Run Book Automation (RBA), IT Process Automation (ITPA), or simply plain old automation is at the forefront of IT operations today because of the commoditization of IT. While the cost of acquisition for new technology continues to plummet as ease-of-use skyrockets, technology still requires support. IT operations staff must configure and maintain all the new devices that customers and users acquire.

Growth in IT infrastructure complexity is outpacing the ability to support it. Simply put, IT workload is increasing exponentially as staff and budgets remain flat. IT simply must work smarter instead of harder. Enter the promise of automation.

There is a good reason for this interest in automation since much of the work IT does is repetitive. Consider the potential windfall in efficiency, effectiveness, and economy made possible by integrating an actionable Service Catalog with a CMDB system for automated provisioning. For example, an executive goes to the service catalog portal and orders a BlackBerry. The ordering, status tracking, configuration, and account activation can all be done automatically if the processes are understood.

Automation is not automatic however. Without sound and documented manual processes in place, there is little hope to ever achieve real benefits automation. What follows are some guidelines for automating IT workflow around ITIL best-practices. These tips show how almost any IT organization can find real opportunities for automation.

Automation Quick Wins

Many think of machine command scripting when they think of automation. While scripting repetitive diagnostic or control sequences and activities is a common automation approach, there are others as well.

Automation is not only scripting. Like most things, too much of a good thing is not always good for you. Create too many scripts and you soon find yourself losing productivity trying to maintain all these scripts. In fact, automation to automate out-of-control scripting is very popular.

Automation includes applying technology to a virtual- and human-intensive operation or activity, and IT is ripe with opportunities. Once you understand that automation is more than scripting, automating ITIL starts to make lots of sense. The question quickly becomes where to begin your automation project. Without care, this can lead to the classic “solution looking for a problem.” Of course, just the opposite is what you really want.

Keeping this in mind, getting started with automation requires that you understand the job, as it is today. What Six Sigma refers to as the “as-is” state. You must document the current process in place from the perspective of all constituents. Understand the business relevance and value of any automation project before you start. Your goal should be evolution not revolution. You will want to aim for a visible and valuable improvement.

Perhaps the best way to approach ITSM automation is to think about reducing IT service variability since business is less accepting of variability in service delivery than ever before. Most variability within IT occurs from manual processes, making sources of variability prime candidates for a quick, visible and valuable win from automation.

Focus on IT Variability

Variability is the measure of how completed tasks that are supposed to conform to a specification vary among each other. From an IT perspective there are two main types of variability: process and service.

First let’s consider IT process variability. For example, consider your change management process. Do workers always input the details your request for change requires? Or do some people always complete the form while others may or may not follow your process? Do all users call the service desk as they should, or do some go around the process? This is IT process variability.

Examples of IT service variability include missing installation or project dates. Does your team consistently meet agreed timeframes for installs, moves, adds, and changes? What about incident resolution? Regardless of the source or type, IT variability is responsible for poor IT service quality, low customer satisfaction, employee job dissatisfaction, and ultimately loss of competitive advantage.

Simply put, variability is the enemy of quality and cost control. IT variability arises from what LEAN refers to as the “7 wastes”: Defects, Overproduction, Transportation, Waiting, Inventory, Motion, and Processing—DOTWIMP for short.

Using the idea of IT variability and comparing your current operations against the framework of ITIL you can probably find “quick wins” for automation. Replacing manual work with automation is all the rage today. Automation is a hot topic, but its dirty little secret is that you cannot automate something if you do not understand how it works in the first place. This critical detail makes ITIL process definition a cornerstone to success with IT Service Management (ITSM) automation.

Run Book Automation (RBA), IT Process Automation (ITPA), or simply plain old automation is at the forefront of IT operations today because of the commoditization of IT. While the cost of acquisition for new technology continues to plummet as ease-of-use skyrockets, technology still requires support. IT operations staff must configure and maintain all the new devices that customers and users acquire.

Growth in IT infrastructure complexity is outpacing the ability to support it. Simply put, IT workload is increasing exponentially as staff and budgets remain flat. IT simply must work smarter instead of harder. Enter the promise of automation.

There is a good reason for this interest in automation since much of the work IT does is repetitive. Consider the potential windfall in efficiency, effectiveness, and economy made possible by integrating an actionable Service Catalog with a CMDB system for automated provisioning. For example, an executive goes to the service catalog portal and orders a BlackBerry. The ordering, status tracking, configuration, and account activation can all be done automatically if the processes are understood.

Automation is not automatic however. Without sound and documented manual processes in place, there is little hope to ever achieve real benefits automation. What follows are some guidelines for automating IT workflow around ITIL best-practices. These tips show how almost any IT organization can find real opportunities for automation.

Automation Quick Wins

Many think of machine command scripting when they think of automation. While scripting repetitive diagnostic or control sequences and activities is a common automation approach, there are others as well.

Automation is not only scripting. Like most things, too much of a good thing is not always good for you. Create too many scripts and you soon find yourself losing productivity trying to maintain all these scripts. In fact, automation to automate out-of-control scripting is very popular.

Automation includes applying technology to a virtual- and human-intensive operation or activity, and IT is ripe with opportunities. Once you understand that automation is more than scripting, automating ITIL starts to make lots of sense. The question quickly becomes where to begin your automation project. Without care, this can lead to the classic “solution looking for a problem.” Of course, just the opposite is what you really want.

Keeping this in mind, getting started with automation requires that you understand the job, as it is today. What Six Sigma refers to as the “as-is” state. You must document the current process in place from the perspective of all constituents. Understand the business relevance and value of any automation project before you start. Your goal should be evolution not revolution. You will want to aim for a visible and valuable improvement.

Perhaps the best way to approach ITSM automation is to think about reducing IT service variability since business is less accepting of variability in service delivery than ever before. Most variability within IT occurs from manual processes, making sources of variability prime candidates for a quick, visible and valuable win from automation.

Focus on IT Variability

Variability is the measure of how completed tasks that are supposed to conform to a specification vary among each other. From an IT perspective there are two main types of variability: process and service.

First let’s consider IT process variability. For example, consider your change management process. Do workers always input the details your request for change requires? Or do some people always complete the form while others may or may not follow your process? Do all users call the service desk as they should, or do some go around the process? This is IT process variability.

Examples of IT service variability include missing installation or project dates. Does your team consistently meet agreed timeframes for installs, moves, adds, and changes? What about incident resolution? Regardless of the source or type, IT variability is responsible for poor IT service quality, low customer satisfaction, employee job dissatisfaction, and ultimately loss of competitive advantage.

Simply put, variability is the enemy of quality and cost control. IT variability arises from what LEAN refers to as the “7 wastes”: Defects, Overproduction, Transportation, Waiting, Inventory, Motion, and Processing—DOTWIMP for short.

Using the idea of IT variability and comparing your current operations against the framework of ITIL you can probably find “quick wins” for automation.
Replacing manual work with automation is all the rage today. Automation is a hot topic, but its dirty little secret is that you cannot automate something if you do not understand how it works in the first place. This critical detail makes ITIL process definition a cornerstone to success with IT Service Management (ITSM) automation.

Run Book Automation (RBA), IT Process Automation (ITPA), or simply plain old automation is at the forefront of IT operations today because of the commoditization of IT. While the cost of acquisition for new technology continues to plummet as ease-of-use skyrockets, technology still requires support. IT operations staff must configure and maintain all the new devices that customers and users acquire.

Growth in IT infrastructure complexity is outpacing the ability to support it. Simply put, IT workload is increasing exponentially as staff and budgets remain flat. IT simply must work smarter instead of harder. Enter the promise of automation.

There is a good reason for this interest in automation since much of the work IT does is repetitive. Consider the potential windfall in efficiency, effectiveness, and economy made possible by integrating an actionable Service Catalog with a CMDB system for automated provisioning. For example, an executive goes to the service catalog portal and orders a BlackBerry. The ordering, status tracking, configuration, and account activation can all be done automatically if the processes are understood.

Automation is not automatic however. Without sound and documented manual processes in place, there is little hope to ever achieve real benefits automation. What follows are some guidelines for automating IT workflow around ITIL best-practices. These tips show how almost any IT organization can find real opportunities for automation.

Automation Quick Wins

Many think of machine command scripting when they think of automation. While scripting repetitive diagnostic or control sequences and activities is a common automation approach, there are others as well.

Automation is not only scripting. Like most things, too much of a good thing is not always good for you. Create too many scripts and you soon find yourself losing productivity trying to maintain all these scripts. In fact, automation to automate out-of-control scripting is very popular.

Automation includes applying technology to a virtual- and human-intensive operation or activity, and IT is ripe with opportunities. Once you understand that automation is more than scripting, automating ITIL starts to make lots of sense. The question quickly becomes where to begin your automation project. Without care, this can lead to the classic “solution looking for a problem.” Of course, just the opposite is what you really want.

Keeping this in mind, getting started with automation requires that you understand the job, as it is today. What Six Sigma refers to as the “as-is” state. You must document the current process in place from the perspective of all constituents. Understand the business relevance and value of any automation project before you start. Your goal should be evolution not revolution. You will want to aim for a visible and valuable improvement.

Perhaps the best way to approach ITSM automation is to think about reducing IT service variability since business is less accepting of variability in service delivery than ever before. Most variability within IT occurs from manual processes, making sources of variability prime candidates for a quick, visible and valuable win from automation.

Focus on IT Variability

Variability is the measure of how completed tasks that are supposed to conform to a specification vary among each other. From an IT perspective there are two main types of variability: process and service.

First let’s consider IT process variability. For example, consider your change management process. Do workers always input the details your request for change requires? Or do some people always complete the form while others may or may not follow your process? Do all users call the service desk as they should, or do some go around the process? This is IT process variability.

Examples of IT service variability include missing installation or project dates. Does your team consistently meet agreed timeframes for installs, moves, adds, and changes? What about incident resolution? Regardless of the source or type, IT variability is responsible for poor IT service quality, low customer satisfaction, employee job dissatisfaction, and ultimately loss of competitive advantage.

Simply put, variability is the enemy of quality and cost control. IT variability arises from what LEAN refers to as the “7 wastes”: Defects, Overproduction, Transportation, Waiting, Inventory, Motion, and Processing—DOTWIMP for short.

Using the idea of IT variability and comparing your current operations against the framework of ITIL you can probably find “quick wins” for automation.

Defects

Defects are a tremendous burden to the organization and cause re-inspection, rescheduling, loss of capacity, loss of productivity, inability of IT staff to work on other projects, inventory issues, and so on. The remedy here is to use automation to “mistake proof” the process. Consider the service catalog. If you include automated IT request fulfillment with your service catalog, you can improve the collection of data and fulfillment. Automating service request processing catches errors before submission to IT, reduces the need for manual review, and decreases variability.

Overproduction

Overproducing creates a false demand for resources. Over servicing customers is bad for IT, unfair to IT workers, expensive, and ultimately unproductive. Typically, IT overproduction is the result of missing process. Consider the service desk. If you don’t have sound incident management or problem management processes, or your change management process is dysfunctional, you may think you have no other choice but to “over service” callers to “go above and beyond” in order to deliver “service excellence.”

Now, thinking about the service catalog again, let us consider setting proper expectations. The service catalog presents the user with a framework to acquire IT services just as a menu establishes expectations when you go to a restaurant. And it’s automated so you need fewer resources.

Transporting

Moving paperwork, hardware, software, cabling, and all the other bits and pieces it takes to deliver a service consume more time and waste more time than you might first imagine. While you may not be able to eliminate transportation, you can nearly eliminate the movement of paperwork using automated scripts and workflow.

Waiting

Users waste millions of hours waiting for IT to do something for them. IT then wastes more time waiting for other IT staff members to carry out related tasks. Reducing the time spent waiting in the service provisioning cycle represents a huge opportunity to improve IT service quality. Remedies here are easy to understand: do tasks in parallel, and make sure to follow managed processes.

One of the most dramatic improvements realized is how automation reduces the wait time on behalf of users and customers. The improvement in productivity alone is often sufficient to justify the automation project. Consider providing automated status emails versus a telephone call.

Inventory

Stockpiling and maintaining an inventory of commodity IT products “just in case” is a common IT activity. For example, because of the delays in many manual ordering systems many IT organizations purchase PCs in bulk. On the surface this sound like a good thing—customers can get their laptops quickly.

The reality of the situation is that just as in manufacturing, too much inventory quickly becomes an economic drain. First, there is requirement for capital outlay, storage, inventory management, tracking, and increased security. Then comes the issue of obsolescence. Hardware and software configurations change so rapidly that even a matter of months can result in obsolete inventory.

Automating a procurement process can produce real economic benefits. Coupled with automated request fulfillment and status updates, automated procurement can dramatically reduce costs and IT service variability.

Motion

Human ergonomic inefficiencies such as walking, lifting, climbing, and reaching are wasteful of time and a health and safety issue. How much time does your staff spend walking around trying to obtain what they need to get a job done? Do users walk around trying to find solutions to their problems? Whenever you see wasted motion, think about how you can prevent it.

Most wasted motion represents real opportunities to improve process or work environment. You can make a safer, more comfortable workplace as you improve IT staff productivity. Shuffling papers, obtaining signatures, manually configuring systems, are all great candidates for scripting and automation.

Processing

Many times the method of processing used has no justification. It is simply how things have always been done or how someone in IT thought they ought to be done. Think about smaller, simpler, and easier to use solutions and processes. It is not necessary to achieve total integration and automation of IT systems. For example, in many cases significant benefits come from simply providing a single place for users to obtain assistance.
Think about calls into a service desk. Every call on average costs about $30. Without appropriate processing of communicating status and updates to users, IT customers are going to call and ask. In this case, the low-tech solution (e.g. people with telephones) is dramatically more expensive than the high-tech solution (e.g. automated request fulfillment software like a service catalog.)

To Sum IT Up

ITIL offers many opportunities for automation. From automated incident creation, to known-error record generation, to change request processing, to service provisioning, ITIL workflow is oozing with potential. If you have already begun using ITIL as your ITSM framework then you are well on your way to understanding your current workflow well enough to identify some automation quick win opportunities.

Using ITIL as your guide, examine your organization for manual workflow and waste. Remember DOTWIMP and the “7 Wastes”. Process and workflow waste are the prime candidates for optimization using automation.

All the sources of waste cause IT service variability. If you can reduce waste through automation, you can reduce IT service variability. Reduce IT service variability and you increase IT service quality while reducing costs. The trick of course is to identify those opportunities that can be quick wins.

Here is a summary of potential opportunities almost everyone can benefit from: