ITSM Change Management 2.0.2 - my journey

[jcmarze]

I am writing this information hoping that this will help future users evaluate that module. I have spent myself a few hours trying to understand this change management module and faced a lot of frustration. I am now in a situation where I cannot use that product in the current state due to its limitation but could possibly do it in the future.

ITSM Basic:
ITSM works at a meta level. It means that it requires numerous configurations to be able to use it properly.

Key elements:
Changes = the main container for some actions
Workorder = the different actions that belong to a container
state engines (x2) = the different states that the changes and workorders can have

There is by default no rule to progress changes or workorders statuses. These are done by hand.
=> for changes under "edit" - but only when the right property has been updated in the config: Front:Agent:ViewChangeEdit.
=> for WO (WO = WorkOrder) in the report section

You can also go into "conditions" and automatically affect the status of changes/WO. E.g. when a specific approval WO is validated, you can create a rule that will move the Change status from pending approval to approved.

Once you have a change + work order you can use the template function and create a snapshot of the current change and wo with their current status so you can cookie-cutter it for other orders. In my case, I have been trying to get a skeleton with a change container in the pending approval status with a basic approval WO in it with a reduced state engine to process simple changes. when a change is built, you can then select that template saving you quite a bit of time.

the next question is how do you manage who can do what in that context.

you are starting with 3 groups and there is a default group called ITSM-change. These users have a Myworkorder interface and can fulfill the workorders. ITSM-builder are the people creating the changes, they can see their own changes in the Mychanges interface. ITSM-manager are the people managing the overall scheme and who can see all changes.

Now you might want some users to have access to some specific functions of the systems but not all. where do you configure this ?

You can define under FrontEnd:AgentITSMChange: MenuModule and WorkOrderModule (under sysconfig in the admin section) which modules are visible at all - i.e. you might want to remove the 'link' function if you do not use it.
You can define which user group can access the menu entries under FrontEnd:Agent:ModuleRegistration.

You can also customise the interface (remove PIR and PSA if you do not need them in similar menus).

After so much work and effort spent on this, why am I not using it ?

Well, the framework is currently clumsy. It does provide the right notifications and smart into it, but I do not believe the people who developped the product ever worked into an operation environment.
The product is well suited to provisionning tasks where people are allocated work to do, but is not suitable to an environment where you want to perform change control (i.e. validate changes according to preallocated set of rules for users).
The mechanisms to allow users to change the status of changes and work orders is not flexible enough. You have access to modify the content of the change and its status or you do not, which makes it tricky to follow it through.
Automatic conditions might not work because the states must be consistent with each other, which means you cannot jump from any state to cancelled for example.
When using templates, the new change created from the template keeps the change-builder property of the initial change, making it invisible from the new change builder.

A lot of potential, but not there yet for me. I wanted a simple system to get people to review and approve changes with notifications in a controlled environment and this does not fit.

JC

[michael_zhong]

same feeling with you

use workflow to handle the changement maybe a good way.