1. Adventures in ITSM
Thank you for attending this continuation of Mason’s ITSM presentations.

2. Agenda Background & History ITSM Tool
Selection process
Working with the vendor
Changes for the IT organization (ITS)
Launch plans
Demonstration
Next steps
Lessons Learned
As you know, Mason has been working on IT Service Management and incorporating the ITIL Framework for the past few years. We’ll start with a quick overview of the last few years, then look at the changes in the last year and then update on our progress.

3. Background: Why ITSM? Drivers
Feedback from the Mason community that the IT support organization did not always operate as a single unit, with uniform processes and policies
Perceptions that some IT support procedures were inefficient and poorly coordinated/integrated
Ticketing system was approaching End-of-Life, offering an opportunity to replace with a more holistic product
Our IT Support Center team had been promoting ITIL® concepts and procedures for some time, so several components and best practices were already in place
ITIL®” is a (registered) Trade Mark of ACELOS Limited. All rights reserved.

4. History
2013
External consultants engaged to assess our IT Service Management maturity level, and recommend a roadmap
IT Process and Planning group created
2014
Under new CIO, IT Unit reorganized with emphasis placed on unity, customer needs, communications
Change Management process improvements
IT Governance Group, and ITSM Steering Committee formed to enhance communication and shared governance
RFI for ITSM Tool =>followed by RFP =>award to EasyVista
In 2013 we hired G2/G3 to assess our maturity level. They met with some of the staff, all of the managers and directors. They provided us with a roadmap to increase our maturity levels including some quick wins and longer term strategies brought an end to our rapid growth, instead of having 3-4 new or renovated buildings each year, we are now at 1 a year, with some building renovations added in and some additional building projects affecting smaller groups of people. As most of you, our funding levels dropped and we were expected to continue rolling out new services but with no additional staff. In 2015, we issued an RFI for a comprehensive ITSM tool, and brought the top respondents in for demonstrations. We used knowledge gained from that process to craft an RFP, posted in August The process ultimately resulted in us selecting EasyVista in early 2016.

5. ITSM Tool New concepts and capabilities for ITS
Separating Incident and Service Request
Questionnaires replacing forms
Known Errors and News Articles
Status: in process of configuration
Starting with Incident, Service Request and Knowledge Management
Creating portals for customers and technicians
Working on dashboards for Management reports
Our new ITSM Tool, EasyVista, has made us make some changes to how we manage our work. First, we are splitting out Incidents and Service Requests. In our old tool everything was handled as an Incident. Service Requests will use questionnaires inside the customer portal instead of forms outside of the ticketing system. These questionnaires are specific to the service being requested. Customers can still call a group to request a service, the support staff can open a request for the customer and work on completing the form with them if necessary.
Known Errors and News Articles are part of the Knowledge Base. We can push News Articles to the customer portal so that the public can know what is happening (outages, events, etc.). Known Errors can be pushed to the customer portal as either Known Errors or Knowledge Articles. These can be rated for content by the customer as well as by a technician reviewing the KE as part of an Incident. Known Errors and News Articles can be tied to an Incident category or to a problem.
We are currently in the final phases of configuring EasyVista Service Manager and the customer portal. We have also created several portals for internal use (technician and dispatcher) as well as a dashboard for managers to review daily metrics and Incidents.

6. Changes for ITS Melding multiple ticketing systems into one
Service Desk Express
Serena Business Manager
Pinnacle
Fast Track
Change in style
Change to Service Management model for categories in the system
Crosswalk of categories from SDE to EasyVista
System allows for automated workflow
Knowledge base for customers for self-help
Our Support Center and most of ITS use Service Desk Express as their ticketing system. We also have several groups outside of ITS also using SDE. Serena Business Manager is used by our Administrative Applications group and their partners in other departments to manage software development. Telecom Admin uses Pinnacle for both tickets and asset management for phones sets, lines, etc. We also have at least one group using Fast Track.
In our initial phase we will replace SDE; once that is stable, Serena users will be moved over. As we move into Asset Management we will migrate the Pinnacle users over to the new system.
The first major change we are implementing is moving to a service management model. We now have Incident and Service Request catalogs, an owner for each service and a group that is in charge of the first step of the Incident or Service Request based on the category chosen. We have also created a crosswalk for our support staff between the old system’s categories and the new categories.
EasyVista allows for workflows to be created on a per category basis. This gives flexibility to handle issues differently when necessary. We are starting with a basic workflow for everything and developing them as we go along. A workflow can generate new actions for groups (either consecutively or concurrently), send an automated to the customer, or automate a process (such as adding new staff to a group within the system).
Our old system had a Knowledge base, but it was infrequently used. EasyVista allows us to bring the Knowledge Base to the customers in the portal as well as having it be searchable from within the Service Manager.

7. Training & Feedback First set focused on how the new tool works
Second set focused on how to do a specific role(Feedback from 1st set )
Support/Data Center
Technician/Dispatcher
Manger
Ongoing training set up for new hires and refresher
Documentation put online
Short “how-to” videos planned
We have completed two waves of training. The first was to show what the tool can do and the basics of how to use it. The second set was specific to the various roles that are within ITS (Manager, Dispatcher, Technician, Support Center).
Training was in person and online, received feedback which led to second wave of training.
Feedback led to recommendation of extension of launch to allow time to get more familiar with the system. This feedback also led to the additional training sessions.
Positive feedback on system but concern about familiarity on a new way of doing business.
Several groups wanted to still go live in January even if everyone didn’t.
Initial Launch date: January 9, pushed back
Several components not completely configured
Worked with vendor to supplement team
Second Launch Date: March 10, pushed back
Customer portal not completed
Several items still being worked on as some requirements were not fully met

8. Demonstration
We have currently have two portals for use internally, Technician and Dispatcher. We have a dashboard for Management.

9. Next Steps Asset Management Change Management workflow automation
Software Asset Management
Hardware Asset Management
Change Management workflow automation
Configuration Management Database (CMDB)
Configuration Items added as part of Asset Management then selected as CI for CMDB
We have had a homegrown CMDB in place for several years, and have continued to mature and increase adoption of a Change Management process. With these next steps we will migrate configuration data and Change Management workflow to the EasyVista platform, aiming for a significant increase in efficiency and manageability.

10. Lessons Learned Expect to be surprised
No matter how carefully you craft the requirements and review the proposals, you’ll probably run into issues
IT Security staff should participate in the requirements definition, product reviews, and deployment planning
Prepare to spend a lot of time on human factors
Cross-functional steering committee to guide development
Organizational change management (processes, policies)
Training is critical – basic concepts + product-specific
At nearly 12 months since the contract was awarded, we have not quite succeeded in completing the initial rollout; nonetheless, we have learned a few things. For example, one of our use cases was that end users/prospective customers should be able to browse our service offerings without logging into the system. Based on discussions with the sales team, we thought that the system we initially purchased could handle that - but in fact it required a couple of change orders to obtain a separate dedicated Service Appstore and modify some security controls. Fortunately our EasyVista team has been very helpful and responsive.
EasyVista’s design paradigms are very different than the structure our service personnel were used to seeing in SDE. This has required a lot of time to be spent on adapting our core processes to the new system. As one example: a substantial part of the system depends on having a logically structured and complete Service Catalog; ours required a fair amount of updating and reorganizing.
Most of ITS attended at least an ITIL Awareness training session, before we started bringing in vendors for product demonstrations.

11. Questions?
David Robertson
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