Itil And The Service Catalog Rightsellingnet

Summary

ITIL Service Portfolio Management
and the Service Catalog
Whitepaper
Contents
Executive Summary ................................................................................................................................. 3
Service Portfolio Management According to ITIL .................................................................................... 4
Service Lifecycle Management ............................................................................................................ 4
Business Service Management ............................................................................................................ 5
The Service Portfolio as a Strategic Asset ............................................................................................... 5
Service Portfolio Details .......................................................................................................................... 6
Service Pipeline ................................................................................................................................... 6
Service Catalog .................................................................................................................................... 7
Retired Services ................................................................................................................................... 7
A Closer Look at the Service Catalog ....................................................................................................... 7
Structure .............................................................................................................................................. 7
The Role of the Configuration Management System and Configuration Management Database ..... 8
Implementing and Leveraging the Service Portfolio ............................................................................... 8
Gaining Control of Development Projects........................................................................................... 9
Automating Service Request Management ........................................................................................ 9
Extending Beyond IT Services .............................................................................................................. 9
Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................. 10
2
Executive Summary
IT executives and their teams face the need to have a comprehensive and accurate view of IT
services. Without this view, it’s difficult, if not impossible, to run IT as a business. To be successful, IT
organizations must create comprehensive and accurate documentation of their “products,” including
planned and existing services. The result is a service catalog that includes all relevant details about
each service, including which service level agreements (SLAs) are associated with it, who is able to
request it, how much it costs, and how to fulfill it

You can leverage this information to gain full control of your service portfolio through effective service
portfolio management. This approach helps you focus on your priorities to improve the services that
support the business. It allows for the most efficient use of IT resources, which reduces costs and
helps increase business agility and user satisfaction. Ultimately, service portfolio management sets up
a process for the business to generate greater value

This paper describes the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) Version 3 (V3) approach to service portfolio
management. It examines the various components of the service portfolio, such as the service
catalog. In addition, it discusses technologies available to develop and manage the service portfolio
and to leverage the information contained in the catalog

3
Service Portfolio Management According to ITIL
ITIL stresses the importance of effectively managing the entire lifecycle of every service; from request
to retirement. This requires a disciplined approach to the following:
 Performing a strategic assessment of the benefits and potential value generation of the IT services
 Evaluating requests for new services or for enhancements to current services
 Planning and developing new and enhanced services for requests that have been approved
 Deploying new and enhanced services into operation with minimal risk
 Effectively managing and supporting operational services
 Continually evaluating services and searching for areas of improvement
 Retiring services that no longer have business value
Many IT organizations are already addressing the management of deployed services by using
available service management tools and solutions. These tools enable IT to maintain service delivery
at agreed-upon levels and provide effective support. Solutions are also available that enable IT to
understand the relationships of the services to the underlying technology components that support
them, as well as the business priorities of the services

Service Lifecycle Management
IT organizations are looking at ways to gain better control of services by addressing the management
of the full service lifecycle. ITIL V3 provides an approach for implementing effective service
lifecycle management: Service Portfolio Management. As defined in Section 5.4 of the ITIL V3 Service
Strategy book1 and illustrated in Figure 1, service portfolio management consists of four major steps:
 Define. Collect information and inventories of existing services. Establish the requirements for the
requested service, and establish the business case for implementing the service

 Analyze. Review the long-term business goals, and determine what services are required to meet
those goals. Then analyze the requested service for financial viability, operational capability, and
technical feasibility to determine how the organization is going to get there. (You may decide to
obtain the service from an outsourcer rather than develop it internally.)
 Approve. Make a decision to retain, replace, renew, or retire the services

 Charter. Communicate action items to the organization to implement approved service, and
allocate budget and resources

Figure 1. Service Portfolio Management
The define, analyze, and approve steps are described in the ITIL V3 Service Strategy book. The
charter step is discussed in the ITIL V3 Service Design book

4
Business Service Management
The service portfolio management process requires continual re-evaluation and refreshing of services
to adapt to changing business conditions. This can be accomplished through more rigorous planning
and analysis based on comprehensive business information, such as leveraging top-down Business
Service Management (BSM) analysis. BSM is an approach for managing IT from the perspective of
the business. By following this approach, you can make better decisions about which services to
develop, deploy, and retain. The process helps you make more effective decisions based on business
factors - such as cost and expected value to the business - as well as on technical feasibility. With a
view of your service portfolio, you can readily identify other services that provide the same or similar
functions as a requested service to avoid duplicating services

Effective service portfolio management helps you make better-informed, make-or-buy decisions, such
as whether to outsource. You can determine the actions to take related to pricing services because
you’ll have accurate cost information

This approach also helps you determine which services to run as usual and which to transform into
new services as determined by business needs and your ability to expand your offerings. Finally, it lets
you retire a service that does not meet minimum technical and functional objectives. As a result, you’ll
improve your service offering by focusing on services that deliver the most value to the business

In a mature IT organization, the most complex task of an IT executive is to integrate IT goals and
objectives with overall business goals and value drivers. To organize the activities of IT around the
business, IT needs to find a mechanism to link IT processes to business processes. This is a difficult
task since IT and the business typically speak a different language and have goals and objectives that
are not always directly connected. The best way to focus communication is for IT to answer the
question, “What is the desired outcome for the business?”
The IT organization needs to manage IT as a service, rather than as individual technology
components. Managing services is a lot more complex, and it requires that many individual
technology components work together to deliver the desired business outcome

A BSM approach focuses on linking service assets to higher-level business services. This approach
enables IT to make business sense of individual technology components. These metrics and the
ultimate business goals need to be documented and carried forward as part of service portfolio
management

The Service Portfolio as a Strategic Asset
The service portfolio defined by ITIL V3 provides the data foundation for service portfolio
management. The most important step in portfolio management involves strategic analysis. Look at
the market space and your customers to analyze which areas will provide the most value to your
business. The analysis involves considering your own capabilities and resources, as well as those of
suppliers, to help you determine whether to run the business as usual or to grow it. In some cases, a
unique opportunity presents itself in the market, and you must transform the service to create a new
opportunity for the business

All IT organizations depend on vendors for applications, services, and operational capabilities. Those
vendors that provide a strategic service should be included in the strategic analysis. Service portfolio
management has a critical dependency on the supplier management process to ensure
control over cost and resources. The ultimate goal is to maximize value and keep control of your
vendor portfolio

5
Service Portfolio Details
For each service, ITIL defines the attributes that should be maintained in the service portfolio, such as
service description, business case, value proposition, priority, risks, offerings, packaging, costs, and
pricing. These are evaluated throughout the lifecycle of the service project, from strategic analysis of a
new service until the service is retired. Each one of these attributes should also be part of the
governance requirements. Therefore, keeping track of them as part of service portfolio management
allows strict control over the projects and enables corporate audit processes required for risk
assessment and audit compliance checks

The service portfolio maintains three categories of services, defined by lifecycle phase:
 Service Pipeline. Services that are planned or in development but not yet available to service
consumers
 Service Catalog. Services that are currently released and deployed or ready for deployment
 Retired Services. Services that are no longer active
Figure 2 shows how services move through the categories of the service portfolio during their lifecycle

Service Knowledge Management
System
Service Portfolio
Service Lifecycle
Service status
Requirements
Defined Service
Analyzed pipeline
Approved
Chartered
Designed
Developed
Built Service
Tested catalog
Released
Operational
Retired
Figure 2. Service Lifecycle Categories
Service Pipeline
The service pipeline represents the strategic outlook that you, the service provider, should take

Services begin their lifecycle in the service pipeline, starting with the strategic assessment of the
marketplace and/or customers to be served. The pipeline includes the services that have been
requested and are currently being evaluated. Here, you identify the requirements of the requested
services. You then define and analyze the services based on a number of factors, including cost, risk,
and expected business value. Based on the analysis, you either approve or reject requested
services. Approved services proceed from the service pipeline to the service catalog. Service pipeline
processes are defined in the ITIL V3 Service Strategy book

6
Service Catalog
The service catalog is the subset of the service portfolio that is visible to customers. The service
catalog includes all services that have been approved and are either in development for currently
deployed. Services include outsourced, co-sourced, and managed services. ITIL V3 defines several
attributes to be maintained by the service catalog for each service, such as the following:
 Service description
 Policies
 SLAs
 Ordering and request procedures
 Support terms and conditions
 Pricing and chargeback
Here, you assess the feasibility of the services that come into the service catalog from the service
pipeline, and either charter or reject them. Chartered services move to the design and development
phases. Developed services are then built, tested, released, and deployed. At this point, services
become operational, and you engage resources to support them

The service catalog is used to develop requestable services that customers can purchase and
consume. A mature service catalog is a very powerful tool for decision making. By analyzing the
demand and fulfillment capabilities a service provides, a service portfolio management approach can
assist you in making decisions to expand a service or the marketplace to serve to meet future
demands

Retired Services
It is necessary to review the service portfolio periodically to determine whether any services should be
retired. Services targeted for retirement may include those that are no longer needed by the business,
those that have been superseded by other services, and those that are no longer cost-effective. Retire
these services and identify them as “retired” in the service portfolio

A Closer Look at the Service Catalog
Maintaining a documented portfolio of services is only part of the story. You also need to communicate
this information to the organization, and that’s where a service catalog fits in

Structure
As described in section 4.1 of the ITIL V3 Service Design book2 and illustrated in Figure 3, the service
catalog has two aspects:
 Business Service Catalog provides the service consumer view. It contains details of the services
available to consumers and shows the relationships of the services to business units and business
processes

 Technical Service Catalog underpins the business service catalog and provides the IT view. It
shows the makeup of the services, including the relationships of the services to the enterprise
infrastructure elements that support them

The two aspects of the service catalog have parallels in manufacturing firms. The business service
catalog is analogous to the product catalog. The technical service catalog is analogous to the
manufacturing product assembly documents that show the assemblies and subassemblies that make
up each product. Likewise, the technical service catalog gives IT an understanding of the makeup of
services and enables IT to reuse services in different applications

7
Both the business service catalog and the technical service catalog are essential to effective service
lifecycle management as defined by the service. The business service catalog communicates
essential information to users. The technical service catalog communicates essential information to
the IT staff and shows outsourcer contributions

Figure 3. Service Catalog

The Role of the Configuration Management System and Configuration
Management Database
The configuration management system (CMS), introduced in ITIL V3, provides a strong foundation for
the service catalog. The CMS is an ecosystem that feeds, manages, analyzes, and presents the
information contained in the configuration management database (CMDB), another fundamental
component of ITIL. Although the CMDB is depicted in the ITIL books as merely a core component of
the CMS, a well-architected, federated CMDB implements much of the functionality of the CMS

The CMDB maintains data on all IT resources, including infrastructure elements and services, as
configuration items (CIs). It provides access to detailed data on each CI and maintains information
about the relationships of the CI’s to each other. As such, the CMDB provides the informational
foundation for both the business service catalog and the technical service catalog. By accessing the
CMDB through the CMS, you can extract a view of the services currently available to customers. You
can view the enterprise infrastructure, including all services and their relationships to the underlying
enterprise infrastructure components

Implementing and Leveraging the Service Portfolio
Solutions can facilitate the implementation and management of the service portfolio. For example,
some include an automatic discovery capability that initially populates the CMDB and keeps it updated
with changes. This ensures that your service catalog is always providing up-to-date information about
available services. Solutions can be used to implement a business service catalog as well a technical
service catalog and can provide tools to manage them

8
Gaining Control of Development Projects
Project portfolio management solutions leverage information in the service portfolio to permit more
effective planning and management of service development projects. They can help you in a number
of important areas, including the following:
 Project portfolio business value and risk analysis
 Project portfolio prioritization
 Project management with customizable processes and workflow
 Project financials management
 Program management
These solutions give you increased visibility into development projects across the enterprise. With this
visibility, you can determine the most valuable projects to pursue, and you can execute those projects
as efficiently as possible. In addition, you can make more accurate budget forecasts and build
collaborative relationships with IT clients. As a result, you will achieve the optimum balance between
market needs and your agility and ability to respond, and ultimately, can determine the Return on
Investment (ROI) or Return on Value (ROV) of your projects

Automating Service Request Management
A major problem faced by many IT departments is that users do not know what services are available
to them, let alone the details of those services, such as how to order them and what they cost

Typically, users contact the service desk to obtain this information, adding to an already high service
desk workload

Once users determine the services they want, they also have a difficult time procuring them, often
because they need to deal with several different sources to complete a single business service. For
example, a manager onboarding a new employee may have to deal with several departments to
provision the employee with a furnished office, including computer equipment. After requesting
services, the manager has to track delivery status across the multiple departments involved

Automated service request management systems can leverage the service catalog to provide
automated service request management and fulfillment. The user consults an online service catalog to
determine what services are available. The catalog contains all the information the user needs to know
to order a service, such as service description, terms and conditions of use, performance and
availability, warranties, price, and request procedure. A well-designed system displays only those
services that the user is authorized to request, based on his or her role

The user selects the service and enters the required information into the online service request form

The service request management system automatically triggers the required actions to process and
fulfill the request. The system tracks the progress of each task and notifies the user when fulfillment
has been successfully completed. In addition, the user can determine the status of a request at any
time by consulting the system

It’s common knowledge that 20 percent of all the services provide 80 percent of all the value and work
effort. By automating these high-intensity services, you can create a very strong ROI. Automated
service request management makes it easy for users to request a service. In addition, it incorporates
best practices to help IT process requests in a timely manner, reducing service desk workload and
enforcing company policies and standards

Extending Beyond IT Services
Once you have put in place a strong IT service portfolio management capability, you can extend it
beyond the management of IT services. This gives you the ability to apply service portfolio
management principles and processes to other services that the enterprise provides and consumes,
both internally and externally

9
Conclusion
You contribute business value to your organization through the services you provide. That’s why you
need to ensure that you are optimizing service delivery for maximum business impact. To do so, you
need to implement effective service management, not only for deployed services, but across
the entire service lifecycle, including service planning, development, deployment, and retirement

Effective service lifecycle management requires that you have complete and accurate visibility into all
services, across their entire lifecycles. ITIL V3 specifies the creation of a product portfolio and the
implementation of service portfolio management as the foundation for effective service lifecycle
management. Through the service portfolio, both you and your users can gain greater visibility of
services. Your users will be able to quickly find and acquire the services they need, and you will be
able to make better-informed, business-based decisions regarding services. As a result, you’ll provide
greater business value to the organization

As defined in Section 5.4 of the ITIL V3 Service Strategy book1 and illustrated in Figure 1, service portfolio management consists of four major steps: Define. Collect information and inventories …

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Frequently Asked Questions

Why is the catalog important in the itil lifecycle?

Accurate and up-to-date information in the catalog is crucial. It is important that everyone in the IT services team have access to up-to-date information regarding existing services and services ready for deployment. This will help to make accurate decisions during the various steps of the ITIL lifecycle.

What is service catalogue management in itil?

Service Catalogue Management (or Service Catalog Management) is one of the well-defined main processes under Service Design module of the ITIL best practice framework. As defined in ITIL V3, it is a controlled process which ensures that Service Catalogue is produced, maintained,...

When should i enter a new service into the service catalog?

Every new service should be entered into the Service catalog once its initial definition of requirements has been documented and agreed. The Service catalog should record the status of every service, through the stages of its defined lifecycle. Are you looking forward to becoming an ITIL expert?

What are the key features of a service catalog tool?

Another desirable feature for a service catalog tool is alignment with industry best practices and frameworks such as COBIT, ITIL 4, VAL-IT, and ISO 27000. In the previous sections, we discussed key metrics that help you assess the effectiveness of your service catalog strategy.