Client: Office of Systems Integration (OSI), State of California
Project: ITIL, ITSM, ServiceNow Implementation and CWS-CARES Service Desk
Role: Project Management, ITIL Processes Implementation, Training, ServiceNow Implementation, Training and ITIL Service Desk Support
E.K. Associates was responsible for implementing a total of 10 ITIL processes, establishing a full-functioning 24/7 Service Desk, and implementing, configuring, and managing the ServiceNow® Service Management Software Tool.
Some of our deliverables included a Service Desk Management Plan and a Knowledge Management plan. The Service Desk Management Plan required the following procedures to be implemented:
- Managing the lifecycle of incidents
- Managing the lifecycle of problems
- Managing the lifecycle of events
- Managing the lifecycle of service requests
- Managing the lifecycle of change requests.
To meet the requirements of the Service Desk Management Plan and in designing and implementing the Knowledge Management process, we created and executed the following ITIL-based processes:
- Incident Management
- Problem Management
- Event Management
- Request Fulfillment (for service requests)
- Change Management
- Service Asset and Configuration Management
- Information Security Management
- Access Management
- Service Level Management
- Availability Management.
Each ITIL-based process included an ITIL High-Level Design plan, a workflow diagram showing the process activities, a description of each activity, and a High-Level Authority Matrix (RACI). Global policies (rules for the process) and applicable COBIT® Controls (Control Objectives for Information and related Technologies) were also listed in the plans. Each High Level Design Plan described how the process interfaced with other processes and functions.
The ITIL Detailed Design Plan for each process noted above described the purpose, objectives, and scope of the process. Tables were used to describe each activity of the process by documenting the title, purpose, policy statement, inputs, procedure or work instruction steps, outputs, audit/controls and metrics.
Monthly, we delivered multiple ITIL Overviews to Service Desk staff and CWDS project staff.
We designed, implemented and supported an ITIL-based Service Desk for supporting the CWS-CARES application, with the Service Desk Management Plan, and process design plans for the procedures utilized by the Service Desk. The Service Desk provided coverage that spanned 24 hours a day, 365 days per year. The Core Hours staff were onsite Monday through Friday from 6:00 am to 6:00 pm, and the Non-Core Hours staff were offsite from 6:00 pm to 6:00 am which provided complete and effective coverage including holidays and weekends.
As part of meeting our obligations and providing superior service, we:
- Utilized a “Continual Improvement” philosophy by
- Developing and documenting a standardized call template to guide Service Desk Analysts through their calls in a methodical, efficient manner
- Regularly auditing ServiceNow records for completeness, accuracy and compliance to best-practices for incident, problem, change and request handling
- Assisting process owners in auditing and reviewing their processes for continual process improvements
- In the absence of a formal Service Level Management process, worked with DevOps and other project and county staff to create formal Operational Level Agreements (OLAs) and Service Level Agreements (SLAs) by adopting industry best practice service level objectives for incidents, problems, changes, and service requests
- Worked with DevOps to create and document a process flow for Access Management for Non-Prod, Preview and Production environments
- Created workflows and process flows for users requesting Access (Access Request Form)
- Designed and implemented a powerful, efficient Major Incident procedure that included the setup of a “War Room” to better manage high priority incidents when they occurred
- Created a War Room binder to be used when conducting Major Incident investigations to speed up and formalize the steps for Major Incident resolutions
- Designed and implemented a robust Problem Management procedure that included completion of a Root Cause Analysis (RCA)
- Set up the Amazon Web Services Interactive Voice Response (AWS IVR)
- Completed the following activities towards the (AWS IVR) migration to a new phone number:
- Created IVR migration test scenarios
- Conducted IVR migration testing
- Participated in testing new IVR instances and worked with the vendor on IVR issues
- Collaborated with Project Management Office on the roll-out of the ITIL processes
- Took ownership of OpenVPN Access Management and transitioned LDAP, OpenVPN, Jenkins, Kibana Access Management from DevOps to Service Desk
- Created and updated training manuals and end user training for ITO CWS/CMS Legacy Access Form
- Created training plans for CWS-CARES modules and worked with the Implementation Team for the rollout of the modules to the Core Counties in California
- Lead and supported the activities for the integration of the ServiceNow and Jira
- Identified production risks and areas for improvement; created action plans for return to service and recovery for unplanned outages
- Established and implemented change control and change management best practices with regards to maintenance, configuration, development, testing, and data integrations
- Participated in requirements gathering activities, provided functional feedback for the CWS-CARES application.
ServiceNow® Service Management Software Tool
Our ServiceNow administrator designed, developed and maintained a customer support portal which allowed users to submit incidents and other requests; track the status of the incidents and requests; and provide support for online chat with the Service Desk. In addition, the administrator performed the following:
- Customized and maintained the Incident Management, Problem Management, Knowledge Management and Change Management modules in ServiceNow to allow staff to utilize the automation of these processes to more efficiently serve customers
- Provided user access to Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) and other support documentation
- Created dashboards and reports for different levels of Management within the Office of System Integration
- Provided ServiceNow training to different teams
- Created Knowledge Articles for incident workarounds and loaded them into ServiceNow to assist Service Desk staff in resolving incidents more quickly
- Formed and managed the ServiceNow Steering Committee
- Completed the following activities for the migration from ServiceNow Express to the Enterprise version:
- Provided Pre-Production support and administration for version upgrade
- Completed Post-Production validation for the ServiceNow Enterprise version
- Conducted ServiceNow Report/Dashboard Training and Team Exercises
- Created test scenarios for Enterprise ServiceNow testing
- Conducted Enterprise ServiceNow testing in Development and Production environments
- Performed requirement gathering, analysis, development and testing of Information Technology Office (ITO) CWS/CMS Legacy Access Form in the ServiceNow Development Environment, and deployed ITO CWS/CMS Legacy Access Form in the ServiceNow Production Environment.