By
Chad
I
have often been asked about my lessons learned in implementing an IT Service
Management (ITSM) tool. Below is the third
in a ten part series examining my ITSM lessons learned. I hope that these lessons help you on your
journey to ITSM nirvana.
Lesson
#3: Have a Service Catalog. The Service Catalog is the foundation of any
ITIL-based IT environment. If you don’t
have a Service Catalog, then you don’t have true Service Management. Developing a Service Catalog is not easy and
its something that should be undertaken before any discussion of a potential
ITSM tool should take place.
There
is much literature relative to developing an IT Service Catalog, but a few key
points to keep in mind are:
(a)
It should be done in conjunction with the business (customers)
(b)
It serves as the “menu” for what IT’s customers can order
(c)
“Services” deliver business outcomes
and are NOT applications or configuration items
(d)
An IT organization’s assets (applications & configuration items) align to deliver
services
(e)
When a customer raises a request for service (an Incident, Problem, Service
Request, Change, or Release), the “Service” that the customer is requesting
assistance for, should be clearly identified.
Keep
in mind that a customer doesn’t care that an application or network is down,
they only care that their business outcome is not able to be achieved. Having services defined in a catalog, and
then reporting on the availability of them, is the true first step towards IT
service management.
