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Research on Enterprise ITSM Knowledge

Management Model

WENG LiangShanghai Tontron Information Technology Co. Ltd.

Shanghai, P.R.China

Lio.weng@gmail.com

WENG BaozhangShanghai Jiaoda Withub General Tech. Co. Ltd.

Shanghai, P.R.China

wengbaozhang@withub.net.cn

AbstractIn the process of enterprise ITSM operation, the

management of IT knowledge is of crucial importance. Based on

the knowledge management process and SKMS of the service

transition process in ITIL v3, this paper raised a reference model

for enterprise ITSM knowledge management, which provides

detailed design for function layers as data collection, information

integration, knowledge processing and knowledge presentation,

and is fully immersed with knowledge lifecycle management. Thispaper further discussed the application of the model in the arena

of small to medium enterprise and large enterprise respectively.

The model could be used as a guide in enterprise ITSM

knowledge management practices.

Keywords- ITIL, ITSM(IT Service Management), Knowledge

Management, Lifecycle Management, Reference Model

I. DEFINITON OF THE SCENE SA. Concept of ITSM Knowledge Management

With the upgrade from ITIL v2 to v3[1], the connotation ofITSM is ceaselessly being enriched, and ITSM is becoming a

major management system throughout the enterprise IT servicelifecycle. The effective operation of such a managementsystem will inevitably be involved with abundant of IT servicerelated knowledge, and how to effectively accumulate thoseknowledge and make full use of them, to support decision-making, is a key issue in successful implementation of ITSM.ITSM knowledge management will help solidify personalservice knowledge from IT staff into the enterprises ITSMknowledge, assure the relative independence between the ITservice quality and the IT personnel, and ensure theconsistency of IT service quality.

Owing to this consideration, much attention is paid toITSM knowledge management in ITIL v3, a knowledge

management process in service transition stage is defined, andthe former CMDB is upgraded to a more general SKMS(Service Knowledge Management System), which collectsrunning data from various stages of ITSM model, integrates,

processes and presents the data, and finally manages andmaximizes the value of ITSM knowledge.

B. Typical Enterprise IT Operation ArenaThis paper will research on a reference model and

implementation methods for ITSM knowledge management

under a typical enterprise IT operation arena. An illustration ofsuch an arena is shown below:

Figure 1. Illustration of Typical Enterprise IT Operation Arena

Main factors within the arena include:

ITSM platform: the carrier platform of the enterprisesITSM processes, which drives the daily operation of ITservices.

Enterprises IT system resources: the collection of allIT resources within an enterprise, including privately-owned IT resources and trusteed IT resources(including devices/system trustee, application trustee,ASP, SaaS, cloud computing), which support therunning of kernel business within the enterprise. Here,the privately owned IT resources are usually deployed

in an EDC(Enterprise Data Center), while the trusteedIT resources are deployed within IDCs(Internet DataCenter).

Enterprises IT management resources: the deployed orleased 3rd-party professional IT management tools andresources, which help monitor, manage the enterprisesIT resources and provide relevant data and functionssupport for ITSM.

IT staff: the executing personnel of enterprises ITservices, including internal IT staff, and out-sourced IT

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staff, professional 3rd-party ITSP(IT Service Provider)service team, and external virtual IT staff, whichaltogether form a generalized IT staff community.

All IT resources and IT management resources put togetherform the enterprises generalized IT resources.

The above IT operation arena fits for most enterprises fromsmall to large scale, covering real and virtual enterprise

operation modes, and is typical for the research of ITSMknowledge management.

C. Knowledge Flow Analysis of Enterprise ITSMThe ITSM platform in ITIL v3 contains KMS functions,

and the enterprise ITSM KMS(Knowledge ManagementSystem) is a generalized KMS, including ITSM platforms andknowledge management related functions of any other 3rd-

party professional IT systems, and is a distributed knowledgemanagement system.

The knowledge flow in enterprise ITSM operation mainlycontains the following:

ITSM platform: the ITSM process running data, data inintegrated CMDB, and SLAs and KPIs for enterpriseIT services are the incoming sources for ITSM KMS,and the KMS will generate optimization suggestionsfor relevant service SLAs, processes and CMDB for

better ITSM operation, after analysis and mining ofthose data collected.

Professional 3rd-party IT systems: the statistical data,service views, service KPI data and professional KMSknowledge interfaces are input sources for ITSM KMS,and the KMS will generate optimization suggestionsfor the work mode, parameter settings to make the ITsystem better suit the enterprises service demands,

after the analysis and processing of these data.

Generalized IT staff: which is the part that involvescreative capabilities within the knowledge flow. The

personal service experiences of generalized IT staff,social search services and online technical support viathe Internet are also complementary sources for ITSMKMS. And the output from KMS will also providetraining material and online technical support for theIT staff community.

Combining the above knowledge flows, it comes to thefollowing enterprise ITSM knowledge flow chart in Figure 2.

II. ITSMKNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT MODELAccording to the above ITSM knowledge flow chart, the

ITSM KMS is the collecting, integrating, processing and value-adding platform for ITSM related knowledge within theenterprise, which will effectively integrate all knowledgemanagement functions and resources to form a unified KMSfor the generalized IT assets and IT staff.

Figure 2. Typical ITSM Knowledge Flow Chart

Setting up a uniform ITSM KMS system will helpconcentrate and analyze the ITSM information from various

sources in time to raise the IT service quality, and solidifypersonal service experiences to form the ITSM knowledge forthe whole IT staff and the enterprise, independent of anyindividual IT personnel.

Following the IT service lifecycle in ITIL v3, the ITSMKMS here will distill IT service operation related information,transfer those information between relevant ITSM processesaccording to enterprises service demands, and provide supportfor service operation and decision-making during the continualservice improvement process.

The ITSM KMS could be recognized as a reference modelfor SKMS in the knowledge management process of service

transition stage (in ITIL v3)[2][3], or as a more generalizedextended model. Since the KMS fully adopts knowledgelifecycle management, all knowledge within this model isreferred to as the uniform ITSM knowledge object, regardlessof the discrimination made between data, information,knowledge and wisdom in ITIL v3. A specific lifecycle stageattribute will be assigned to each knowledge object to denotethe semantic differences.

A layered structure is adopted in the model, which isbasically consistent with the reference model of SKMS in ITILv3(shown in Figure 3.).

A. Data Collecting LayerThe data collecting layer collects from such sources as

ITSM platform, professional 3rd-party IT systems and IT staffthose data related to enterprise ITSM operation. The datacollected here are the original IT service data.

A unified knowledge interface will be needed for theselarge scale ITSM data collection, to facilitate the informationinteraction between the KMS and any other professional ITsystems, and to make necessary format and semantictranslation and make them fully understood by all IT systemsand the IT staff. After the encapsulation of the uniformknowledge interface, all ITSM relevant knowledge are

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integrated to form a virtual knowledge base, which structurallyclassify, organize and manage the knowledge according toenterprises service demands, and the underlying details arehidden from the upper-layer knowledge functions.

The data collected here correspond to the original form ofITSM knowledge, i.e. the input stage of knowledge lifecycle.

ITSM KMS

LifecycleManagement

Value-add/Presentaion/Application

Basic Knowledge Mgmt

Knowledge Analysis & Mining

LifecycleModels

3rd-Party KB

Knowledge LCMgmt.

Othersources

Knowledge

Proc.Interface

3rd-partyTeams

LC ModelMgmt.

KnowledgeValue-adding

KnowledgeAggregation

KnowledgeEvaluation

AnalyticalModel Mgmt.

IntegratedSearch

Knowledge I/O Interface

Enterprise ITRules Mgmt.

Data Mining

Analytical Models

KnowledgeClassification

KnowledgeView Mgmt.

KnowledgeMaintenance

ContentFiltering

KnowledgeAsset Mgmt.

KnowledgeProcessing

ITSM Knowledge BaseKnowledge

Index

KnowledgeMap Mgmt.

KnowledgeStorage Mgmt.

Knowledgeauthorization

ITSM KB

FunctionalView

E-Learning&Training

knowledgesearch

PersonalizedKB

Online Support

KnowledgeSelf-service

Value-addedServices

ACRONYMSLC LifeCycleKB Knowledge Base

DataCollectionInterface

ITSMPlatform

3rd-partyProf. ITSystems

KnowledgePresentation

Layer

KnowledgeProcessing

Layer

InformationIntegration

Layer

DataCollection

Layer

KnowledgeStrategy Mgmt.

IT Staff,online

resources

Figure 3. Enterprises ITSM Knowledge Management Model

B. Information Integration LayerThe information integration layer provides basic

management to those ITSM data collected: store themeffectively into the ITSM knowledge base, and organize andmanage them through a unified enterprise ITSM knowledgesystem. After being integrated, the ITSM knowledge objectenters its growth stage, corresponding to information.

The basic knowledge management functions provided here

include:

Knowledge Classification Management: maintain theknowledge according to a structured schemecombining integrated and distributed modes. And theknowledge classification is periodically evaluated andupdated according to enterprises service demands.

Knowledge View Management: different knowledgeviews for different user roles and ITSM functions aredefined and managed.

Knowledge Maintenance Management: basicmaintenance operations of ITSM knowledge, includingadding, modifying, deleting and searching, withknowledge version control involved.

Content Filtering: monitor and filter the content ofITSM knowledge.

Knowledge Asset Management: manage theenterprises knowledge assets, and combine them intothe unified enterprise IT assets category.

Knowledge Processing: provide primary processingfunctions to ITSM knowledge, according to algorithmsand regulations set beforehand.

All ITSM knowledge objects are stored in an ITSMknowledge base, which supports distributed deployment mode.Different ITSM KMS sub-systems will be grouped together toform a global knowledge view through the knowledge mapfunction. And knowledge index and search services are

provided to users to accelerate the location and query for thedesired knowledge objects.

ITSM KMS also provides the physical storage managementof the knowledge base, mapping from the logical knowledgeobject to physical storage nodes, and also provides knowledgeaccess control.

C. Knowledge Processing LayerThe knowledge processing layer further processes the

knowledge objects within the ITSM knowledge base, andgenerate and derive new knowledge products according toenterprises service demands at strategic, tactical andoperational levels.

For the generalized IT staff mode, the analysis and datamining of ITSM knowledge will incorporate three major

processors: The internal processing functions within the KMS:

including management of analytical models, datamining based on analytical models, and value-adding

processing of knowledge. Administrators might setenterprise IT rules to denote certain analyticalconstraints to better suit the enterprises servicedemands.

Processing functions provided by 3rd-party partners:3rd-party partners are allowed to make professionalanalysis, evaluation, mining and value-adding

processing of the knowledge within the knowledgebase via a corporation interface, to produce moreprofessional and valuable derived knowledge products.

Complementary processing functions by IT staff via anonline community: owing to the aggregation effect ofweb 2.0 community, personal experiences andanalytical wisdom of the generalized IT staff areaggregated and integrated here.

D. Knowledge Presentation LayerThe knowledge presentation layer is the knowledge

presentation and access UI layer for IT staff and end users aswell as an interface layer for the KMS to feedback generatedknowledge and derived products to the ITSM platform,

professional IT systems and IT staff, to better support theenterprise ITSM operation.

The feedback functions actually implement the knowledgetransfer between relevant ITSM processes and functions, andthe knowledge transfer path could be dynamically modifiedaccording to actual service demands.

The knowledge presentation functions provided to the endusers including:

Various knowledge views for ITSM processes, toprovide operation and decision making references.

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Integrated knowledge search and online technicalsupport for IT staff.

Customized knowledge base and knowledge self-services, to form personal ITSM knowledge portal fitfor the operational habits of individual IT staff.

Professional online learning and training for thegeneralized IT staff.

Knowledge aggregation services to combine variousknowledge within KMS and external relevantresources to form a unified knowledge portal both atglobal and enterprise levels.

Other knowledge value-added derived services.E. Knowledge Lifecycle Management

A dynamic management function based on ITSMknowledge lifecycle is incorporated through all the abovefunction layers. The core is the knowledge lifecycle model,which represents the whole dynamic process containing theinput stage, growth stage, value-adding stage and declining

stage, and might help administrators to manage knowledgeobjects according to their respective lifecycle stages, in order tomaximize the overall ITSM knowledge value contribution.System resource allocation priority is also determinedaccording to the value of a given knowledge object.

Administrators might set the stages and working parametersof the lifecycle models according to actual service demands.

Another feature used simultaneously is the evaluationmethod for knowledge objects, which is widely used to judgethe state transition of the lifecycle model. The value of aknowledge object is determined according to such factors asthe value of correlated IT resource objects, the visit frequency,

the users opinion, the matching of knowledge classification,the authors experience level, and the duration of current state.

For any knowledge objects entering the value-adding stage,the processing priority is also assigned according to theassessed knowledge value of that object.

III. APPLICATION PATTERNS OF THE MODELA. Application Pattern for Small and Medium Enterprises

For small to medium enterprises, the ITSM operation willrely on those flexible means as 3rd-party professional servicesand virtual IT staff to a large extent, owing to the limited IT

budget and the relatively restricted skill level of the internal IT

staff. Therefore their ITSM systems and ITSM KMSs usuallyadopt a distributed deployment mode, containing enterprisesinternet ITSM resources, 3rd-party ITSP professional services,and complementary online resources.

Under this application pattern, the ITSM KMS operates inthe following way:

Local ITSM KMS: will be running as the kernel ITSMknowledge base that satisfy the service demands, anddirectly supports the local ITSM system operation. The

ITSM KMS usually could be recognized as animplementation version of the ITSM knowledgemanagement process, but not a complete version sincemany functions required will be expanded through theout-sourcing system resources.

3rd-party ITSP SKMS: will provide professionalknowledge processing, knowledge synchronization andknowledge transfer services according to the serviceSLAs between the enterprise and the ITSP, and isusually an important and professional expansion to thelocal ITSM KMS.

Other online resources (including the relevant web 2.0community): will provide complementary andauxiliary knowledge and processing resources to localKMS, and is usually a more flexible expansion portion.

The above three parts will finally be combined to form avirtual enterprise ITSM KMS, and provide support for localITSM operation. The proportion of the three components will

be correlated to the enterprises ITSM operation mode, andmight be adjusted during the lifecycle of the enterprise.

B. Application Pattern for Large EnterprisesAs for large scale enterprises, the local ITSM KMS is

usually an independent and complete implementation versiondirectly supporting the local ITSM operation, owing to therelative complexity of IT resources and relatively high skilllevel of the IT staff.

Of course, in the actual ITSM operation, large scaleenterprises will also adopt out-sourcing, crowd-souring policiesfor some professional IT services to lower the operational costs.In this case, the ITSM KMS will also incorporate 3rd-partyITSP and online resources expansion, but the share of theseexpansion parts will be much smaller.

IV. CONCLUSIONSThe main characteristics of the enterprise ITSM knowledge

management model raised in this paper including fully fit forthe enterprises actual service demands, adaptability to typicalITSM operation modes for different enterprise scales, andincorporation with the knowledge object lifecycle managementmodel, to maximize the benefit of ITSM knowledgemanagement.

The model is consistent with SKMS model from ITIL v3,and could be used as an implement reference model for SKMSin the knowledge management process.

REFERENCES

[1] OGC&TSO. The Official Introduction to the ITIL Service Lifecycle,pp75-89

[2] OGC&TSO. ITIL version 3-Service Transition, (4.7) KnowledgeManagement.

[3] OGC&TSO. ITIL version 2-Service Support, (7) ConfigurationManagement.