- Sync Jira with other key ITSM apps for a fully-automated ITSM workflow
- Automatically create HipChat rooms and crowdsource expert help when an incident occurs
- Save $7,900 per minute by predicting incidents and downtime before they happen.
Creating a Robust ITSM Toolkit with JIRA ServiceDesk
To deliver services and support to its Managed Services clients, Praecipio Consulting relies on an IT Service Management (ITSM) process with many moving parts. But the core tool supporting that process is JIRA Service Desk (JSD). “It’s perfect for use in an ITSM environment,” Harding says. “It has a lot of really powerful features right out of the box, but it’s also highly configurable and extensible through add-ons and partner technologies.” In addition to using JIRA Service Desk internally, Praecipio Consulting also advises many of its clients on implementing and configuring the tool to fit their ITSM processes. [bctt tweet=”.@Praecipio wanted to build the best Incident Management process they could using Atlassian tools.” username=”Workato”] In order to demonstrate the power of JSD as a complete ITSM solution, Praecipio Consulting delivers workshops across the country that focus on the opportunities for integration and automation with JIRA Service Desk. “We wanted to show how the Atlassian products combined with other technologies can be used to augment JSD,” says Harding, who was responsible for building out the workshop environment. “I was asked to build the best Incident Management process I could using the Atlassian toolset and our partner technologies,” he explains. The workshop toolchain continues to evolve over time; currently, it includes JIRA, Confluence, BitBucket, HipChat, StatusPage, xMatters, Splunk, Puppet, BigPanda, and Riada’s Insight platform.Streamlining Incident Management Between xMatters, Big Panda, and JIRA
The goal of Incident Management is to restore service as quickly as possible; depending on the severity, the costs associated with a major incident can be exorbitant. In fact, the industry average cost is $7900 per minute of unplanned downtime. “It’s all about mean time to resolution (MTTR),” Harding says. “You want to restore service as quickly as possible.”
In a well-oiled Incident Management workflow, making sense of the data from alert systems is crucial. So is communication: the right people must quickly be informed about what’s wrong and how to fix it. Harding explains that, to resolve incidents quickly, data must flow from system to system automatically—and accurately. “You have to ensure that there’s one system of record and that it’s entirely accurate,” he continues. “If you update an issue in JIRA, the update must be replicated to StatusPage, in the relevant HipChat room, in BigPanda, and so on. Everyone must be on the same page, regardless of the system they’re looking at.”
At their workshops, Praecipio Consulting’s ITSM workflows begin with an event—such as a server crashing—which triggers alerts from Pingdom and NewRelic. Those alerts all flow into BigPanda, an alert correlation engine. Harding explains, “BigPanda makes sense of all the alert noise in an environment by picking up on patterns and shared characteristics.”
[bctt tweet=”Unplanned downtime costs $7900 per minute on average. @praecipio helped their customers avoid that.” username=”Workato”]
Upon creation in JIRA, the incidents are automatically tied to the affected IT asset in Insight, the appropriate individuals receive xMatters notifications, and the workflow also updates StatusPage to provide visibility to a larger audience. A HipChat room provides a venue for communicating about potential incident solutions, and after the incident is resolved, the workflow leverages Confluence to perform an incident retrospective for organizational learning.
