Any activity must be provided with resources. For the IT service, we can distinguish the following varieties: human (intellectual assets), financial (renewable asset), managerial, information (formalized experience and knowledge), IT equipment and software licenses.
The ideas considered are true for any type of listed resources. Therefore, for simplicity of presentation and examples, for the purposes of this article, we will understand under resources only IT hardware assets and software licenses.
I think you can easily recall two or three companies which are characterized by the following situation:
- There are several departments/managers/management processes/information systems collecting primary data and information on IT hardware and software license usage – working in isolation;
- There is no single source of data on the use of IT equipment and software licenses in projects and in operations.
If you need to centralize resource accounting across related activities, additional questions arise:
- Is there a difference between the IT resources used in implementing projects and providing IT services?
- Does it make sense to centrally manage them, whether they are used in projects or as part of IT service delivery?
Projects and IT services require the same resources
If a company’s IT service activities are based on service and project approaches, then parallel processes working with IT resources are possible.
Let’s refer to the definition of the Service Portfolio in the ITIL V3 library: the area called “IT Service Pipeline” corresponds to the project activities of creating IT services.
Thus, the lifecycle of an IT service can be divided into two parts: the period of its creation or upgrade and the period of IT service provisioning and decommissioning. Activities within the first period are defined through project management, and activities within the second period are defined through service management or IT service delivery. And both time periods consume the same IT resources: IT hardware and software licenses.
We can say that the overall pool of resources under service management and process management is the same as the portfolio of IT assets. The difference is that different characteristics of the same IT resources are important for different management processes.
It turns out that IT project management, ITSM and ITAM processes use the same tangible IT resources. The only difference is in the aspects of managing them.
The use of unified inventory and data warehouse tools, integrated accounting and management processes, will reduce the cost of collecting and maintaining the relevance of data and ensure its completeness and relevance.
Centralized accounting of IT resources increases IT resource accounting increases their manageability
If the IT asset portfolio is the same scope as the overall pool of project and IT service resources, are we right to say that IT asset management can replace IT service resource management and project resource management?
No, it’s not. Because these are different activities and involve people from related departments, with their own tasks and areas of responsibility.
And yet, IT asset management can be the basis for organizing multi-factor accounting of IT resources – both in the interests of project management, IT service delivery, and in their own interests.
This is possible due to the fact that:
- The IT asset lifecycle includes the project resource lifecycle and the KE lifecycle;
- IT asset accounting is more accurate than project resource and KE accounting (both in terms of the coverage of the categories accounted for and the depth of accounting / CMDB depth);
- A specific IT asset, project IT resource and KE are, more often than not, one physical object. It just takes into account its different characteristics: functional / inventory / contractual / financial.
The life cycle of project resources (from procurement to commissioning) and the life cycle of a KE (from commissioning to decommissioning) are part of the full life cycle of an IT asset (from planning to disposal).
Each of the management areas considered evolved from generalized practice cases and methodologies. Their followers considered their subject area to be self-sufficient, and so each had its own processes for accounting for project resources or IT services. If any two or all three methodologies are used in the same company, it makes sense to combine or integrate them.
IT asset management can be that single IT resource management tool.
If there is a need for accurate information about IT resources across multiple dimensions, it makes sense to combine the different activities and integrate different sources of information about the same management objects between them.
Such integration will simplify the work and reduce labor costs to keep the data up-to-date and form a single repository of information, on the basis of which you can build comprehensive reports in different sections.
Who can benefit from centralized accounting of IT resources?
By adding IT resource management aspects, we involve new participants in our centralized information space.
Thus, transparency in the accounting of IT resources in terms of various aspects of management can be of interest to managers responsible for information security or ensuring compliance of IT activities with external and internal requirements.
It makes sense to collect and store information on management objects in a centralized way, combining and enriching it with data from related sources on the necessary management slices.
IT asset management processes are characterized by strong horizontal ties and the involvement of participants from different departments. On the one hand, the large number of participants makes it difficult to implement and run such processes. On the other hand, the participants themselves are stakeholders, which simplifies the rationale for implementing IT asset management. It also reduces the cost of collecting up-to-date information about IT assets by eliminating the duplication of activities.
As part of the IT asset management system, the following links are lined up:
- For each project, its budget execution can be tracked;
- For each project and related IT assets, data on related contracts is reflected;
- The use of IT assets as project resources and contract objects is tracked.
Single information space data structure
As a result, project managers are able to manage projects in terms of finances, contracts, and resources from a single point.
In conclusion, a few key thoughts in this article:
- The same resources are used for IT services and IT projects. However, aspects of management can be different: functional, inventory, contractual, financial;
- IT asset management can complement configuration management by enriching KE information with a unique set of inventory, contractual and financial aspects;
- IT asset management can be the primary trusted source of data for project resource management;
- Centralized IT asset management allows to collect information from different sources in a single place and thus create a single information space for all aspects of IT resource management;
- IT asset management can form the basis for centralized IT resource management.
1 IT Service Conveyor, ITIL V3, Service Strategy, 4.2.3 Service Portfolio, Pipeline and Catalogue, p 117
2 IT service resources are considered to be assets and configuration units, KEs. There is no separate term for project resources, so we will use the phrase “project resource”
3 An IT asset can be hardware, parts, consumables, or software or IT services, or possibly intangible entities (logical elements) over which a company has rights of ownership or use and which are accounted for in the ITAM repository as part of their lifecycle. But mostly IT assets mean hardware and software.
An IT asset portfolio is all of a company’s IT assets for which the company has legal responsibility.
IT asset management is a set of interrelated processes aimed at addressing the physical accounting, financial control and contractual obligations associated with IT assets throughout their lifecycle.
4 Exceptions are logical elements accounted for in the CMDB, as part of the configuration and asset management process, such as the LAN IP address range.
5 Project resource management is one of the main groups of project management processes. It includes the processes of planning, procurement, supply, distribution, accounting and control of resources, resource inventory management. These processes relate to the management of labor and material and technical resources. Management of financial resources is carried out as part of cost management.
6 Configuration and asset management – one of the main processes within the provision of IT services, which solves the problem of managing configuration units during their operation. There are also related processes involved in the provision, accounting and maintenance of the operation of KE: management of user requests and incidents, change management, IT service delivery level management.
7 Where relevant data will come from different activities for different aspects of the accounted facilities: functional, financial, contractual, inventory.
