A Best Practice Approach for Automating IT Management Processes

In an effort to bring more structure to the task of automating systems management, we introduce an approach for incrementally introducing best-practice-based automation into IT service delivery and management. Our approach is process-centric, using best-practice processes to structure the automation, scope out high-value automation opportunities, identify interaction points between automation and its broader environment, and expose the overall impact of automation on the service delivery organization. We illustrate our approach by applying it to a specific example: reducing the cost of IT change management via a system that automates changes in the domain of software lifecycle management (such as installation/deployment and configuration)