Tag Archives: service

The Necessity of a Service Catalog

Thomas Failor, AIM class of 2014.This is a guest post by AIM alum Thomas Failor, 2014, about the benefits and necessity of having an Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) service catalog in your IT or operations department.

Sometimes painful lessons are good ones in hindsight. In a previous life I moved from sales management to operations and one of my first tasks was to write a service catalog for my department’s offerings. Let’s just say my early efforts weren’t a hit, but with a little help I pulled it together. Learn from the error of my ways.

So what’s a service catalog? Service catalogs are just that, a catalog of the services your department provides. Formally identified in the 2007 Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) V3 as a suggested best practice, service catalogs have been used in well run organizations since at least the early 2000s. Most were justified in the return on investment of reducing cycle times and improving outcomes. With the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, service catalogs gained importance as a way to document processes for audits.

Everything your group does is likely regarded as a service for someone or some group in the company. Does your work stream have a service level agreement (SLA) you’re required to meet? If so, your group provides a service and you need a service catalog. The main reason service catalogs are so important is that they provide a vehicle for your group to communicate and negotiate SLA agreements with other groups or customers, both internal and external. Without a document to formalize these relationships, your group will be tone deaf to your customers and likely provide poor service.

Service catalogs have some common ingredients, but overall they are a managed document that describes:

  • what you do and what it’s called,
  • who owns your service,
  • when you do it,
  • to whom you provide the service,
  • how to request the service,
  • how service is delivered,
  • what you charge for the service,
  • any SLAs related to your service.

More formally, a service catalog is implemented “in a manner that facilitates the ‘registration, discovery, request, execution, and tracking of desired services for catalog users.’” – Wikipedia.

There are many free templates on the web to get you started writing a service catalog, but it may benefit you to produce a high-level diagram listing suppliers, inputs, processes, outputs, and customers of your particular business process to help identify who ALL of your customers are and what teams supply your various processes. You’d be surprised how little agreement there can be about who the customer is. Try it, you may be amazed at what you discover.

An ITIL trade group in the UK provides some detailed Service information on Catalogs on their website.

In essence, a service catalog provides two benefits. It allows you to clarify the services and service levels that you provide and it provides a clear advertisement to your customers as to your offerings. If nothing else, a service catalog is a great exercise in seeing your services from your internal and external customers, and hopefully acting to improve them over time.

Tech Heroes Among Us

People standing with hero shadowsThis week I have thinking about the tech heroes among us. You may be one or you may know one. This is the person that helps you get a new app on your phone or customize your LinkedIn account. As I have mentioned in previous blogs, technology is not always user friendly, although it is improving. Interfaces are not always intuitive even though we now have dedicated user experience engineers. Until we get to that perfect understanding of every app, tool, and device every time, we need the tech hero.

Celebrating the Tech Hero

Cloud services hosting company Carpathia has a mechanism for nominating tech heroes. The chosen few receive a backpack filled with things that tech heroes need such as a notebook computer and toolkit, even energy drinks. Carpathia is also hosting Tech Hero events in various cities around the country to meet and celebrate tech heroes. The purpose is to recognize those unsung heroes that keep us going every day (and to sell cloud services to those that know exactly what that is).

Who Are These People?

I have found that tech heroes are not always the people with the deepest knowledge of technology but those people who have taken the time to understand the logic of computers and applications AND have the ability to explain it to the rest of us. That is sometimes a rare combination of talents. Perhaps there should be a designated position of “Tech Hero” within an organization. That way, the current tech heroes—currently just over the wall or around the corner—can get their real work done.

Who Is Your Tech Hero?

Tell me who your tech heroes are. I would like to recognize them in future blogs and give them their fifteen minutes of fame. Is it an IT guru, coworker, spouse, son or daughter? Or is it you? Add a comment to this blog naming your tech hero and explaining why they are so awesome. They may be quietly performing miracles, but it is time we honor them for the very necessary service that they provide. Let me know.

 

About Kelly BrownAuthor Kelly Brown

Kelly Brown is an IT professional, adjunct faculty for the University of Oregon, and academic director of the UO Applied Information Management Master’s Degree Program. He writes about IT and business topics that keep him up at night.