Technical Service Offering relationship with Application Service

Sandra Clendon · ‎08-14-2023

When modelling the ServiceNow platform, we have come across a scenario that we're not sure how to resolve. We have situations where we believe Technical Service Offerings "depend" on Application Services (that are "contained by" other Technical Service Offerings).

Examples are:

TSO: "ITOM Administration" contains App. Serv. "Certificate Management DEV", "Certificate Management TEST" and "Certificate Management PROD"

TSO: "PKI Management" depends on App Serv. "Certificate Management PROD"

or

TSO: "ITSM Administration" contains App. Serv. "Change Management DEV".... etc

TSO: "ITIL Change Management" depends on App. Serv. "Change Management PROD"

While we can create these "depends on" relationships, they are not supported by any of the OOTB service builder options and do not show up in DPM. They do all support the recommended Business Service Offering "depends on" relationship with Application Services.

Am I missing something here in our design? PKI Management and ITIL Change Management are clearly Technical Service Offerings, but it's our ServiceNow platform team that owns, roadmaps, enhances and maintains these products (also Technical Services).

Kristine Naess · ‎08-15-2023

Hi Sandra and Casper,

We have chosen to divide services between cmdb_ci_service_technical and cdmb_ci_service_business according to this TBM mapping:

So if there's a business consumer (not IT tech person) to the offering, it's a business offering. Otherwise it's a tech offering. And even if the data model suggests a different relationship as default for tech offerings to application services, we have used the same. And in a Data Foundations PAC meeting in K23, Scott Lemm/Mark Bodman told they were going to open up for more "bespoke" relationship types in the future.

This also allows a business offering (using an business user facing application) to be dependant on a tech offering (using a tech user facing application) that again is dependant on an application service to function, which can be helpful when you want to see who may be impacted by an outage.

Regards,

Kristine

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Michael Dul · ‎08-15-2023

Hi Sandra,

It is absolutely fine for a Technical Service Offering to be dependent on an Application Service. This relationship can also be used for any dependent infrastructure. You can have backup services dependent on backup application services, or even on the jump server itself. In the same way as you are describing, your ITSM Offerings are dependent on ServiceNow.

I would add however that for me one of the most important questions about Business Service Offerings is the level of your modelling. If you map only your internal IT offerings in ServiceNow, it may make more sense to create those as Business Offerings as they will represent your highest aggregation that you deliver to your customers. If however you represent wider scope of your company and offerings more aligned to the nature of the business your company provides, things like ITSM Change next to Manufacturing Offerings can look rather technical and as such I would move them to Technical Services.

In the end, it needs to make sense for your company.

Best Regards,

Michael

l337 · ‎08-23-2023

Hi Sandra,

This slide may help you, it was taken from their CSDM Data Model Examples deck.

Sandra Clendon · ‎08-23-2023

Hi Steven,

I have been through all the resources I can find and download the example pack whenever it is updated.

You'll note that while the example pack covers the Incident Management scenario, the ServiceNow examples do not cover scenarios such as PKI Management which is NOT a Business Service Offering right?

I have put ITOM Administration as the the technical offering that contains ("provides and maintains") the Certificate Management Application Service. PKI Management doesn't provide or maintain the technology (not in our organisation anyway) - it depends on it. Our PKI team is much more process oriented - focused on keeping the organisation secure - using ServiceNow as a tool to manage certificate expiries.

I would argue that ITIL Change and ITIL Problem management do the same as these offerings are not visible outside of ICT (and do not have any associated non-technical catalog items), but I could equally argue a case for them being business offerings.

I cannot see a case for PKI Management being a business offering.