Steps for assembling the project team and defining the project

During the first stage of your CMDB project, you will form a project team, scope the project, gather input from key constituents, and lastly get funding and approval to commit resources to the project. The benefits of a CMDB extend across various IT functions that benefit from access to consolidated and accurate data about the IT infrastructure, its users, and the services it enables. Therefore, ongoing focus on involving key constituents in the process of obtaining knowledge and scoping the problem, solution, and expected benefits is crucial to successfully gaining approval to move forward with the project.

 

This topic intends to provide practical, how-to guidance on organizing a CMDB project and building a successful CMDB. All of the steps in this stage examine general IT project management best practices with an emphasis on the CMDB. If your organization already follows rigorous IT project management, then you may not need to spend a lot of time on these steps. But do take the time to review them, because these steps contain a great deal of useful CMDB information that will help you achieve success. The steps for assembling the project team and defining the project are as follows.

 

Step 1.

 

Assemble Project Team:

 

Goal: Identify the team members, including key constituents from affected IT functions whose input and support you’ll need. Also scope your resource requirements for the other stages of the project. The right team members will increase your probability of project success.

 

Step 2.

 

Obtain CMDB Knowledge:

 

Goal: Educate team members on all aspects of a CMDB, including structure, terminology, scope, relationships with other IT processes, benefits, and the tasks required to build a CMDB. Investment in education now will dramatically reduce confusion and increase your ability to clearly describe the reasons for pursuing the project.

 

Step 3.

 

Create and Agree on CMDB Goals and Mission Statement:

 

Goal: Clearly describe the objectives of the CMDB project. Include a review of the current environment and problems to be solved, and a statement of the goals and mission for your CMDB project. Clearly defining goals is a critical early step toward getting the project approved, and then achieving the desired results.

 

Step 4.

 

Review and Define Benefits:

 

Goal: State the expected benefits and resulting organizational impact in terms of key metrics and measures. You want to link the problems and goals identified in the previous step to the specific 

 

benefits expected from pursuing the CMDB project. Detailed information about how the project will improve the organization will be used to build a business case and estimated ROI for the project.

 

 

Step 5.

 

Build a Business Case:

 

Goal: Use the output of the previous steps to build a solid business case so you can gain the buy-in and approval of key constituents, the project executive board, and the overall project sponsor. You need a logical, simple business case to win approval over other projects requesting scarce resources.

 

Milestone: Project Sponsor Approval for Funding and Resources:

 

Congratulations. You’ve made your case. You outlined the resources and funding required implementing a CMDB, and you clearly described how the organization would benefit. It’s time to move forward and define solution requirements in stage 2