The IT Skeptic - request

Service catalogue and request catalogue

skeptic — Mon, 09 May 2016 10:57:16 +0000

It is hard to believe that confusion between service catalogue and request catalogue is still a thing but it is, as shown by a recent conversation on Facebook Back2ITSM.

Service catalogue and service request catalogue

skeptic — Sun, 25 Nov 2012 02:54:35 +0000

Both service catalogue and service request catalogue matter - the order in which you address them and the relative priority you give them depends on the circumstances. Don't fall for the hype around service request catalogue right now. Click to tweet this.

Shopping: request vs incident

skeptic — Mon, 30 Jul 2012 19:47:23 +0000

Roy asked the question "Would you agree that there's no difference between walking into a store and buying something (perhaps asking a clerk where the item is located), and returning an item that is broken or which doesn't fit?". It was such a good example I decided to answer in a blog post.

The Standard+Case approach: applying Case Management to ITSM

skeptic — Mon, 18 Jun 2012 23:44:25 +0000

Here is an exciting new approach to categorising and resolving any sort of activity "tickets", such as requests (including incidents) on a service desk, problems, or changes. It is called Standard+Case until somebody comes up with a better name. I know there is so much to read these days, but if you have anything to do with service support or change management, read this. It'll change your year.

Standard+Case is a synthesis of our conventional "Standard" process-centric approach to responding, with Case management, a discipline well-known in some other industry sectors such as health, social work, law and policing.

S+C addresses criticisms of approaches like ITIL for being too process-centric and not allowing customers and knowledge workers to be empowered. S+C does not seek to replace or change ITIL or other theory: it expands and clarifies that theory to provide a more complete description of managing responses.

It provides a good skills path for service desk analysts that fits well with gamification. And Standard+Case is applicable to Problem Management and Change Management (and Event Management...) as well as Service Desk activities. S+C applies to anything that requires a human response: there's either a standard response or there isn't.

For more information about Standard + Case, see the Basic Service Management website.

A menu is not a service catalogue

skeptic — Mon, 21 May 2012 02:25:53 +0000

A menu is not a service catalogue. Please can we desist with this awful analogy. It makes people think automated service requests is an "actionable service catalogue". It's not. It's an actionable request catalogue.

Response Management

skeptic — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 22:43:15 +0000

The more I think about it the more convinced I become that the way ITIL and COBIT and ISO20000 structure incident and request fails the basic test of being customer-focused or business-aligned.

A list of Request Classes to help out ITIL

skeptic — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 20:37:12 +0000

Recently we discussed how I think ITIL V3 muddies the definition of Incident, and of Incident Management. As part of that discussion I realised that my own list of Request classes had missed one, "Fault". That list came from my book Introduction to Real ITSM which is a satirical version. A more serious one was originally published by me in the article The Evolution of the ITIL Request on ITSMWatch.

So I thought I'd update my list.

ITIL V3 Incident Definition: Camels and Committees

skeptic — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 08:20:44 +0000

ITIL defines an incident to be an impact on service or a failure of a CI that might impact service. I think that is clumsy. An incident is an impact on service. Period. A failure of a CI is something else.