Applying LEAN

to the

ITIL V3 Event Management Process

itSMF UK Conference 2008 Driving Real Value
Rohit Nand

Subbarao Chaganty

Agenda

11

ITIL V3 Event Management & Lean Principles

12

Event Management Process & Business Case

13

Approach for Waste Reduction

14

Waste Reduction Scope and Benefits

15

Summary & Other Opportunities within IT Service

Management

Agenda

11

ITIL V3 Event Management & Lean Principles

12

Event Management Process & Business Case

13

Approach for Waste Reduction

14

Waste Reduction Scope and Benefits

15

Summary & Other Opportunities within IT Service

Management

Event Management gets its due with ITIL V3

I monitor my servers. What else do I need to do?

Questions
before ITIL V3

Isnt this a part of the Incident Management process?

I support and manage Applications. Does this still concern me?
Whose ownership and responsibility is it?
Where can I find best practice guidance on Event Management?

Outcome
Areas

Impact of proactive event monitoring and management on IT

stability
Key enabler for proactive Service Desks
Improve efficiency through Automation

Event Management is the backbone of IT Service Management playing a

significant role in Service Operations and Assurance
4

LEAN originated with the Manufacturing industry but its principles

are now being successfully applied to Services

The complete elimination of

waste so all activities create
value for the customer

Our initiative focused on elimination of waste in

Event Management to reduce manual efforts by ~ 44%
5

We mapped the Lean Principles of Waste Reduction to Event

Management to achieve optimization
1. Inventory
Waste

2. Processing
Waste

3. Waste due to
Waiting Time

As-Is

To-Be

Mapping the redundancies

and duplication existing in
the current Event
Monitoring and Alert
scenarios

Building an
optimized Event
Management
system

4. Transportation
Waste

5. Waste of
Motion

6. Waste from
Over-Production

7. Waste due to
Product Defects

Agenda

11

ITIL V3 Event Management & Lean Principles

12

Event Management Process & Business Case

13

Approach for Waste Reduction

14

Waste Reduction Scope and Benefits

15

Summary & Other Opportunities within IT Service

Management

The Event Management process in question mainly depended on preconfigured Alerts which needed to be responded to and resolved
;
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;
;

Alert volumes and over crowded

monitors are distracting for the
analysts and challenge the
analysts focus

Risk of missing a critical alert

while dealing with such a huge
number of alerts
Cleanup the monitoring system
and ensure only genuine alerts

;
; Hot Spots for Waste Reduction

Case study Business Case & Drivers

Service Desk operations involved
significant efforts towards monitoring
alerts triggered by specific application
related events:
Batch jobs
Log files for key words
System and database space
Key business processes
File arrivals

A focused initiative was kicked off to

analyze the alerts and reconfigure and
cleanup to ensure following outcomes:
9 Reduce cost of monitoring
activities
9 Optimize Service Desk monitoring
9 Ensure accurate priority
classification
9 Automate manual activities
9 Improve team moral

Non-value adding monitoring

efforts
Probability of missing critical alerts
Crowded alert interface

Reduced monitoring efforts

Ability to detect & address critical
alerts
Cleaner alert interface

We applied waste reduction practices from LEAN on Event Management to

improve efficiency and reduce costs
9

Agenda

11

ITIL V3 Event Management & Lean Principles

12

Event Management Process & Business Case

13

Approach for Waste Reduction

14

Waste Reduction Scope and Benefits

15

Summary & Other Opportunities within IT Service

Management

10

Phase

Establish 2 week baseline

period
Collect/download alert
reports
Categorize alerts into
waste and identify
resolutions
Validate redundancies
with application groups

Deliverables

Analysis

Key Activities

A data collection drive followed by intensive analysis and validation with

the application support groups strengthened the business case

1. Analysis report
2. Waste categories

Business Case
Develop the business
case (Effort/$aving$)
Determine
implementation
requirements
Identify risks and
mitigation
Seek agreement and goahead from Leadership

3. Business Case
4. Implementation plan

Implementation
Setup implementation team
Recalibrate the baselines
2 weeks (retrofit changes)
Implement identified
resolution
Validate the reduction
goals for each category

5. Recalibrated baselines
6. Realized benefits

The Solution enables the Service Desk to continually remove alerts they
believe to be redundant & aid in further optimization of the process
11

Agenda

11

ITIL V3 Event Management & Lean Principles

12

Event Management Process & Business Case

13

Approach for Waste Reduction

14

Waste Reduction Scope and Benefits

15

Summary & Other Opportunities within IT Service

Management

12

Inventory Waste 32% of alerts warranted No

Remediation Action
Significant number of alerts configured to prompt manual activities like releasing
space, kicking off processes and/or jobs manually

Notification or informational alerts

Prioritization & classification of
alerts (Informational, Minor,
Major & Critical)
Alerts as triggers for manual
processes
Automate manual tasks to
alert on exception only

Revisit prioritization and

clearing of informational alerts

Automation of manual activities significantly reduced this waste. Alerts should

be configured to trigger specific ACTION
13

Processing Waste 24% of alerts were Redundant in

nature !!
Alerts for same or related events, e.g. Both Parent and Child jobs triggering alerts
within embedded batch job scenarios.
Redundant alerts for embedded
jobs
Different monitoring systems
creating duplicate alerts
Lack of co-relation between
related events
Co-relate alerts and
remove duplicates

Identify relation patterns

within events and alerts

Redundancies identified and eliminated such that ONLY meaningful alerts

appear in the system
14

Waste due to Waiting Time 13% of alerts were

performing Reminder Service
Alerts that are prime candidates for automation move from a Reminder Service
mode to Alert on Exception only mode
Lack of Service Desk
empowerment
Log file alerts & file arrival alerts
Reminder service alerts for
manual jobs

Eliminate manual task

reminder alerts

Automate manual tasks and

configure exception alerts

Empower Service Desks; Move towards Exception Based Alerting

15

Few other categories of Alert wastes were identified and marked

for either reconfiguration or decommissioning
Misfired alerts sent
to wrong teams /
configured to wrong
teams
Lack of proper
training or event
handling procedures

Alerts created by
new or changed
functionality
Missing alerts for key
changes
Lack of release
management &
coordination

Orphan alerts no
clear resolution
defined
Lack of clear event
handling procedures
Crowded alert radars
capturing
insignificant events
and alerts

Duplicate alerts due to

incorrect configuration
Alerts configured for
scheduled downtime

13% of the total alerts eliminated belonged to this category. Periodic review of
Alerts is a critical activity to maintain optimum alert levels

16

Agenda

11

ITIL V3 Event Management & Lean Principles

12

Event Management Process & Business Case

13

Approach for Waste Reduction

14

Waste Reduction Scope and Benefits

15

Summary & Other Opportunities within IT Service

Management

17

By addressing the waste types to remove redundancies and duplication

we were able to achieve effort reduction by 44% (~USD 600,000)

Event
Mgmt Efforts
reduced by
44%

Some practical considerations

Develop Ability to detect redundant
alerts for analysts

Build and maintain a continuous improvement

program

Identify opportunities for automation

and integration

Consider breaking up vertically aligned support

and moving towards a shared services model

18

Potential areas within IT Service Management where LEAN based

Waste Reduction can be applied to considerably optimize VALUE
Service Transition

Service Operations

; Change Management
; Configuration Management

Event Management
Incident Management

Transition Planning

Problem Management

Knowledge Management

Access Management

; Testing & Validation

; Release & Deployment Mgmt

Service
Strategy

Request Fulfillment

;
;
;

Service
Portfolio

Service Design
Service Catalog Management

;
;

Capacity Management

Financial
Management
Demand
Management

Availability Management

Continual Service
Improvement
Service Measurement

Service Reporting

7 Step Improvement Process

Service Continuity Mgmt

Security Management
Supplier Management

19

Lessons from Economics and Psychology in managing

the Change

Look within the organization

for Positive Variance

Build Partnerships

Self-funding of Continuous
Improvement initiatives

Measure and
Communicate Success

Assign Ownership

Design Incentives

20

Thank you

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