Balanced Scorecard Method for Determining an Impact on a Business Service Caused by Degraded Operation of an IT System Component

摘要

A “balanced scorecard” method is disclosed for determining degrees of impact on business service elements (BSE's) caused by degradations of configuration items (CI's) in an underlying IT system. The formulas are used by an Impact Calculation Engine (ICE) of a Business Services Management (BSM) system. They provide enhanced accuracy by accounting for “service aspects” of alerts (using categories such as performance, availability, security, end user, capacity, and financial) and/or degrees of CI degradation (in some embodiments using OSI Standards). The method eliminates manual assignment of degrees of impact. Preferred embodiments convert alerts to a common alert format, determine a separate degree of impact for each service aspect, and use default formulas when custom formulas are not provided. Some embodiments use a service subscription wizard to at least partly automate the assignment of CI-to-BSE relationships. Different balanced scorecards can apply to the same BSE at different times, dates, usage levels, etc.