What I noticed some time ago, was that we didn’t necessarily apply that same rigour to the data going into and out of our function steps. So I took it upon myself to address this shortfall. The optimist in me thought that this would be another six-week sprint – how naïve I must be – still!
I didn’t put the stopwatch on to measure how long this refresh took, but it was more than six weeks!
First off, we had to have a dedicated approach to how data was modelled in the process flows. Pretty quickly, I could see that the following pattern could cover all aspects of data management in the process models:
{Entity} {Attribute} {Action}
Some data elements might not include an attribute. For example, when we first create a Software Request, we create all elements of the request, not just the odd field here or there. But many data elements do involve change components of larger entities, hence their inclusion in the white boxes on the maps.
Having gone through all of the processes refreshing the data in those white boxes, what this gave us the opportunity to do was to consolidate the data values in Excel to drive out the nuances into one spreadsheet rather than trying to print out all the process maps and conduct that comparison on paper.
We took that consolidated data view in Excel, and decided to share it with purchasers of the Process Kit. But rather than present an unwieldy table of endless rows of data in a table, we made use of “slicers” to help navigate those 800+ rows of data.
The advantages and use cases that start to come out from this work become compelling:
Procurement: We don’t really care for ITAM, but we are vaguely curious as to what happens to software contracts as they traverse the ITAM eco-system. By scrolling down the entity slicer and selecting “Contract” you are instantly presented with all of the processes and function steps that engage with contracts in their execution. Further clicks within this sub-set of data will reveal which attributes are engaged with and how.
Data Analysts: We need to know what entities are created within the ITAM eco-system, but don’t wish to wade through 32 process maps to find out – no problem! After clicking on the red cross for the entity slicer in the previous example(!) we can now go to the Action column and select “Create”. Straight away we are presented with the numerous entities that an ITAM eco-system might reasonably produce. If the data analyst in question is looking to automate SAM workflows, then the Entity & Attribute Tracker will reveal the creation points, which supports identity and access points for stakeholders.
Info Sec: Not unlike the data analysts, they might have a focus on specific data types/ entities that contain personally identifiable information (PII).
However, where we see the biggest advantage is when an equivalent model is used for adjacent disciplines in modelling their processes in the same way.
For example, a contract won’t be “created” in the ITAM eco-system – we merely get a whiff of it at the entitlement importation process. If someone in procurement wished to model the entire entity lifecycle of a contract then they could adopt our modelling mantra, and have the entire contract lifecycle accounted for.
Another compelling use-case we envisage, is when Service Management wish to transition asset data into Configuration Items (CIs) not every asset will earn CI status, but those that do will require additional governance/ oversight to ensure that critical systems to don’t suffer the sling and arrows of incidents, problems and changes.
A final note: from my meagre studies around data management, I was very keen to stick to “Create, Read, Write, Delete” values for the actions that entities and attributes experienced. However, fast-forward to ITAM and deleting data is a rabbit-hole most companies won’t recover from, so “Archive” was added as an acceptable alternative to deletion.
The entity and attribute tracker forms part of the 3.1 release of the process kit, and can be bought separately for £99 (+ VAT for UK sales). Alternatively, new sales of the kit will come with the entity and attribute tracker built-in. Former purchasers of the kit should reach out to ITAM Accelerate for their complimentary copy for free.
