8 Detect to Correct (D2C) Value Stream

This chapter provides an overview of the Detect to Correct (D2C) Value Stream – one of four IT Value Streams that comprise the IT Value Chain. It describes the business context, objectives, and details behind the D2C Value Stream.

8.1 Objectives

The D2C Value Stream provides a framework for the work of IT operations integrating Service Monitoring, Event, Incident, Problem, Change Control, Configuration Management, Service Remediation, and Service Level functions. It also provides a comprehensive overview of the business of IT operations and the services delivered by IT operations. This viewpoint provides understanding of the inter-relationships among its many domains; including Event, Incident, Problem, Change Control, and Configuration Management, and responsiveness to business requests and requirements. The D2C Value Stream is designed to incorporate a wide variety of sourcing methodologies across services, technologies, and processes. This value stream accommodates the technical inter-relationships and inter-dependencies required to fix operational issues and improve the ability of IT to support business objectives by providing agility, increased uptime, and lower per-service cost.

Today, all IT organizations have the ability to detect and resolve operational issues, but may have the following limitations:

—  Low levels of automation within domains

—  Virtually no automation across domains

The D2C Value Stream provides a framework for bringing IT operations functions together to enhance IT services and efficiencies – thus reducing risk. Currently, data in each operation’s domain is generally not shared with other domains because they do not understand which key data objects to share and do not have a common language for sharing. When projects are created to solve this, it is often too difficult and cumbersome to finish or there is an internal technology or organization shift that invalidates the result. The D2C Value Stream defines the functional components and the data objects that need to flow between components.

8.2 Business Value Proposition

The D2C Value Stream enables IT organizations to increase efficiency, reduce cost, reduce risk, and drive continuous service improvement by defining the data objects and data flow required to integrate the operations of multiple domains.

Increase efficiency and reduce cost by:

Reduce risk by:

Continuous service improvement:

8.3 Key Performance Indicators

The D2C Value Stream critical success factors and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are as follows:

Critical Success Factors

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

Achieve Operational Excellence

Events:

  • % of monitored CIs versus unmonitored CIs in the Actual Service
  • Number of Events that cause business disruptions
  • Number of escalated Events
  • Number of false-positive Events

Incidents:

  • Number of Incidents
  • Number of escalated Incidents
  • Number of false-positive Incidents

Problems:

  • Number of Problems identified
  • Number of eradicated Problems

Changes:

  • Number of change-related outages
  • Number of emergency changes
  • Number of unplanned changes

Knowledge:

  • Number of Known Errors per version
  • Average number of times each Known Error was read/used

Improve Customer Satisfaction

Number of failed agreements (SLA/OLA)

% of availability of critical business systems

Mean Time To Repair (MTTR) Events/Incidents

Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF)

Mean Time Between System Incidents

Number of Incidents created by users on system performance

% of first-call Incident resolution

% of success rate for user self-fix

Improve Staff Effectiveness

% of automatically remediated Events

% of Events correlated to a business service

% of re-opened Incidents

Average time to close an Incident

% of automatically remediated Incidents

% of rejected Incidents

% of automatically remediated changes

Alignment with Business Strategy

Number of hours spent on business-critical services

Number of business services defined

% of business-critical services

% of CIs that are not linked to a business service

% of business-critical services with defined service-level targets

8.4 Value Stream Definition

The goal of the D2C Value Stream is to efficiently manage the IT operations by monitoring key services, correlating and appropriately escalating Events, managing (resolving) Incidents/Problems, running an effective Change Control, and doing all of that in an automated way. The D2C Value Stream is initiated when:

The above inputs trigger functional components including:

As part of the D2C Value Stream, manual or automated Run Books may be executed to diagnose or remediate Events, Incidents, or Problems. When necessary, the Physical Service Model is updated and RFCs are created to record changes.

The D2C functional components are often owned and managed by different IT groups. The D2C Value Stream provides a framework that ensures that functional components used by IT groups can work together efficiently, through well-defined control points and data objects, to govern and run IT operations.

Figure 66 shows the functional components, data objects, and entity relationships for the D2C Value Stream.

Note: The red lines in Figure 66 represent recognized industry employed linkage variations. These variations and their associated implications will be detailed in future releases.

Figure 66: Detect to Correct Level 2 Value Stream Diagram

8.4.1 Service Monitoring Functional Component

Purpose

In charge of creating, running, and managing monitors which measure all aspects/layers of a service such as infrastructure (system and network), application, and security. Also in charge of storing all measurement results and calculating compound measurements. Not in charge of the monitor definitions. These are done earlier in the service lifecycle in the R2D Value Stream and are delivered to Service Monitoring by the Fulfillment Execution functional component in the R2F Value Stream.

Key Data Objects

Note: The Service Monitor definition created in the R2D Value Stream is moved with the Release Package as a part of the Service Release Blueprint transfer to the R2F Value Stream and is received from the Fulfillment Execution functional component (R2F Value Stream).

Key Attributes

The Service Monitor data object shall have the following key data attributes:

Key Data Object Relationships

The Service Monitor data object shall maintain the following relationships:

Event data flow integration between the Service Monitoring functional component and the Event functional component must manage the Event lifecycle state.

Functional Criteria

The Service Monitoring functional component:

—  Shall monitor infrastructure (system and network)

—  Shall monitor application

—  Shall monitor security

—  May monitor customer experience

—  May monitor usage for the Usage functional component in the R2F Value Stream

Data Architecture Criteria

The Service Monitoring functional component:

Model

Figure 67: Service Monitoring Functional Component Level 2 Model

8.4.2 Event Functional Component

Purpose

Manage Events through the Event lifecycle for events that occur on any IT service. The Event lifecycle includes but is not limited to detecting, categorizing, filtering, analyzing, correlating, logging, prioritizing, and closing events. During the event lifecycle some categories of Events can serve as initiators of Incidents and for diagnostics and remediation activities.

Key Data Objects

Key Attributes

The Event data object shall have the following key data attributes:

Key Data Object Relationships

The Event data object shall maintain the following relationships:

Functional Criteria

The Event functional component:

Data Architecture Criteria

The Event functional component:

Model

Figure 68: Event Functional Component Level 2 Model

8.4.3 Incident Functional Component

Purpose

Facilitate normal service operations restoration as quickly as possible and minimize the impact on business operations, thus optimizing service quality and availability. Service restoration can be facilitated through the following means:

An Incident is defined as an unplanned interruption to an IT service or reduction in the quality of an IT service as defined within the Service Contract related to the IT service. Failure of a CI that has not yet affected a service is also an Incident; for example, failure of one disk from a mirror set.

An Interaction is a record of any end-user contact with the service desk agent. In some cases, either the service desk agent or self-service knowledge can resolve the Interaction without creating and managing an Incident. In other cases, an Interaction can be associated with an existing Incident (eliminating the need for Incident creation and correlation). When an Interaction cannot be associated with an existing Incident because it requires additional clarification, diagnostics, or support actions, a new Incident will be created.

Key Data Objects

Auxiliary Data Objects

Key Attributes

The Incident data object shall have the following key data attributes:

The Interaction data object shall have the following key data attributes:

Key Data Object Relationships

The Incident data object shall maintain the following relationships:

Incident data flow between the Event functional component and Incident functional component must manage the Incident lifecycle state.

Problem data flow between the Incident functional component and the Problem functional component must manage the Problem lifecycle state.

Functional Criteria

The Incident functional component:

Model

Figure 69: Incident Functional Component Level 2 Model

8.4.4 Problem Functional Component

Purpose

Responsible for managing the lifecycle of all Problems. The objectives are to solve severe/repeating Incidents, prevent Incidents from happening, and minimize the impact of Incidents that cannot be prevented. The Problem cause is not usually known at the time of the Problem data object instance creation, and the Problem functional component is responsible for the investigation. Also serves as the main exit point from the D2C Value Stream for the feedback information about IT services issues. The feedback is reported to the R2D Value Stream in the form of Defects and to the S2P Value Stream in the form of Portfolio Backlog Items (demand request).

Key Data Objects

Key Attributes

The Problem data object shall have the following key data attributes:

Key Data Object Relationships

The Problem data object shall maintain the following relationships:

Defect data between the Problem functional component and the Defect functional component must manage the Problem to Defect lifecycle state.

RFC data between the Problem functional component and the Change Control functional component must manage the RFC lifecycle state.

Functional Criteria

The Problem functional component:

Data Architecture Criteria

The Problem functional component:

Model

Figure 70: Problem Functional Component Level 2 Model

8.4.5 Change Control Functional Component

Purpose

The system that is responsible for managing the lifecycle of all the RFCs in the IT environment. Make sure that changes are done in a standardized and auditable way so that the business risk is minimized. Manage change through the following means:

Key Data Objects

Key Attributes

The RFC data object shall have the following key data attributes:

Key Data Object Relationships

The RFC data object shall maintain the following relationships:

RFC data between the Fulfillment Execution functional component and Change Control functional component must manage the RFC lifecycle state.

RFC data between the Problem functional component and the Change Control functional component must manage the RFC lifecycle state.

Functional Criteria

The Change Control functional component:

Data Architecture Criteria

The Change Control functional component:

Model

Figure 71: Change Control Functional Component Level 2 Model

8.4.6 Configuration Management Functional Component

Purpose

Focused on tracking the inventories of Actual Services and their associated relationships. Identify, control, record, report, audit, and verify service items; including versions, constituent components, their attributes, and relationships.

Key Data Objects

Key Attributes

The Actual Service data object shall have the following key data attributes:

Key Data Object Relationships

The Actual Service data object shall maintain the following relationships:

Functional Criteria

The Configuration Management functional component:

Data Architecture Criteria

The Configuration Management functional component:

Model

Figure 72: Configuration Management Functional Component Level 2 Model

8.4.7 Diagnostics & Remediation Functional Component

Purpose

Through the use of manual and automated Run Books, provide diagnostics information and/or remediation steps to shorten the MTTR. Run Books help streamline diagnosis and remediation for service functions by applying knowledge solutions to service anomalies.

Key Data Objects

Key Attributes

The Run Book data object shall have the following key data attributes:

Key Data Object Relationships

The Run Book data object shall maintain the following relationships:

Functional Criteria

The Diagnostics & Remediation functional component:

Data Architecture Criteria

The Diagnostics & Remediation functional component:

Model

Figure 73: Diagnostics & Remediation Functional Component Level 2 Model

8.4.8 Service Level Functional Component

Purpose

Enable the design and creation of Service Contracts (SLAs). Also responsible for the management of all Service Contract data objects throughout their lifecycle including the governance of the Service Contract instances from the moment they are instantiated. Also responsible for collecting the relevant information in order to monitor compliance with the terms specified in the Service Contract and exposing data that reflects that actual performance against the defined Service-Level Objectives (SLOs).

The actual legal aspects of the Service Contracts are not handled by the Service Level functional component directly; however, these documents (usually created and managed by the legal department and not in IT) are used by the functional components in the S2P and R2D Value Streams as the main input for the demand and requirements definition stages.

Key Data Objects

Key Attributes

The Service Contract data object shall have the following key data attributes:

The Key Performance Indicator data object shall have the following key data attributes:

Key Data Object Relationships

The Service Contract data object shall maintain the following relationships:

Service Contract (instance) data flow between the Request Rationalization functional component and the Service Level functional component must manage the Service Contract (instance) lifecycle state.

Functional Criteria

The Service Level functional component:

Data Architecture Criteria

The Service Level functional component:

Model

Figure 74: Service Level Functional Component Level 2 Model

8.4.9 Other IT Operations Areas

IT operations include a broad area of capability and many of these capabilities are not part of the D2C Value Stream.


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