Click    when you are finished.

Welcome to the Event Management learning. Click each sequential tab below to find key learnings and information.

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          Introduction          ::

What is an Event?

An event is a change of state which has significance for the management of a Configuration Item or IT Service. It is anything that might happen in the environment that we need to know about and probably act upon to ensure the continuity of an agreed level of service.

Depending on the nature of the event, the required action may be repairing a failed component or simply capturing its information on a log for later trend analysis.

In addition to managing events that can affect the environment, Event Management is also an area where automation opportunities may be discovered. These opportunities should be identified and prioritized since many may represent important sources of efficiency and simplification in the normal operations. This can lead to faster and more accurate support results.

Goals

Event Management is intended to

• Detect, analyze, and determine the appropriate process for dealing with event occurrences.
• Automatically detect conditions in the operating environment that might cause service delivery to fall outside of agreed quality levels, and to identify opportunities to automatically correct those conditions.

Benefits

Event Management processes serve as an initial link into other service operations, transition and design processes, and it can initiate integrating the management of IT services. Effective event management provides:

Terms & Definitions   {showhide title="See More ..." changetitle="Hide ..."}

Throughout this learning, the following key terms, descriptions, and Event Management categories are used. Review the following for reference and applied use.

Terms

Event Categories

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Additional Resources

• Event Management Role Handbook
• ITSM FAQs
• How Do I Demos

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 Roles & Responsibilities ::

Event Manager Role

Each Service Management process has one or more associated roles. A role is a category assigned to a user, or group of users, that defines access privileges to process functionality. In the Event Management process, there is only one role defined being the  Event Manager.

Click to view a demonstration how to View Roles Using ISMP.

Event Manager Responsibilities

• Understand what Events are needed for Event Manager's service.   {showhide title="Show Description" changetitle="Hide Description"}
  It is important to Understand what Events are needed for your service.
  
  For new services or components, understand what:
  • Configuration Items are contained in the service
  • Event information is needed
  • Failure conditions
  • Detection or prevention mechanisms are available to minimize failed conditions
  From the supplier recommended list of detectable Events, consider the following for which:
  • Events do we need to capture and act on
  • Are the right thresholds for our implementation of the service
  
  
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• Develop and maintain service impact models.   {showhide title="Show Description" changetitle="Hide Description"}
  It is important to Develop and maintain an Event Management service impact model. When developing a service impact model, the following should be executed:
  • Identify how each service CI depends on other CIs for its normal operation.
  • Capture any key dependencies that we want to follow when one of the CI fails or degrades.
  • Work with the Configuration Manager for your service, to ensure all these key dependencies are recorded in the CMDB.
  
  
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• Document event management requirements and make a case for their importance.   {showhide title="Show Description" changetitle="Hide Description"}
  It is important to Document event management requirements.

  When preparing and documenting an event summary, consider: What Condition or Event needs to be detected What type of Event What threshold should be used How Event should be handled What actions should be taken What support group should take actions Can response to this Event be automated

  When describing why requirements have business importance, consider: Why important to handle this Event What service or indicator will this improve Size of improvement is expected on that indicator Show an actual figure, with support documentation Why is it important to the Intel Business Be sure to submit the requirements to the EM PIT for approval and deployment submission.

  
  
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• Perform audits to ensure the required Events are processed as needed.   {showhide title="Show Description" changetitle="Hide Description"}
  Making rules and defined processes more specific to Event Management helps create a more refined, automated process.
  
  Plan for and conduct regular audits. Audits should test the processing of the Events including the following:
  1. Event Detection
  2. Event Disposition
  3. Event Notifications
  4. How support groups handle the Event
  It is important to understand the requirements that should be met.
  • Understand which tools are used to capture and process your service's Events, and how they work together.
  • Access to tools or reports to complete the required tests and assessments. 
  
  
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• Ensure Events are processed with good performance measured by Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).   {showhide title="Show Description" changetitle="Hide Description"}
  The following are critical for good performance success:
  • Keep track of KPI trends for your service
  • Identify and implement required improvement action plans.
  
  
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• Identify opportunities to automate the handling of Events.   {showhide title="Show Description" changetitle="Hide Description"}
  When looking for automation opportunities, consider:
  • Ideas that have a good benefit for the cost.
  • Looking into your process stats and trends (LSS is most useful here) to identify areas of automation that were not evident at first sight. 
  
  Examples of automation of Events include self-healing scripts and service recovery options.
  
  
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• Participate in Event Management Process Improvement meetings   {showhide title="Show Description" changetitle="Hide Description"}
  It is important to participate in Event Management Process Improvement Team meetings to help identify areas of improvement such as how to:
  • Identify common process improvements that can or should be made.
  • Enable service operations to go faster, do better, and be more efficient.
  
  
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Responsibilities Summary   {showhide title="See More ..." changetitle="Hide ..."}

The below image summarizes the 3 categories associated with the responsibilities for the Event Manager role.

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        Process Flow        ::

Service Configuration Structure

Representation in the CMDB is needed for Events to be meaningful, and to note how a malfunction of any concrete CI may affect other concrete CIs. This connects and integrates Event Management with other Service Management processes like:

• Incident
• Problem
• Knowledge
• Capacity
• Change
• Release Management

Configuration Management Database (CMDB) Diagram

• use Service impact models to understand how impact propagates through the service.
• recognize when relationships are fed into a correlation engine, calculating the propagated impact can be automated with different actions selected based on that impact.

Click on the image below for a larger display.

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Event Management Process Flow (Simplified Version)   {showhide title="See More ..." changetitle="Hide ..."}

Correlation is the most important step in the process flow. It determines: How severe the event (incident) impact is What the root cause of a series of events is How the event should be handled Correlation needs to consider: Which CIs are being impacted How impact is propagated to other CIs and services Actions can be taken to: Notify interested parties Attempt an automatic fix, or seek a manual fix solution For some Events such as an information issue, simply logging the Event for later use is sometimes all that is needed.

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Process Intersects   {showhide title="See More ..." changetitle="Hide ..."}

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      Tools & Indicators      ::

Monitoring Tools

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)   {showhide title="See More ..." changetitle="Hide ..."}

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Reports Control Charts  &  KPIs Dashboard   {showhide title="See More ..." changetitle="Hide ..."}

1. Event Control Charts
   

   ► Shows the Event Management KPIs at the highest level.

2. Event KPI Dashboard
   

   ► Shows the Event Management KPIs at a second level of detail.

3. MyITE (My Integrated Tool Environment)
   

   ► It is an ITSMR provided portal for easy use of these reports.

4. OLAP cube, OLAP (On-line Analytical Processing)
   

   ► Data source used with Excel to create pivot tables fed by Event and Incident Information - useful for detailed analysis.

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  ||  Completion  ||  ::

Click    when you are finished.

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