Release Notes - Version 3.1


Below, an overview is provided of the improvements that have been included in version 3.1 of the Alignability® Process Model. Minor changes (e.g. improvements of the layout or spelling corrections) are not listed.

Version 3.1  -  October 2004

No.

Description of Improvement

1.

Changed the terminology used in the Alignability® Process Model to strictly adhere to the terminology proposed by ITIL®. The terms that have been changed are listed below:

Version 3.0 Term

Version 3.1 Term

Configuration Administration

Configuration Management

Configuration administrator

Configuration manager

Configuration database

Configuration management database

CDB

CMDB

Request Management

Incident Management

Help desk

Service desk

Help desk administrator

Service desk agent

Help desk manager

Service desk manager

Root Cause Analysis

Problem Management

Root Cause Assessment

Root Cause Analysis
(the name of procedure 2)

Stability manager

Problem manager
(within Problem Management)

Availability manager
(within Availability Management)

Capacity manager
(within Capacity Management)

Continuity planner
(within Continuity Management)

Instability

Problem

Assessed

Analyzed
(problem status)

Contact Administration

Address Book Management
(a slightly more intuitive name)

Account manager

Service level manager

2.

Added two date fields to the SLA form to facilitate the management of SLAs. These fields are called "Start date" and "Expiry date".

3.

Renamed the Customers tab page of the SLA form to "Customer" That makes it more intuitive that normally only one customer organization is linked to each SLA.

4.

Added the Serv. Level Mgr. field to the Customer tab page of the SLA form. This field allows the person who acts as the service level manager for the organization(s) that are covered by the SLA to be linked to the SLA.

5.

Rearranged the Service form to ensure that both the CIs and the SLAs that are related to a service are visible when the service is opened.

6.

Renamed the Allocation on array (GB) field of the Configuration Item form to "Array allocation (GB)". This ensures that the field label fits better when displayed.

7.

Renamed the Medium field of the Support Request form to "Source". This should make the field name more intuitive and should avoid confusion with the "Medium" option of the Impact field.

8.

Split the option "Gone - Not Able to Reproduce or Request Withdrawn" of the support request Completion code field into the following two separate options:

Gone - Not Able to Reproduce

Withdrawn - Request Withdrawn by Customer

9.

Adjusted the text in the decision diamond for Incident Management step 1.3 slightly to make it more obvious that customers do not just to inquire about support requests; they also to ask for support requests to be re-opened when they have been notified via email about a solution that they are not satisfied with.

The text in the decision diamond has been changed from "Customer inquires about previously registered support request?" to "Concerns previously registered support request?"

10.

Changed the text in the action box for Incident Management step 1.4 from "Open support request…" to "Review support request…". This was done to provide more consistency within the process model.

11.

Added an instruction for Incident Management step 1.13 specifying that service desk agents should look for pending problems that could provide a workaround.

12.

Added a step to Problem Management procedure 3 to ensure that problems with the status "Dead-End" are periodically reviewed. The work instructions of this procedure were adjusted accordingly.

13.

Adjusted the work instructions of Problem Management step 2.4 and 2.5 to explain that specialists can also contact external suppliers for help when they are analyzing a problem.

14.

Rephrased Problem Management work instruction 1.1.1 to make it easier to read.

15.

Added an instruction requesting the preparation of a rollback plan to Change Management step 2.4.

16.

The following procedure diagrams have been redrawn to ensure that users with an SVGA screen resolution (i.e. 1024 x 768 pixels) never have to scroll to the right when reviewing a procedure:

Configuration Management procedure 1

Alarm Management procedure 1

Alarm Management procedure 2

Incident Management procedure 1

Problem Management procedure 2

Change Management procedure 1

This allows users to use the mouse wheel when a procedure is too large to be depicted in its entirety in the user’s browser screen.

17.

Changed the term "item type" to "form" throughout the Alignability® Process Model to make it easier to understand.