Introduction to Integrating PPM with Universal CMDB, Using ALM

Universal CMDB consists of a business-service-oriented data model with built-in discovery of the following:

• Configuration items (CIs) and their dependencies

• Visualization and mapping of business services

• Tracking of configuration changes

When you integrate PPM with Universal CMDB, you can select CIs and run impact analysis reports from change requests in PPM, to determine which components of a system will be affected by a software change, and to what extent. The integration assists IT managers and Change Advisory Boards in deciding whether a change request should be approved for development or deployment.

For example, your software change might involve upgrading a database server. Before you can perform the upgrade, you need to stop the server. In some cases this could prevent users from accessing crucial services, or even cause a crash of your production system. Impact analysis determines the effect on the entire system of stopping the server, and gives you a report showing the components that will be impacted. This enables you to plan the change with minimal disturbance to your operations.

Using Impact Analysis in a Change Request Lifecycle

Since a software change might be developed and deployed over a lengthy period of time, you might want to generate an Impact Analysis Report at the following stages in the lifecycle of the change request:

• Before you approve or develop the change. Before you approve or develop the change, it is useful to forecast the effect that introducing the change will have on your production system. You describe the intended change, specify the components that you think will be affected, and run impact analysis to forecast the effect of the change.

  The resulting report gives you an indication of how your system will cope with the change after the change has been developed and deployed, and helps you decide whether to approve the change for development.

• After the change is approved for deployment to a production system, but before you deploy the change. While the software change is being developed and then evaluated for quality, modifications may occur in your system infrastructure. For example, servers might be added or removed, or applications might be changed. As a result, the original impact analysis may no longer give an accurate indication of what will happen when you introduce the change. So after the change has been developed, evaluated, and approved for deployment, you perform another impact analysis to give you an up-to-date picture.