Context

Incident Management and Problem Management are among the most important information technology (IT) processes for addressing faults in your IT infrastructure and are part of the IBM® Accelerator for Tivoli® Service Desk.

IBM Tivoli Service Desk enables IT organizations to address Incident and Problem management, and planning and scheduling for rapid restoration of critical IT services at an appropriate cost.  Tivoli Service Desk documents incidents and problems from users, service technicians, and network systems management applications. Tivoli Service Desk provides a single point of contact for the internal customers in an organization. This single point of contact can be supported from multiple call centers or a single support group.

Tivoli Service Desk enables IT organizations to create service efficiencies, reduce disruptions, and improves mean time to resolve a problem or incident. It streamlines service desk operations by unifying key service support processes and delivering easily accessible business reporting and real-time key performance indicators (KPIs).

Incident Management is a critical process that enables a rapid recovery from service outages and reductions in the quality of service. The objective is to coordinate the restoration of normal service operation as quickly as possible with a minimum disruption to the business and to ensure the best achievable levels of service availability are attained.

Problem Management is the complementary process aimed at improving the quality and stability of the IT infrastructure by investigating the root causes of incidents and removing those root causes. By proactively tracking and removing errors in the IT infrastructure, the impact of incidents is minimized and the recurrence is prevented.

Unlike some vendors in the market, IBM Tivoli Service Desk comes with the option of prepackaged world class services to provide the customer with an incident and problem management solution. This solution consists of IBM Tivoli Service Desk and IBM Accelerator Service. The prepackaged service is called IBM Accelerator for IBM Tivoli Service Desk.

This solution is designed to improve time to value for the customer. It accelerates the implementation of self-managing, autonomic technology into your operations. It lays down the best practices to quickly diagnose and resolve problems in computing environments that affect on demand business infrastructure performance and availability. It provides a method of viewing, analyzing, and correlating log and trace files across a heterogeneous environment. This solution is designed to reduce the time and resource-consuming deployment of autonomic problem-determination solutions.

Furthermore, this service product provides an effective and efficient customer-specific solution at a reduced cost percent of the cost of a non-accelerator solution. This solution consists of fully ITIL®-aligned Incident Management and Problem Management processes, role implementation, customized respected vendor products, and a well-designed roll out methodology.

Details

The IBM Accelerator for Tivoli Service Desk increases the availability of critical IT services and enables fast roll out because it contains a completely prebuilt set of customer deliverables and workshop materials, all of which can be easily customized.

Offering components and deliverables

The key deliverables of the offering are two process references that document each aspect of the processes to the operational level. The documents include high-level and detailed process flows, tasks, activities, inputs, outputs, key performance indicators (KPIs), role definitions, role mappings, and reference data. Examples include incident priority, impact, urgency, status codes and status transitions, and resolution target levels. These process references thoroughly document the role definitions and role mappings that allow for both the implementation of these processes in an operational environment and the relationship to the organization in question.

The main documents included in the IBM Accelerator solution are:

• Solution overview
• Solution installation guide
• Solution configuration guide
• Procedure guides (user guides)
• Predefined code
• Predefined reports
• Training material 

In addition to the base toolsets, the deliverables and services provided by the IBM Accelerator solution include:

• Tivoli Service Desk software
• Project plan
• Skills List
• Install guide
• IBM GS Method templates
• Initial Solution Architecture
• Completed personalization worksheet
• Personalization collection workshop
• Bill of materials
• Model organization communication plan
• Customized code
• Solution document
• Teach the teacher training workshop
• Technical support

For the deployment of the solution, a predefined project plan defines the tasks, schedule, milestones, and resources that are assigned. This project plan is tailored to your engagement at the beginning of the project. A sample excerpt of the project plan is shown in the table.

1. Acceptance from client

2. Deploy Tivoli Service Desk product

2.1 Prepare IBM Tivoli Service Desk solution validation workshop

2.2 Facilitate IM and PM solution validation workshops

2.3 Review IM and PM solution validation findings

3. Organizational considerations

3.1 Prepare for organizational IM and PM readiness planning workshop

The IBM Accelerator roll out methodology deployment flow is shown in the diagram. The activities in yellow are customer led, the blue are IBM led, and those in green indicate a joint effort. Although the activities in blue are IBM led, customer participation and support is required.

The roll out process focuses on four major workshops:

1. Solution Validation Workshop (2 days): This workshop introduces the customer to the IBM Accelerator for Service Management services offering Asset Management solution. During the workshop, the IBM consultant presents all aspects of the process and the accompanying documentation, conducts a solution walk-through to illustrate the different process execution paths, and provides an introduction to the solution's personalization opportunities.

At the end of the workshop, the core team has a complete understanding of the solution and the customization options to fine-tune the solution to meet customer-specific requirements.

2. Organization Considerations Planning Workshop (1/2 day): This workshop describes the roles required to effectively use the IBM Accelerator for Service Management services offering Asset Management solutions. It examines the tools to help implement organizational changes to support the solution, and reviews organizational change issues and considerations.

At the end of the workshop, the core team and the executives have a complete understanding of the predefined roles, their responsibilities in implementing the solution, and the impact this solution will have on the existing organizational structure.

3. Personalization Data Collection Workshop (2 days): This workshop is for collecting the personalization information required to complete the IBM Accelerator for IBM Tivoli Service Desk, which is implemented using Tivoli Service Request Manager.

At the end of the workshop, every fine-tunable parameter is clearly defined to match a customer specific environment. This configuration is then used in the Solution Personalization phase to create the environment.

4. Solution Training Workshop (2 days): The teach-the-teacher workshop provides additional education to the (customer) project core team using the material that will be used to train the users of the IBM Tivoli Service Request Manager.

At the end of the workshop, the core team has the skills to offer training workshops to their user community within the customer's organization.

Obtaining more information

See attached document for details on this accelerator Accelerator Tivoli Service Desk.pdf

For additional information, contact your IBM Global Services representative or visit these Web pages:

• IBM ITIL Accelerator Solutions
• How IBM supports ITIL and provides ITIL-based capabilities and solutions
• Infrastructure Resource Management