September, 2011

WebMD on IT Service ManagementWebMD on IT Service Management

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AgendaAgenda

About WebMDArchitecture and implementationKey features and tipsAcknowledgementQ/A

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About WebMDAbout WebMD

• Most Recognized & Trusted Brand of Health Information

• Serves consumers, physicians, other healthcare professionals, employers and health plans.

• 105 million visitors/month on both desktop and mobile platforms

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What we had…What we had…

One single ticket flow and ticket Inadequate data managementManual dispatch mechanismProne to human errorsPoor report

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Simple, cost-effective, flexible IT Service Desk that tracks– 1600 corporate employees’ helpdesk requests– 250 employees in the technology department service requests’ that

are fielded by individual technical operations groups Incident & problem management Change & notification management Release management

Business NeedsBusiness Needs

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Our ITSM System Evaluation Check ListOur ITSM System Evaluation Check List

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1. Functionality2. Needs3. Maintenance and administration4. Integration 5. User impact6. Cost7. Support8. Future growth

Why We Chose Serena For ITSMWhy We Chose Serena For ITSM

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Design ConsiderationDesign Consideration

Simulate across-team interactions and communicationsTicket hierarchy to represent different ITSM tiers Business process orientedMinimize human inputFocus on business tasksEfficient reporting

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Ticket HierarchyTicket Hierarchyacronym hierar

chyticket type purpose input submitter owner parent

RM L4 release management

management, communication

portalproject name

PM PM -

EE L3 environment engagement

management, communication

environment PM PM RM

CD L2 code drop management, communication

code drop number* (auto counter)

QA QA EE

AB L1 application build service request ProductApplicationBuild information

QA techops CD

SR L1 other ops and dm requests

service request depends on different request type IT dm or ops AB or standalone

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Ticket Submission TreeTicket Submission Tree

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We decided to start our ITSM project with SBMScope of implementation– ITSM – release management Q3/2010– ITSM – incident management Q4/2010– Employee Request Q1/2011– ITSM – notification/change management Q3/2011

Summary as of 7/31/2011– Monthly release since Q4/2011 – 111 change requests– ITSM service requests – 13812– Employee requests – 5355– Incident management – 1519

ResultsResults

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Key featuresKey features

Group-based privilege managementParent-child ticket modelLeverage Aux tableAutomatic ticket title and event counterIntegrated approval processSBM MobileCustom report

SERENA SOFTWARE INC. 12

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Parent/Child ticket modelParent/Child ticket model

Sub-task transition– Higher tier tickets as parent, lower tier ones as children– Data inheritance: users don’t need to input fields that

exists in higher tiers already– Process control with transition action

• Example 1: Code drop ticket stays in process state until all its children (build deployment) are completed.

• Example 2: After code drop is approved, all its children (stay in review state) are pushed to backend operation team.

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Leverage Aux Table-1Leverage Aux Table-1

Aux tables and data management– More than 10 aux tables are created.– Used as single/multiple relational fields in workflows– Data of each aux table is managed by different team: less

maintenance overhead for SBM admin team– Example:

• Product, Application tables are owned by Product Operation teams

• OS table is owned by System Operation team• VLAN table is owned by Net Operation team

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Leverage Aux Table-2Leverage Aux Table-2

Ticket assignment by aux item selected– Submitter should be able to submit a ticket without knowledge of

backend supporting engineers– Create User field in aux table– Use mashup script to set ticket owner as user field from a relational

field (aux item)– Example: All build deployment tickets are dispatched based on the

selected “Product” • CMS product aux item has CMS ops team as product owner• Submitter selects “CMS” in “product” relational field• Mashup script makes the CMS ops team as the ticket owner

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Automatic Title and CounterAutomatic Title and Counter

Auto generated ticket title– To avoid miscommunication and human error, most ticket

titles are auto generated– Use SBM script and custom data fields to generate title

• Code drop title = Portal + Release title + Environment + code drop# (Consumer R9 QA01 cd#5)

• Build title = Portal + Release title + Environment + code drop# + application (Consumer R9 QA01 cd#5 ATS)

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Integrated Approval ProcessIntegrated Approval Process

Live Code drop approving process– In WebMD, all live (production) code drops require

approval from upper managers– After submitter creates all the build deployment tickets

under a code drop, use JavaScript to block action buttons of the build tickets – all tickets stay in “submitter review” state

– Once code drop is approved, transition action will transfer all the build tickets to operation teams

– If rejected and submitter decides to cancel the code drop, transition action will withdraw all build tickets

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SBM MobileSBM Mobile

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Designed for approval processSMS with SBM URI to access the ticket with SBM Mobilesbmmobile://firstaid.mobile.webmd.net/tmtrack/tmtrack.dll?View&I=$RECORDID()&T=$TABLEID()

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ReportsReports

One of the key requirement of the ITSM project is to create meaningful reports for– Upper management– Project manager– Team owner/member– Individual users

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Status Report Status Report Multi-view Report for request breakdown by request type - SysOps

Multi-view Report for product status and request breakdown by team - ProdOps

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Application Version ReportApplication Version Report

Show latest closed tickets for each application in each environmentPM uses the report to check which application version is deployed in each environment

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AcknowledgementAcknowledgement

Serena Software Inc.– John Hastings-Kimball– Kartik Raghavan– Digant Shah– Rick Tyler

Key contributors in WebMD– Teresa Dietrich – Senior Director, Technical Operations– Roger Hsu – Lead Production Engineer, Site Reliability Engineering– Derek Chang – Director, Site Reliability Engineering

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Q/A

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Supplemental Material

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Release ManagementRelease Management

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Environment EngagementEnvironment Engagement

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Code DropCode Drop

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Build Deployment FormBuild Deployment Form

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Application Deployment FlowApplication Deployment Flow

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Incident ManagementIncident Management• Incident Management

Incident Ticket

Response 1 Response 2

Report 1 Report 2 Report 3

Review 1

Review 2