itSMF Bulletin July 2020 | Page 12

How healthy is yours

A healthy Configuration Management Database (CMDB) is the foundation for IT Service Management and ICT infrastructure. With the CMDB as the single source of truth, you can easily track ICT assets and Configuration Items (CIs) with complete visibility which can provide rapid error detection and correction.

Unfortunately, there are common mistakes when implementing a CMDB. These mistakes can seriously affect you and your organisation making the best use of the database. This is especially the case when you’re using the CMDB as the core for ServiceNow or other information systems.

1. Integrations

You quite likely already have third-party software in place for various purposes, including collecting data about your service assets.

When you don’t integrate these with your CMDB and your ServiceNow implementation, you’re crippling the CMDB in terms of staying accurate and up-to-date. As such these integrations are necessary to collect accurate and timely

information for your CMDB. In order to combat this you must plan how you will implement those integrations with relevant third-party software within your organisation to populate the CMDB.

2. Do Not Overload your CMDB

This mistake is far too common. Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should, therefore not everything should be recorded in your CMDB.