Four steps to getting started with your IT Service Catalogue
Service Catalogues can be very powerful, but can also be a minefield, as you’ll know if you’ve already started down this track.
So, if you are going to implement a Service Catalogue, where do you start?
1. Firstly, you need to define the goals of the Service Catalogue. What problems are you trying to solve? What are you looking to achieve? This seems obvious, but so many people miss this step, or make assumptions, or fail to document them so they can be used as a checkpoint while progressing with the design and implementation.
2. Having defined the goals/problems, you should then be able to describe how you’ll know if you’ve been successful. These will help you define and describe the end point of the Service Catalogue implementation project. In other words, "we will have completed our implementation when the following conditions have been met..."
3. With your organisation's goals for a Service Catalogue documented and agreed, you can then decide what type of Service Catalogue you need. There are three different types of catalogue commonly referred to as IT Service Catalogues:
a. Technical Service Catalogue. This contains a range of information that is useful to IT staff in delivering and supporting those services. This might include internal OLAs, details of underpinning contracts with third party vendors, etc. In other words, a lot of information that a customer in the business you support would not really want or need to know on a daily basis (or ever!).
b. Business Service Catalogue. This Service Catalogue is visible to customers, and contains only the information that may be useful and/or relevant to them. The Service Levels they can expect are a common feature of Business Service Catalogues.
c. Request Fulfilment Catalogue. Some organisations when seeking a Service Catalogue are actually talking about a Request Fulfilment engine. Indeed some vendors of ITSM toolsets claim to have a built-in Service Catalogue that is in fact a pretty looking Request Fulfilment portal. Request Fulfilment portals can be useful, especially where some automation of fulfilment is set-up, templates of key information can pop-up when the request is made, or where required approvals are sent out immediately by the system. They are not usually a Service Catalogue in the true ITIL sense however.
4. You then need to track how and where you will track your Service Catalogue information. If you already have an ITSM Toolset, does this have a Service Catalogue component that meets your goals? If not, does an existing application that your organisation is familiar with meet the requirements? This can even be done with Microsoft Excel or published on an intranet, depending on your goals and requirements. Or do you need to set about a process of documenting requirements, defining your budget, and going to market to find a Service Catalogue tool?
If you get to this point having successfully followed all the steps above then you’ve made a good start in implementing your Service Catalogue! You will then be ready to get into the next steps, which involve configuring your catalogue(s), defining the specific information you want to capture in the catalogue (again referring back to your goals), and then capturing the as-is situation of the IT services you provide. There are challenges ahead, but at least you've laid a sound foundation for your new IT Service Catalogue.
Comments
Business Service Catalogue & Rqst Ful Catalogue
What is the relationship between Bus SC & RF Cat - who is the ultimate 'end user' of each & if it is the business, when & how would the use the 2 catallogues, i.e. do they first use the business SC to identify what is avaialable & then use the RF catalogue to order what they need.
Would the bus SC have the same or different items on its list compared to the RF catalogue?
RE: Business Service Catalogue & Rqst Ful Catalogue
Hi, thanks for the comment.
To answer your questions one by one:
1. Who is the end user?
Typically this is going to be business end users (IT's customers).
2. What is the relationship between the two?
If you already have an ITSM Toolset (or are shortlisting towards purchasing one) you may choose to look at how the toolset handles this relationship this by default and see if that meets your needs. If it does, that will save some rework.
I think the two do generally need to be somewhat discrete because of the different requirements for each of them:
-For a Request Fulfilment Catalogue, you generally will want it to primarily focussed on the quick, streamlined ability to request a new IT service.
-For a Business Service Catalogue, it is more about listing the available services and setting expectations around those services. That might be, for example, the expectations they can have in terms of SLAs for that service, hours of support, etc, not just how quickly they can expect a request to be fulfilled for adding that service in the first place.
The two should be linked though, to avoid frustrations from customers going into one and not finding what they need, and also to complete the picture. One option might be that your Business Service Catalogue is the first place you direct customers to, and you have a button next to that service to 'request this service' which takes you direct to that item in the Request Fulfilment module.
In Request Fulfilment I'd recommend a link to the Business Service Catalogue too.
You'd probably want both types of catalogue clearly visible/accessible from whatever the primary web portal into IT is for your customers.
3. Would the bus SC have the same or different items on its list compared to the RF catalogue?
That depends on how you've defined a service based on the specific goals which you are trying to achieve (or problems you are trying to solve) by implementing the Business Service Catalogue.
Another way to look at this is:
Do you have IT services that you want to inform customers about but which they would not ever request? E.g. services where it is important for customers to understand what level of service they can expect but which they would never request?
If the answer is yes, then you will have items in the Business Service Catalogue that are not available in your Request Fulfilment tool.
I must stress that the key foundation is to define your goals/problems you are trying solve, and then the vision of what success looks like - i.e. how will we know when we've 'got there'.
One last point. Before you launch either, get some customer feedback and use it. Hold a customer forum, or arrange some User Acceptance Testing.
IT Services
If one looks at the ITIL v3 Glossary, the following Service types are specified: Infrastructure Services, IT (Technology) Services and Business Services
What is the relationship between these?
Our first take on this is:
An Infrastructure service is made up of 1 or more (IT) Components
An IT Service is made up of 1 or more Infrastructure Services
A Business Service is made up of 1 or more IT Services
Can you comment on the validity/inaccuracy of the above, please?
RE: IT Services
Hi,
I would suggest that how you define services depends on what you are trying to achieve by implementing your Service Catalogue.
Typically a Business Service Catalogue is aimed at IT's customers (internal or external depending on your situation). Therefore you'd only want information in there that is relevant to customers and in a format that they can understand. This is usually limited to IT services directly provided by IT to the business to enable their work. That is the 'service' in a Business Service Catalogue. This is what ITIL V3 calls a business service.
Referencing infrastructure services and blurring IT services vs. business services in IT's Business Service Catalogue will probably just lead to confusion, but that will depend on your needs and the nature of your customers. I would generally recommend against it.
You may wish to have a closely related Technical Service Catalogue which contains a range of other information that is directly useful to IT. That is where you might wish to hold information such as OLAs, underpinning contracts, and potentially information about IT and Infrastructure Services that support Business Services. The advantage of the three different definitions in the ITIL V3 glossary is that if you have a need track services in a Technical Service Catalogue that are not in the Business Service Catalogue, you have a different term available to describe them.
IT Services
The answer seems slightly confusing - could you please expand on your comments with examples?
RE: IT Services
Hi,
I think that you were commenting on someone else's comment/question rather than an answer I provided, because I'd not answered any comments on this blog till today. If not, please let me know and re-iterate your question and I will be glad to provide an answer. Thanks for reading the blog! Hope we can keep writing items of interest.
Kind Regards
Jonathan
Business line
Hello, I read your weblog however my client is bank with different type of business lines , how can I map their business line with my services ( I am application and data center) service provider and work as 2nd line in bank data center and 2nd line in Banking application services.
Many thanks.
RE: Business line
Thanks for the comment. Big topic! How about you email me at jonathan.coles@silversix.com.au, as there's a bit of discussion to be had and a bit more I would need to understand before I could answer this? Thanks, Jonathan