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Crawl, Walk Run Approach to
Building an IT Service Catalog
Tips and techniques to build out your service catalog
- in smart, easily digestible pieces.

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Table of Contents
TABLE OF CONTENTS................................................................................... 2
Executive Summary....................................................................... 3
Service Portfolio vs. Service Catalog.................................. 5
What Distinguishes the Benefits of a Service Catalog..... 6
A rush to judgement................................................................... 7
A painful crawl............................................................................. 8
Collaborative crawling............................................................ 9
Stepping in the wrong direction............................................. 11
Walking tall................................................................................... 12
Running on Empty......................................................................... 13
Running to daylight.................................................................... 14
conclusion..................................................................................... 15
Bios and resource links............................................................ 16
About us.......................................................................................... 17

Crawl, Walk Run Approach to Building an IT Service Catalog - Version 1.0
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Executive Summary
“People don’t want drills .... They want holes!”
These wise words neatly summarize the value of service catalogs. In the best of
possible worlds, an organization’s service catalog is rolled out to their end-users (we
prefer to call them “customers”) in a “service-centric” manner as opposed to one
that’s “IT centric.”
Is there any difference? We strongly feel there is, especially from the customer
perspective.
When we meet with members of a tech-centric culture, we sense an “inside out”
mentality. The IT department is viewed as a cost center, focused on optimizing
assets. But they perform as silo-based operations. They concentrate internally on
function, skills and/or platforms. Yet, they don’t necessarily incorporate customer
needs in their planning and deployment.
At Emtec, we transform companies from “IT-centric” to “service-centric,” and the
optimal oversight of service catalogs contributes greatly to the transition. This
model helps customers thrive via an “outside in” IT management philosophy.
Service-centric organizations are very customer/process-friendly. They seek to
align technology with strategic goals and daily functions to increase competitive
advantage.
One key distinguishing factor: Unlike the IT-centric way, the service-centric IT
department finds ways to meet or exceed expectations without customers
shouldering the full burden of specific costs or risks . In a service centric approach
it is about what my customer needs rather than an IT-centric focus of what
applications, hardware…etc.
Hence, service-centric IT divisions provide the “holes,” not a drill.
Here’s another appropriate analogy: Think about how much the online shopping
experience has reduced the quality of “dread” often encountered when buying a
roomful of furniture. In the past, you’d visit the store and your feet would get sore
just from walking the entire floor to find what you like.
If the store didn’t ship products, then it was time to call that brother of yours who
had the pickup truck, hoping you could borrow it.
Then came the actual moving of the furniture from the store to the home. Aspirin for
that aching back, anyone?
The service-based quality of the online shopping model has changed all of this.
You’re buying what you seek: a dining-room table set. The purchase does not
include the burden of visiting a store and moving the furniture. If the delivery person
gets injured, you’re not liable. The service provider assumes that risk. Hence, you’re
getting your holes without buying the drill.

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In reading this paper, you’ll discover best practices to develop and present a service
catalog that positions your IT department as service-centric, maximizing customer
satisfaction levels. You will understand the differences between the service catalog
and service portfolio – they’re not the same, although many believe that they are.
As in prior Emtec papers, we’ll frame this discussion within our “crawl, walk, run”
approach, which enables an IT department to pursue other business objectives
without major disruptions to day-to-day operations.
The Infrastructure Executive Council (IEC) has found that 65 percent of service
catalog efforts fail to meet objectives. This phased-in approach significantly
increases your chance for success by helping you avoid many of the pitfalls in
service catalog development.

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Service Portfolio vs. Service Catalog
As indicated, you should not confuse a service catalog with a service portfolio. The
service portfolio exists within the Service Knowledge Management System (SKMS),
and contains the complete set of services managed by the provider. It consists of
three main elements: the service pipeline, retired services and the service catalog.
Service Pipeline
This refers to any services
that are proposed or in-
development.
Retired Services
These are services for which
the lifecycle has entered the
completion stages.
Service Catalog
The catalog describes all “live”
IT services, meaning those
available for deployment.
There are two kinds of catalogs here – one outlining business services and the other
specifying technical services. Customers only have access to the former, to help
them understand how the organization will be supported. Your IT team, however,
will also have access to the technical-service catalog, which details the applications
that will carry out the business services.
The service catalog contains information about all live IT services, including those
available even if not necessarily deployed. It includes information about deliverables,
prices, contact points, ordering and request procedures. Which means, to the
customer, ordering IT can be very much like our example of ordering furniture from
an online retailer: Your end-users would choose the services they need from what
is available. The catalog also covers how security policies impact usage, and how
to get support. It explains clearly in “everyday” language where to turn to if there’s a
problem with the service.

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What Distinguishes the Benefits of a
Service Catalog?
What are the advantages to this? Your service catalog helps you map expectations
against capabilities, as well as streamline how services can be deployed. If
developed wisely, the service catalog will avoid prospects of either over-delivering
or under-providing. Customers also appreciate the qualities of “routine” within the
catalog experience, how they go to the same place every time for applications, and
use the same passwords to acquire them. Their satisfaction levels elevate. They’re
less worried about how to get what they seek, and can concentrate on doing their
jobs instead.
As for the organization? It prospers from reduced labor costs, as services are
now conducted in a uniform, managed manner. There is less manual coordination
involved and more automation. The IT department does not have to spend hours
on the phone with customers because these customers are going right to the web.
This is how the service catalog establishes credibility within the IT department. In
fact, the IEC reports that 63 percent of CIOs with high-impact service catalogs say
the catalogs create more productive conversations with partners about the value of
an IT service provider.

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A Rush to Judgment
Unfortunately, too many businesses never reach the point of having a high-impact
service catalog. They rush forward, failing to define their service portfolio before
launching a service catalog. According to Gartner, 70 percent of IT organizations
with a service portfolio project will develop the catalog as a customer-ordering
mechanism before documenting their IT service portfolios.
Clearly, these companies could use some advice about crawling before they
walk or run. We’ve seen service catalogs that are clear results of a “do it now!”
mindset, leading to poor design and services described in such a technical manner
that customers can’t make sense of it. Or the catalog doesn’t reinforce service
management, by properly designating configuration items (CIs) for the service to
link to incident/change. They don’t introduce a consistent service definition, with
metrics and reusable service models.
In other words, they’re “IT-centric” instead of “service-centric.”
The vast majority of these catalogs fail the first time for this very reason. If this
is your experience, don’t lose heart. It takes a while to make the transition from
producing a catalog meant for “IT people” to one that best supports customers.

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A Painful Crawl
Ok, you’re at the crawl stage now. You probably have services available but never
formalized a list. Now, you want to move forward from here. Here are typical out-of-
the-gate mistakes to be avoided:
IT-Centric Mentality
It’s understandably difficult for an IT team to evolve from a IT-centric to a service-
centric one. Members have spent their entire careers in IT and this “silo” mentality
encourages a glut of tech-laden descriptions without any consideration for the
business view. The document reads like a foreign language for intended customers,
who abandon it. Also, applications are interpreted as services. But applications
are not services. Not for the customer, at least. “Tracking packages,” for example,
is a business service. But many organizations list the application that enables the
tracking AS the service. They focus on the tool before thinking about its capabilities
and the value it provides the business.
Stall Tactics
The IT team wants a complete and thorough list before moving forward with
the catalog. This isn’t necessary. You can always add items to the list as you
go forward. Holding off for an indefinite period means that the information that
customers need to do their jobs will remain unavailable for the long haul.
Rush, Rush, Rush
As opposed to stalling, managers take the opposite approach and rush the catalog
into play. Without a service-management plan, a deployed catalog is doomed.
Focusing on the Tool
You pursue a complete tool to manage the service catalog before you actually
launch the catalog. This too is somewhat backwards-thinking. You shouldn’t buy a
tool until you really understand what the services are and why they perform a critical
business function. Don’t get us wrong, we love technology and we advise our
clients to acquire some kind of automated-management tool for their catalog- but
just not in the crawl stage.

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Collaborative Crawling
For the purposes of our “best practices” summarized in the crawl, walk, and run
stage discussion, we consider each in terms of the “strategic,” “tactical” and
“operational” perspectives. These categories provide milestones and possible
courses of action for an organization to move from one stage to another, avoiding
pitfalls.
Strategic – Strategic Promotion
The crawling stage is the time to begin shifting mentalities, to establish your service-
management model as a pro-active communications tool to be part of your overall
communication plan. People must understand through your promotional efforts that
services now drive IT. This will clearly require additional work within IT. Your IT team
will have to keep doing things the “old” way while transitioning to the new way. Help
them understand the importance of the role they’re playing within the larger context.
Make it clear that they are valued players in this effort – specialists who are very
good at what they do. With this kind of purposeful orientation, it will be much easier
to motivate your teams to put in the hard effort ahead of them.
Tactical – Establish Baselines
When the transition to that of a service organization is well underway take some
time to examine and document current processes, especially Service Request
Management and the Service Desk function. It’s good to understand this at the
“crawl” stage because in the future when you’re introducing new, service-friendly
features to customers like self-service portals – you’ll have a good way to compare
and track improvements. You will also know how your IT services are supported by
your current process and therefore what to adjust when introducing new ones.
Appoint an IT services manager to oversee this transition, to play the role of IT a
service-center ambassador. His role is to manage the end-to-end lifecycle of one
or more services and to start and or maintain the relationship with the business
representative. This manager should know the difference between corporate
services that remain basically “functional” (like e-mail) and services that help achieve
organizational strategies. The IT services manager oversees all IT efforts to business
processes, collaborating with members of multiple departments to develop an
agreed-upon summarization of valuable services.

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Operational – Assemble Service List
With the steps above already taken, a list of IT services can now be assembled. It’s
fine at this stage if these are the more “basic” corporate/infrastructure services. This
is the time to agree upon what the fulfillment of a service request exactly is, in a way
that makes sense to the customer. In a service-centric culture, a request is fulfilled
when the customer’s intended outcome is reached. In the IT-centric organization,
it’s fulfilled when an application is deployed.
Lastly, the service manager should define the service-request model and how
service-requests will be fulfilled. Is this done online? What happens when the
request is first made? What mandatory steps will the help desk take in response?
What are the required follow-up procedures after the request has been addressed?
Which teams are involved? Again, these models should have the customer/
business perspective foremost in mind.

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Stepping in the Wrong Direction
You’re now walking. You’ve introduced service-level management as a
communications initiative. You have a list of services, and are about to define
service capabilities. You can group them together in various service-line categories
and you have started formalizing service descriptions. You may think you’re doing
everything right. But you still can encounter problems.
Reinforcement is Lacking
The IT staff still lacks awareness of how the technology support function links
to business services. Managers have communicated these concepts, but they
take time to sink in at a cultural game-changing level. The message hasn’t gotten
drilled in enough. It’s not being reinforced in hallway conversations, workshops
or department-wide email updates. This means certain staff members take on
roles as agents of resistance instead of catalysts for change. IT Service teams will
be impacted, and they need to understand why and how they will work with the
changes in the future.
Several Layers start Unraveling
You fail to properly assign the service-level manager role – perhaps it’s one of
many hats this staffer now wears and the significance of this role isn’t taking
hold. Applications begin to drive the IT catalog’s construction instead of services.
Inaccuracies are discovered within the publicized pricing. All of these trouble spots
lead to poor acceptance of the catalog in its early stages.
The Devil is in the Details
There is continued inaccurate data in the service list. Information conveyed
within is too high-level, or too detailed for customers to make sense of – with
no logical grouping of categories to help them navigate. Customers sigh at the
prospect of scrolling through 60 unorganized service listings to find out what
they want. All focus is on tool development rather than how these tools support
business functions. Applications start getting selected with customers having
no genuine understanding of what services they’re getting. People who have
had no involvement with the publication of this catalog now openly question the
information, threatening to rip the entire project apart before it’s had a chance to
take off.
No Validation
All of the above problems lead to this unfortunate outcome: The catalog is static.
No one is really making actionable use of it in a meaningful way. This is because no
one has ever validated the intent of its productive purpose with customers. No one
has ever asked them, “What does services mean to you?” or “How can we make
this list of services actionable for you?”

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Walking Tall
Strategic – Communicate your Vision
Drive home the principles of your service-level management vision. Break down
walls of resistance by getting service-desk staff fully involved. Have them examine
the developing list of services, as well as the grouping of services, and invite
feedback. Encourage them to think like the customer in these sessions, based
upon “real” customer feedback. In doing so, you’ll establish clarity where there once
was confusion. This, in turn, enhances the cultural change you seek.
Tactical – Build a Service Model
Build a service model that distinguishes between business/corporate and technical
services. An exchange server that runs e-mail does not perform a business
objective, it’s a tech service. If your company makes widgets, then designing
widgets can be the business service delivered. For a retail organization, a service
model is based upon the phases of “shopping, selection, assistance and shipping.”
These phases are underscored by additional services such as “assist shopper
in selecting,” “answer questions,” “present shipping options,” “confirm details,”
etc. Note the focus on action here, not the tech applications that make the action
possible.
Operational – Zero in on Service Targets
Managing your customer’s demand for your services is a large part of this, with
absolute clarity of service capacity, requirements and capabilities. This kind
of estimation matches service investments with service needs. Then, cultivate
understanding of how CIs support all of this. By the end of “walk,” you’re not only
illustrating service expectations, but what services are supposed to look like .

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Running on Empty
Congratulations, you’re ready to run. You have a catalog that’s packed with relevant
services. You have service level agreements (SLAs) assigned and reviewed and
can even start thinking about automating the catalog to reap the rewards of cost
savings, as this is the stage where you fine tune metrics to measure impact.
It’s too early to pop open the bubbly. Not when these common mistakes loom:
No Ownership of the Catalog
Yes, there is the IT services manager. But with so much of the catalog now
completed, this manager is subjected to other duties/distractions. The catalog
loses a sense of governance. The organization is now ready to nominate Business
Relationship Managers that will ensure the IT service provider is satisfying the
business needs of the customers….we need to reinforce the Service Level manager
role and ensure he/she meets the customers on a regular basis to review the
services performance according to the SLA in place.
Confusion Ahead?
IT service providers (The IT Team) underestimate the impact of this groundswell
of change. They don’t realize how this “business first” mindset completely
revolutionizes the way they handle service requests. They confuse SLAs with
service targets. They are not one and the same. The SLAs contain little more than
service expectations. That’s not enough.
Garbage in, Garbage Out
Listed services aren’t kept up to date. No, they won’t get outdated in a year. But
over time, the offered services will mature and the catalog should grow to embrace
these changes. This is the same time period when service-request systems get
antiquated as well.
Too many Tools in the Shed
It’s overwhelming for customers to get their arms around it all. On top of this, they
can’t adequately exploit self-service features of the catalog because these haven’t
been sufficiently planned out.
Relationships in Disarray
The relationship among the configuration management database (CMDB), service
desk and service catalog is muddled. In decomposing these functions, the business
payoffs are not primarily considered, to effectively break down the services that
drive outcomes. You can do this, and you don’t need a CMDB for it either. If you
grow your catalog, you’ll end up documenting more and more service-connected
technology assets (configuration items) that help meet business objectives. When
you have compiled enough of these assets, then it’s time to pursue a CMDB.

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Running to Daylight
Strategic – Rationalize your service agreements.
Whether you examine them through the prism of your service view or customer
perspective (or both), come up with a blueprint that pinpoints where these
agreements fit within your structure. Also, start looking at which metrics you’ll use
to calculate total cost of ownership (TCO) verses value. Again, you have to include
the benefit to customer services within these metrics to establish this value.
Tactical – Formalize roles
External service owners and the internal managers who must oversee business
relationships need to have their roles formalized. These managers should be
responsible for reviewing SLAs and making sure they remain current with company
goals. This is all part of introducing a Service Catalog Management process that
fosters the ownership of processes to make it all work. It needs constant re-
evaluation and refining.
Operational – Software takes hold
You should have an IT Service Management (ITSM) software tool in place by
now. Make sure it links incident/problems called into the help desk to services (as
opposed to CIs), to enhance a systemic approach to response deployment. At this
point, the service manager is overseeing end-to-end provision here, taking on the
needed ownership of the catalog. And don’t forget that a completely automated
web-service portal must be available to all customers at this phase.

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Conclusion
Let’s boil down the launch and implementation of a service catalog to these
simple questions: What services do customers want? When do they want them?
What service-level components are required to deliver them? How do we collect
meaningful data on the status of each component, as measured over time?
Then, keep in mind how these questions are addressed within the crawl, walk, run
approach:
Crawl
What services do our customers want? When do they want them? This is how the
very initial version of a basic service catalog is framed. Its service-level requirements
and agreements are all dictated by this customer-centric view.
Walk
What service-level components are required? We outline our available CIs
and designate teams responsible to deliver these in a manner consistent with
customers’ service expectations. We have operational-level agreements in place
and underpinning contracts to support them.
Run
How do we collect meaningful data on the status of each component, as measured
over time? This involves both SLA monitoring and reporting. Does our measurement
data cover the customer experience? Does it include business-driven metrics? Drill
deeply for this kind of quantitative framework, then record results for longevity.
That’s because, in the end, your service catalog should never appear static. It is an
organic, work in progress. But it is one that’s assembled and constantly refined for
you to achieve maximum benefits for the long haul.

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BIOS
Renee-Claude Lafontaine
Senior Adviser in IT Service Management & ITSM Center of Excellence Lead
Ms. Lafontaine has over 20 years experience in the field of IT service management.
She has provided strategy consulting for clients large and small, offering guidance
with mandates including evaluating the process maturity of IT service management,
development and implementation of management processes based on ITIL.
Andrew Braden
IT Service Management Advisor
Mr. Braden is a Senior Technical, Process and Business Analyst with over 25
years of progressive experience in the information technology industry. He is
focused on Value Based Management initiatives, guided by the internationally
accepted standards for IT service management best practice reference models:
ISO20000, Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL), Control Objectives
for IT (COBIT), Val-IT governance architecture (GEIT) and Capability Maturity Model
Integration (CMMI).
Resource Links
Industry Links:
• www.isaca.org (COBIT, VAL-IT, Risk-IT)
• www.pmi.org (PM-BOK)
• www.sei.cmi.edu (CMMI)
• www.iso.org (ISO20000, 27000)
Emtec Links:
• Emtec ITSM Blog
• Emtec Event Archive
• Emtec Whitepapers
• Emtec Website

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About Us
Emtec, Inc.
Emtec is a provider of technology-empowered business solutions for world-class
organizations. Our local offices, highly-skilled associates, and global delivery
capabilities ensure the accessibility and scale to align your technology solutions with
your business needs. Our collective focus is to continue to build clients for life: long-
term enterprise relationships that deliver rapid, meaningful, and lasting business
value.
Our mission is to help our clients improve IT systems and processes – to transform
IT into an investment that returns true value to their respective organizations.
For more information visit: www.emtecinc.com.

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