A while ago my team was tasked with the development of a Global Service Catalogue & during our discussions surrounding this I had reason to ask one of our senior managers "What do you mean by Service?" He defined every software application we manage as a service, giving us a catalogue with thousands of entries. That just felt unwieldy and unmanageable to me! So, at what level should we define "Service" to make this practical? ITIL V3 defines a service as " a means of delivering value to a customer by facilitating the outcome that they wish to achieve......" In our regional catalogue we currently provide process enablement services in addition to the regular workplace services to the various Business Units to support there business processes. These differentiated services are made up of IT components which are required to facilitate the process. A good example is the email service. An email service is made up of several components including the exchange server & the network in addition to the MS Outlook application. If we only list the application as the service we ignore all the supporting components which impact the customers experience of that service.
I believe a good catalogue contains service groupings, such as Collaboration services, which contain services, such as e-mail, which are made up of components, such as Outlook & has utility options such as the choice between a 50mb mailbox & a 2000mb mailbox. Another service grouping could be differentiated services which contains the procurement service of which e-mail is a mere component.
Another definition of a service is:
A service is a "measured process" with a "public interface" which delivers its output in "exchange for value received".
“measured process” - The performance and output of a service is measured in terms perceptible and meaningful to its consumer. The level of service quality is routinely reported and measured, which results as a determining factor in the price of the delivered outputs.
“public interface” - The service provider occupies a different domain of planning and budgetary authority from those of its customers. Related processes within a given domain of authority are expected to cooperate in support of the aims of the organization.
“exchange for value received” - May be transactional (pay per delivery) or budgetary (prior funding). Mechanism enabling provider to be cost-effective in negotiating and tuning service levels and output to meet changing customer needs.
This lends credence to my theory that an application, in and of itself, is not a service, it is merely a component of a service, the question is, does everyone else see it that way?
#itsm #itservice #service catalogue