In a recent webinar (you can access the on demand recording here), mike.malcangio and I discussed the barriers to service catalog success, and good practices, before looking at how service catalog technology is evolving. This blog covers the good or best practices — what would you add (or remove)?
You can download the deck here.
Service catalog good or best practices
So what can you do to help ensure that your service catalog initiative doesn't die a quick and painful death in the hands of misguided project people and unreceptive customers (end-users if you like)? Here are a few recommendations from the webinar:
- Think "service catalog management" and not just "service catalog" — what are your processes for the activities below?
- Realize that service portfolio management should be the precursor to service catalog management. You'll need to understand your end-to-end services (what they are, who uses them, what they do, how they are composed, what they cost, etc.). And in business rather than IT terms.
- Be clear about the objectives for service catalog management and not just the tool. You'll need to identify the issues and opportunities you're trying to address; and the objective should definitely not be "creating a service catalog." It's also more than a list of IT services, for most, and should ultimately deliver a better service experience and hopefully save costs.
- Importantly it's not about the technology — it's about what comes from the productive use of the technology.
- It's clichéd, but getting the right people involved is key. This is the business' service catalog not IT's. IT should not drive the look and feel, or content of the service catalog — the business should. And it's not a one-time consultation — keep them involved.
- Avoid scope creep — it sounds obvious but you know you'll get requests to change "this" or to add "that" along the way. Deliver what you planned to deliver and change as necessary after the first delivery milestone. Alternatively stop the project and regroup in unison — don't try to change things on the fly.
- Remember that this isn't just a data collection exercise. There is a danger that a service catalog is like early-adopter CMDB … the place where service data goes to die. Interestingly though, for many organizations, Service Catalog has reignited the need for a CMDB and associated service asset data.
- Think ahead — look at the potential for future shared services exploitation. A single employee portal in conjunction with HR and facilities, say. I'll bring us back to this with enterprise service management later.
- Ensure that the other ITIL processes needed to get the best out of a service catalog are fit for purpose — such as financial management (service costing through to accounting), service level management, and configuration management.
- Don't emphasize the shopping cart front-end at the expense of back-end data and activities, for example consumption monitoring, to help make optimal supply decisions.
- Automate provisioning where possible — for the proverbial "better, quicker, cheaper." And align your service catalog initiative with your corporate automation initiative(s) to help ensure that relevant experience is leveraged, integrations are catered for, and duplication of effort and possibly unnecessary costs are avoided.
And finally… #13
Keep at it. As well as the need for the service catalog management envelope there is also a need to keep monitoring and encouraging use.
So:
- Continue to involve your customers; actively seek feedback and be open to criticism;
- Monitor usage, and offer additional coaching and training;
- Consider, and try, different ways to increase service catalog use and to improve ease of use; and
- Nurture and feed service catalog activities like you would any other living thing.
Well that's it from me and what I said in the webinar. I'd love you to offer up more best or good practices by way of a reply below.
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