Configuration Management Process Overview
Configuration Management identifies, controls, and maintains all elements in the IT infrastructure called Configuration Items.
Relationships
Main Description

Goals

  • “To account for all the IT assets and configurations within the organization and its services”
  • “To provide a sound basis for any processes requiring configuration information, including Incident ManagmentProblem ManagementChange Management and Release Management
  • To enable the correction of any exceptions related to configuration records and the corresponding Configuration Item (CI), by verifying the configuration records against the infrastructure. 

Scope

“Configuration Management covers the identification, recording, and reporting of IT components, including their versions, constituent components, states and relationships to other IT components and business uses. Items that should be under the control of Configuration Management include hardware, software, systems, services and associated documentation.

Given the definition above, it should be clear that Configuration Management is not synonymous with Asset Management, although the two disciplines are related. Asset Management is a recognized accountancy process that includes depreciation accounting. Asset Management systems maintain details on assets above a certain value, their business unit (affiliation) and their location. Configuration Management also maintains relationships between assets, which Asset Management usually does not.”

While different technologies and practices are sometimes applied in context, the scope of Configuration Management encompasses solution development and test environments as well as IT infrastructure and operational environments.

Includes

Excludes

  • Asset Management
  • Inventory tracking
  • Procurement of configuration items
  • Tuning and installing configuration items

Key performance indicators

  • Satisfaction of Incident Management with CMDB accuracy, completeness, and usefulness
  • Satisfaction of Change Management with CMDB accuracy, completeness, and usefulness
  • Percent of IT-controlled CIs represented in the CMDB
  • Percent of IT-controlled CI interdependencies in the CMDB
  • Number of updates made to the CMDB
  • Number of inaccuracies discovered in CMDB data
  • The elapsed time and direct costs
    • In this process domain
    • In each process step and between steps