catalogue

A reader asked for advice on Service Catalogue. Here's my "Service Catalogue in a nutshell":

Not only has ITIL V3.1 2011 not fixed the problems with business-vs-technical services, they have gone the wrong way and reinforced the problem. I will fight to the death to say there is no such thing as internal supporting "services", because I care about ITSM.

Why are so many sample Business Service Catalogues so hideously boring? - dull and analytical. They should be written by marketing people: they should be brochures. Bright and colourful, creating a positive impression, selling the benefits.

If your service catalogue says you provide application "hosting", your IT department is committing organisational suicide. You need to be an Information Service Provider.

Oh dear. “The heart of ITIL is the CMDB”? No it isn’t. Not unless you are looking at ITIL from underneath. Yet another example of inside-out thinking instead of outside-in. Do customers care about the CMDB more than the Catalogue? No. Is ITSM about being customer-focused and service-centric? Well, I thought so.

The heart of ITIL is the service catalogue.

Technical vs Business service catalogue: we had a go at this argument previously but I am discussing it again over on LinkedIn and I have - I hope - a clearer way of stating the position. The popular perception of a Technical Service Catalogue is that it described different service entities than a Business Service Catalogue. That's just plain wrong. It gives IT staff entirely the wrong attitudes and mindset. So here is my shot at a definitive statement of position on Technical vs Business Service Catalogue. For any organisational unit, for the services that are the outputs across the boundary of that unit, there is only one service catalogue ...and only one set of services.

Those of you who have the misfortune to NOT live in this part of the planet probably won't be at the Aussie itSMF conference to meet me, so how about coming to debate service catalogues with me on next week's webinar where I'll be giving my own unconventional views on the topic. We'll be taking live questions!

The question was asked on a LinkedIn forum: after the initial launch and training for a service catalogue, how to ensure it gets used? My view:

Oh dear it's an outbreak. I'm once again debating on a forum whether the services in the Technical Service Catalogue are different services from those in the Business Service Catalogue. And it shows up recently on a major website. I consider this concept of internal IT services as nothing short of tragic. Anyone who thinks the two catalogues could list different services clearly fails to grasp the whole fundamental point of service management, which is to get everyone to think in terms of the service delivered to the customer. And there are plenty of folk think that way, judging by early results in our latest poll.

[Updated with a Health Warning] Recently I wrote "It seems Technical Service Catalogue is often misunderstood to mean a catalogue of different services from those in the Business Service Catalogue. It's not. It is a different view of the same services". And those views are quite complex.