements document soup-to- nuts. However, for those companies looking for some initial guidance, EMA is offering a new one-day, on-site workshop for writing good detailed requirements, aimed squarely at do-it-yourself CMDB implementation types. To get a taste, view the free, on-demand version of the one-hour EMA Webinar, "A Hands-on Guide to Defining Detailed Requirements for Your Enterprise CMDB Project." Registrants for the Webinar will receive a complementary Writing Detailed CMDB Requirements workbook.
If you are involved in your company’s CMDB effort, be watching this space in the coming months for a new CMDB study by resident expert, Dennis Drogseth, Getting Value Out of Your First Phase and Second Phase CMDB System.
