Defining Business Structure › Define the Business Infrastructure › Families and Classes

Families and Classes

Families classify configuration items by type and assign meaningful attributes for each one. Classes identify general categories of configuration items that your enterprise supports. Families are broad categories of configuration items such as hardware, software, and services. Classes are more specific categories within the broader family category. For example, the family hardware might contain classes such as, modem, router, repeater, and bridge.

Organizing your configuration items into families and classes makes it easier to manage your configuration items. For example, you can generate a list of configuration items that belong to a particular family or class.