Back in the HEAT for Windows days the only SDLC methodologies that were on the HEAT radar and considered “the norm” were Waterfall and Iterative, and there was little to no discussion about SDLC.
In 2001 Agile entered the stage Lean followed soon thereafter in 2003, and in 2008 DevOps entered the stage. Depending on who you ask, the majority of software development is still Agile, some Lean, and DevOps is the latest contender.
Meanwhile, HEAT for ITSM emerged, was acquired by Ivanti, rebranded Ivanti Service Manager, and again rebranded to Ivanti Neurons for ITSM as part of another practice, the Shift-Left Methodology.
When you are gathering Ivanti Service Manager (ISM) and Ivanti Asset Manager (IAM) requirements to build your Solution Design Documentation and Scope of Work (SOW) there is one very important best practice. Set Implementation Priorities!
setting priorities for your ISM project
Scoping is an art of finding the right balance between effort, benefits, and long term gains. Quick Wins should be your 1st Priority (P1) followed by long term gains which are Priority 2 (P2) and have the highest benefits.
For example, on a recent Asset Management implementation the core project team determined that the quickest wins and highest benefits would be asset scanning and a foundation for procurement and assets (hardware and software) that we could built upon on future phases.
ITSM Priorities by Benefit and Effort
That lead us to this high level scope:
P1 – Asset Scanning / Procurement Foundation
P2 – Software Asset Management (SAM)
P3 – Hardware Asset Management Enhancements
What this meant was that we would build asset scanning capabilities not only for assets but also packing slips, replace the existing purchase order tracking excel sheets, and vendor inventory tracking sheets from Softchoice and various software vendors, with an Ivanti Service Manager product catalog for hardware and software, utilized the purchase order workspace for sales orders, enabled contracts and entitlements for software inventory, and built a softchoice integration to automatically update invoice and shipping information and functionality to reconcile against packing slips and purchase orders.
These were just our P1’s and P2’s! With further integration to discovery tools, enhancements to assets, and workflow automation for P3. Of course keep in mind that upon project completion some of the other requirements from the parking lot will become P1’s and P2’s and the cycle begings.
Along the way we identified morequick wins that improved overall product usability and project tracking:
ISM Administrator Level 2 Role – for limited admin access with dedicated top level tabs to manage assigned validation lists and some configurations without full administration console access
a19 Consulting Tracker– a custom built project tracking tool by a19 Consulting with backlog, artifacts, parking lot, status updates, project dashboard, heat release project and package tracking, to-do list, and many more features
a19 Consulting Change Control with Announcements, Alerts, Notifications, and approval process for User Acceptance Testing (UAT)
a19 Consulting UAT Test Scripts Workspace for ISM Administrators and Consultants to develop test scripts, run test scripts, log defect, pass/fail tests, request enhancements and identify show stoppers, must-haves, and nice-to-haves
ITSM/ITAM/ESM Blog 
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