Service transition processes
4 Service transition processes
4.7 KnOWLEDgE MAnAgEMEnT
The ability to deliver a quality service or process rests to a significant extent on the ability of those involved to respond to circumstances – and that in turn rests heavily on their understanding of the situation, the options and the consequences and benefits, i.e. their knowledge of the situation in which they are currently, or in which they may find themselves. That knowledge within the service transition domain might include:
■ Identity of stakeholders
■ Acceptable risk levels and performance expectations
■ Available resource and timescales.
The quality and relevance of the knowledge rests in turn on the accessibility, quality and continued relevance of the underpinning data and information available to service staff.
4.7.1 Purpose and objectives
The purpose of the knowledge management process is to share perspectives, ideas, experience and information; to ensure that these are available
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The objectives of knowledge management are to:
■ Improve the quality of management decision-making by ensuring that reliable and secure knowledge, information and data is available throughout the service lifecycle
■ Enable the service provider to be more efficient and improve quality of service, increase
satisfaction and reduce the cost of service by reducing the need to rediscover knowledge
■ Ensure that staff have a clear and common understanding of the value that their services provide to customers and the ways in which benefits are realized from the use of those services
■ Maintain a service knowledge management system (SKMS) that provides controlled access to knowledge, information and data that is appropriate for each audience
■ Gather, analyse, store, share, use and maintain knowledge, information and data throughout the service provider organization.
4.7.2 Scope
Knowledge management is a whole lifecycle-wide process in that it is relevant to all lifecycle stages and hence is referenced throughout ITIL from the perspective of each publication. It is dealt with to some degree within other ITIL publications, but this section sets out the basic concept, from a service transition focus.
4.7.2.1 Inclusions
Knowledge management includes oversight of the management of knowledge, the information and data from which that knowledge derives.
4.7.2.2 Exclusions
Detailed attention to the capturing, maintenance and use of configuration data is set out in section 4.3.
4.7.3 value to business
Successful management of data, information and knowledge will deliver:
■ Conformance with legal and other
requirements, e.g. company policy, codes of professional conduct
■ Documented requirements for retention of each category of data, information and knowledge
■ Defined forms of data, knowledge and
information in a fashion that is easily usable by the organization
■ Data, information and knowledge that is current, complete and valid
■ Data, information and knowledge to the people who need it when they need it
■ Disposal of data, information and knowledge as required.
Knowledge management provides value to all stages of the service lifecycle by providing secure and controlled access to the knowledge, information and data that is needed to manage and deliver services.
Knowledge management is especially significant within service transition since relevant and appropriate knowledge is one of the key service elements being transitioned. Examples where successful transition rests on appropriate knowledge management include:
■ User, service desk, support staff and supplier understanding of the new or changed service, including knowledge of errors signed off before deployment, to facilitate the roles within that service
■ Awareness of the use of the service, and the discontinuation of previous versions
■ Establishment of the acceptable risk and
confidence levels associated with the transition, e.g. measuring, understanding and acting correctly on results of testing and other assurance results.
Effective knowledge management is a powerful asset for people in all roles across all stages of the service lifecycle. It is an excellent method for individuals and teams to share data, information and knowledge about all facets of an IT service.
The creation of a single system for knowledge management is recommended.
Specific application to service transition domain can be illustrated through considering the following examples:
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■ Blurring of the concept of intellectual property and information when engaged in sourcing and partnering, therefore new approaches to controlling ‘knowledge’ must be addressed and managed during service transition
■ Knowledge transfer often being a crucial factor in facilitating effective transition of new or changed services and essential to operational readiness
■ Training of users, support staff, suppliers and other stakeholders in new or changed services
■ Recording of errors, faults, workarounds etc.
detected and documented during the service transition stage of the service lifecycle
■ Capturing of implementation and testing information
■ Re-using previously developed and quality-assured testing, training and documentation
■ Compliance with legislative requirements, e.g.
Sarbanes-Oxley, and conformance to standards such as ISO 9000 and ISO/IEC 20000
■ Assisting decisions on whether to accept or proceed with items and services by delivering all available relevant information (and omitting unnecessary and confusing information) to key decision makers.
4.7.4 Policies, principles and basic concepts
4.7.4.1 Knowledge management policies Knowledge management policies are required to guide all staff in the behaviours needed to make knowledge management effective. Policy statements will be very dependent on the culture of the organization, but typically might include the following:
■ Knowledge and information needed to support the services will be stored in a way that allows them to be accessed by all staff when and where they are needed.
■ All policies, plans and processes must be reviewed at least once per year.
■ All knowledge and information should be created, reviewed, approved, maintained, controlled and disposed of following a formal documented process.
4.7.4.2 The Data-to-Information-to-Knowledge-to-Wisdom structure Knowledge management is typically displayed within the Data-to-Information-to-Knowledge-to-Wisdom (DIKW) structure. The use of these terms is set out below.
Data is a set of discrete facts. Most organizations capture significant amounts of data in highly structured databases such as service management and service asset and configuration management tools/systems and databases.
The key knowledge management activities around data are the ability to:
■ Capture accurate data
■ Analyse, synthesize and then transform the data into information
■ Identify relevant data and concentrate resources on its capture
■ Maintain integrity of the data
■ Archive and purge data to ensure optimal balance between availability of data and use of resources.
An example of data is the date and time at which an incident was logged.
Information comes from providing context to data.
Information is typically stored in semi-structured content such as documents, email and multimedia.
The key knowledge management activity around information is managing the content in a way that makes it easy to capture, query, find, re-use and learn from experiences so that mistakes are not repeated and work is not duplicated.
An example of information is the average time to close priority 2 incidents. This information is created by combining data from the start time, end time and priority of many incidents.
Knowledge is composed of the tacit experiences, ideas, insights, values and judgements of
individuals. People gain knowledge both from their own and from their peers’ expertise, as well as from the analysis of information (and data).
Through the synthesis of these elements, new knowledge is created.
Knowledge is dynamic and context-based.
Knowledge puts information into an ‘ease of use’ form, which can facilitate decision-making.
In service transition this knowledge is not solely
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An example of knowledge is that the average time to close priority 2 incidents has increased by about 10% since a new version of the service was released.
Wisdom makes use of knowledge to create value through correct and well-informed decisions.
Wisdom involves having the application and contextual awareness to provide strong common-sense judgement.
An example of wisdom is recognizing that the increase in time to close priority 2 incidents is due to poor-quality documentation for the new version of the service. This is shown in Figure 4.35.
4.7.4.3 The service knowledge management system
Specifically within IT service management, knowledge management will be focused within the service knowledge management system (SKMS), which is concerned, as its name implies, with knowledge. Underpinning this knowledge will be a considerable quantity of data, which will also be held in the SKMS. One very important part of the SKMS is the configuration management system (CMS). The CMS describes the attributes
and relationships of configuration items, many of which are themselves knowledge, information or data assets stored in the SKMS. The relationship between the CMS and the SKMS is shown in Figure 4.8.
Figure 4.36 is a very simplified illustration of the relationship of the three levels, with configuration data being recorded within the CMDB, and
feeding through the CMS into the SKMS. The SKMS supports delivery of the services and informed decision-making.
The SKMS will contain many different types of data, information and knowledge. Examples of items that should be stored in an SKMS include:
■ The service portfolio
■ The configuration management system (CMS)
■ The definitive media library (DML)
■ Service level agreements (SLAs), contracts and operation level agreements (OLAs)
■ The information security policy
■ The supplier and contract management
information system (SCMIS), including suppliers’
and partners’ requirements, abilities and expectations
■ Budgets
■ Cost models
■ Business plans
■ CSI register
■ Service improvement plans
Data
Who, what, when, where?
How?
Why?
Information
Knowledge
Wisdom Context
Understanding
Figure 4.35 The flow from data to wisdom
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■ The capacity plan and capacity management information system (CMIS)
■ The availability plan and availability management information system (AMIS)
■ Service continuity invocation procedure
■ Service reports
■ A discussion forum where practitioners can ask questions, answer each other’s questions, and search for previous questions and answers
■ An indexed and searchable repository of project plans from previous projects
■ A known error database provided by a vendor which lists common issues in their product and how to resolve them
■ Skills register, and typical and anticipated user skill levels
■ Diagnostic scripts
■ A managed set of web-based training courses
■ Weather reports, needed to support business and IT decision-making (for example, an
organization may need to know whether rain is likely at the time of an outdoor event)
■ Customer/user personal information, for example to support a blind user who needs to have specific support from the service desk.
Many of these knowledge and information assets are configuration items. Changes to CIs must be under the control of the change management process, and details of their attributes and relationships will be documented in the CMS.
Figure 4.37 shows examples of information that should be in an SKMS. The meanings of all abbreviations in this figure can be found in the list of abbreviations at the end of this publication. The arrows represent the fact that all configuration items are described within the configuration management system.
4.7.5 Process activities, methods and techniques
4.7.5.1 Knowledge management strategy An overall strategy for knowledge management is required. Where there is an organizational approach to knowledge management, initiatives within service transition, IT service management or other groupings should be designed to fit within the overall organizational approach.
In the absence of an organizational knowledge management approach, appropriate steps to establish knowledge management within service transition or within IT service management will be required. Even in this case it is important to manage knowledge with as wide a scope as practicable – covering direct IT staff, users, third-party support and others likely to contribute to, or make beneficial use of, the knowledge.
The strategy – either in place in the wider organization or being developed – will address:
Configuration management system Service knowledge
management system
Configuration management database
Support for delivery of services Support for decisions
Figure 4.36 Relationship of the CMDB, the CMS and the SKMS
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| Service transition processes■ The governance model, including the
requirements of software asset management, Sarbanes-Oxley, ISO/IEC 20000, ISO/IEC 38500 and COBIT if these are applicable
■ Organizational changes under way and
planned and consequential changes in roles and responsibilities
■ Establishment of roles and responsibilities and ongoing funding
■ Policies, processes, procedures and methods for knowledge management
■ Technology and other resource requirements
■ Performance measures.
Knowledge identification, capture and maintenance
Specifically, the strategy will identify and plan for the capture of relevant knowledge and the consequential information and data that will support it. The steps to delivering this include:
■ Assisting an organization to identify knowledge that will be useful
■ Creating a knowledge taxonomy and categorizing knowledge
■ Designing a systematic process for organizing, distilling, storing and presenting information in a way that improves people’s comprehension in a relevant area
■ Accumulating knowledge through processes and workflow
■ Generating new knowledge
■ Accessing valuable knowledge from outside sources
■ Capturing external knowledge and adapting it – data, information and knowledge from diverse sources such as databases, websites, employees, suppliers and partners
■ Reviewing stored knowledge to ensure that it is still relevant and correct
■ Updating, purging and archiving knowledge.
4.7.5.2 Knowledge transfer
During the service lifecycle an organization needs to focus on retrieving, sharing and utilizing its knowledge through problem solving, dynamic learning, strategic planning and decision-making. To achieve this, knowledge needs to be transferred to other people and to other parts of the organization at specific points in the lifecycle.
Many of the service management processes will
CMDB CMDB DML
SMIS SCMIS CMIS AMIS
Service portfolio
Service strategy
Financial data
Service design packages Service models
SLAs
ITSCM plans Demand
data
Business cases
Policies and plans
DML
Release plans
Deployment plans
Test plans and reports
Technical documentation
Standard operating procedures
Management
reports Service
reports CSI
register Improvement plans Events
Releases Changes Known errors
Problems Service requests
Incidents
CMDB
Pipeline Catalogue Retired
SKMS
CMS
Figure 4.37 Examples of data and information in the service knowledge management system