My title.."Configuration & Change Manager".
What am I doing ?
Well, I am one of two custodians in Change Management. I run the CAB - Change Advisory Board, and TCAB - Technical Change Advisory Board. I must say it's quite a pleasant change ( pardon the pun ) to sit on the other side of the desk when it comes to CAB. So many times I have been grilled regarding my production changes - have I thought of this, have I thought of that, have you tested this....etc..etc..etc...It puts quite a different perspective on things and I beleive has made me more aware of "business services" in terms of implications of failed changes and incidents - ie. a broader overview of things.
My primary focus however is in Configuration Management. WTF ???? Yea, I know. I've come into this role blind but have learnt heaps along the way with talking to people, ITIL user groups, forums etc.. We are coming from a really low base, so the opportunity to create and build the CMDB is pretty exciting and a massive learning curve. The graphic on the right pretty much sums up my day outside of telling people to give me more detail in there production change. This comes back to my life as a unix admin and how my little insular world building a a Solaris cluster and how it fits into the bigger picture. ie. what is the impact of the cluster if it fails ( odd, I know, both nodes in a cluster failing right ? ). But work with me on this. Lets assume a cluster fails, what are the implications ? Which users are impacted ? Which business service is impacted ? Whats the actual $$$ cost to the business ? The challenge for me is to work out which products impact which business services ie. sales, invoicing etc. You will be very suprised that not many people know and the people which did know are long gone. It's a work in progress and by the end of it, if it can somehow become the source of truth for all technical teams, service management and the business then I have acheived what many business try to achieve. It's a massive challenge !I've also come to realise that there are still many technical people that just dont get Service Management, and why we need it !! I just assumed ITIL had been drummed into all of us over the last 10 or so years. But yet, people with no idea whoare in technical roles still do exist.
All in all I am enjoying Service Management. It puts into perspective all the things I used to do in a project, on unix systems and how my small contribution as a unix admin actually equates to the bigger picture. I don't really miss the hands on work, I sit near a bunch of dba's which are always asking me scripting, unix type questions. I still tinker at home so still get my technical fix in other ways.
Anyway, will keep ya'all posted on the CMDB. Hope you guys enjoy my raving rant !
