The IT Skeptic - Comments for "Configuration Management is a process not a thing"

configuration discipline

skeptic — Sun, 26 Feb 2012 22:09:24 +0000

it sounds as if you are referring to Dev handing over to Ops. That's one issue which I call Dead Cat Syndrome. But I'm not sure how tightly linked it is to Configuration Management? I'd hope Operations staff set up the infrastructure for a new service, not Dev, so that Ops knows the configuration. The handover should come before that.

The discipline I was referring to is more inside Operations, getting techs to actually record what they changed.

YES YES YES!

Benjamin Reed — Sun, 26 Feb 2012 15:27:14 +0000

I've driving myself to the edge of insanity trying to help the brilliant minds at the company I work for of exactly what you've put onto paper here. I've described it this way, "configuration management is NOT a CMDB somewhere that someone else maintains for you; it is just simply engineering discipline." I get blank looks back and the "I still don't think we need it", as if it is a thing they can live without.

I don't know how to get through to them (and I really do mean they're brilliant - I see what they can make). I also see what they have trouble handing off to other people to support because they're off making the next great thing and didn't have time to make sure their product was sufficiently understood by everyone (not just them), documented and controlled.

I've gotta find a new assignment or I'll be driven to madness trying to help people see what you've written here.

Expert CM Guidance for IT Service Managers and Practitioners

Matthew Flynn — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 11:12:00 +0000

Assuming Rob doesn't delete this comment as too blatant a plug - those interested in practical Configuration Management, rather than the theoretical outline ITIL gives might be interested in the new book on Configuration Management from BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT, published this week.

http://www.amazon.com/Configuration-Management-Guidance-Managers-Practit...

This was put together from the results of a joint workshop of ITSMF-uk and BCS' Configuration Management Specialist group. The book is a digest of the collective practical experience and expertise of these two groups.

Matthew

Configuration Management is at the mercy of the source.

Milligna — Sun, 24 Oct 2010 23:20:51 +0000

I agree that the goal of Configuration Management is to deliver data when needed and with an appropriate level of accuracy to the processes which need it. The biggest challenge with this activity is NOT the gathering of and presentation of data to the people who need it. I think the biggest challenge is controlling how the data is created and maintained.

In many IT organisations, the Configuration Management process doesn't have input into the creation of the data that it consumes - often Configuration Management is asked to come in and make sense of data once decisions have already been made and tools have been selected... Think HR Data - HR is usually in control of this data without any input from Config. Config then needs to make guesses as to how they should interpret the data and where the value can be returned to the IT organisation. When performing Config activities, I often feel like an anthropologist - trying to make sense of a long dead civilisation with a significantly different cultural perspective on the information they used and maintain to perform their daily activities.