Boost your ITSM maturity with a service catalog

Editor's Notes

• #4: © 2001 Pink Elephant Inc. All rights reserved.
• #6: © 2001 Pink Elephant Inc. All rights reserved.
• #8: @title: The other is about the nature and purpose. Some think it’s a listing of what IT does, like a paper menu. But it’s no more a than our Constitution is a paper document. The catalo organizes and defines the IT organization. It defines who you are. Defines rights and obligations. Offers and Requests. Let’s talk about the 3 natures of the service catalog. [read bullet] Like the US constitution the catalog defines us, our mission, our charter, who IT is as a resource to our customers.; it establishes what we value and how we organize ourselves to deliver on those values. Let’s use another service organization as an example: the restaurant. Are you a 4 star restaurant? Or a fast food place? A local bar? Either one is ok, but we should know before we publish the menu? So if the catalog is like a menu, remember that the menu is the key organizing document of a restaurant. It defines the type of restaurant, what ingredients we buy, who we hire to cook, whether we have cashier and fry stations or maitre’d, someliers, waiters, chefs. It certainly drives our prices! I see some organizations wanting to pay fast food prices for 4 star service. I see some IT organizations putting caviar on top of everything even if the customer can’t pay for it. So the menu is not a piece of paper, it sets expectations, helps the customer choose, and drives the organization structure. 2) Second, the catalog needs to be actionable. This means it needs to be useful in the moment of truth. What is that moment of truth? When the user needs a service, and they was what is it? Is it for me? How do I get, how long will it take? What will it cost? Or When the executive needs to plan and budget. A listing of applications doesn’t work. It’s like wanting to eat a fine meal, and getting a list of ingredients, no price, no costs. And by the way, the ingredients? Just what’s in the fridge, That’s not a catalog. 3) Finally, it should enable governance. Big word, straight forward issues. What services and at what level should they be provided? How are these paid, by whom, when and how much? Who is entitled to what services? How are services requested, approved, brought into operations. How are new services funded? This is where we depart from the service catalog as a concept and need to think of the functions, roles and processes. This is where we need the front office shows up.
• #10: This is the executive business customer perspective. They see the portfolio of available services with their own view of the Service Catalog This view has both service offerings and service agreements. Service offerings are packages such as app hosting, SAP financial services, desktop computing – that are made up of specific IT services provided by the IT silos like messaging, telco, storage, etc. And they have service agreements and invoices for these service offerings, with the ability to forecast demand and manage budgets. Let’s see how this structure gets used in a real life case study.
• #11: Notes: Service Delivery, Service Level Management, Page 33 Section 4.4 Implementing the process Section 4.4.1 Product a Service Catalogue, raises the question of What is a Service? The slide takes the definition from the book. A ‘service’ can be made up of other ‘services. IT staff often confuse a ‘service’ as perceived by the Customer with an IT system. The Service Catalogue may define a hierarchy of services, qualifying business service/infrastructure service/network service/application service. The Catalogue may be a matrix.
• #12: © 2001 Pink Elephant Inc. All rights reserved.
• #21: © 2001 Pink Elephant Inc. All rights reserved.