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So, it has been determined as an organization that our IT Infrastructure teams processes (both internal and dealing with our user base) is broken. I am going to be leading a team to do an audit on our processes. My current plan is to first do a discovery phase, then a phase for reconciliation and creation. Finally a last phase of looking into the future, and trying to create an elastic framework that will be able to incorporate things like change management, SOX, PCI, and other exciting and yet to be determined things. As of right now, I have "The Practice of System and Network Administration" as my textbook.

My questions are: 1. Does anyone have any reference guides, books, other than above for evaluating, reviewing, and creating internal IT process flows that they can recommend?

  1. Has anyone done this before, and what kind of advice can they give?
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I feel your pain – Izzy Jul 14 '09 at 21:43
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This is EXACTLY what ITIL and MOF were designed to do. Both are operations frameworks (they are very similar but there are differences. I'm not a fan of COBIT (which is another ops framework). I'd take a look at the MOF framework first as it's more grounded than ITIL (which is about principles rather than explicit "do this to get here"). Both use change management as a foundation

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I am avoiding the ITIL world just because this is currently an internal division audit, not for the whole infrastructure. I haven't heard of MOF, so I will look into that. My hope is that at the end of this audit, we will have the proof positive metrics to why some sort of overarching framework like ITIL would be of use – bread555 Jul 14 '09 at 22:24
You don't need to revamp the whole infrastructure to implement MOF or ITIL. Many implementations start with 1 division implementing the practices. It is however important for sr. management to get on board once you've shown the benefits. I'd start by keeping track of how long/problems with teh old way for comparison with the practices. – Jim B Jul 15 '09 at 1:35
I took your advice and went and found the Process Steps. Document AS IS, Analyze AS IS, Architect TO BE, Implement TO BE. Good stuff. Then as I began to write up the template for going forward, I was informed this was a "Upper Management Task" and the project was ripped out of my hands. Needless to say, this should be interesting :-) – bread555 Jul 20 '09 at 14:13
Politics makes IT life interesting. – Jim B Jul 20 '09 at 17:19
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Do you have some of trouble ticketing system to keep track of problems and work? If not, I think that would be a great start. Almost every job I have been at, I have implemented a ticketing system and there is always a positive impact. Response time and accuracy increases dramatically...

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Definitely have a ticketing system. Our issue is more with where things go from there. The actual work has been getting done, but there is a disconnect of who is responsible for what and who should be notified for when/where. – bread555 Jul 14 '09 at 22:22
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