Challenges, solutions and lessons learnt in 7 years of Service Management at CERN

Abstract

CERN has been using ITIL Service Management methodologies and ServiceNow since early 2011. Initially a joint project between just the Information Technology and the General Services Departments, now most of CERN is using this common methodology and tool, and all departments are represented totally or partially in the CERN Service Catalogue. We introduce a summary of the current situation of Service Management at CERN, as well as its recent evolution. We discuss service onboarding, user experience, and tool configuration, outlining the challenges faced, solutions adopted and some important lessons learnt. Some of the most important points relate to CERN’s common process and service catalogue, which have enabled scalability; hiding complexity from users in order to improve user experience; and the good practices to configure CERN’s Service Management application which have been learnt in the 8 years of the project. Finally, we present ongoing and future work, such as the upgrade of the CERN Service Portal and bringing even more new services board.