One of the first questions when contemplating a Service Catalog is, “Where do we start?”

The project I’m currently working on is an “ITIL maturity improvement” project, or to describe it more accurately, it’s the first phase of a long-term IT Service Management improvement program. In this phase, we’re working directly on ITIL Incident Management, Problem Management and Service Desk.

But if you know ITIL, you know it’s impossible to only work on one process area… in fact one of the key roles of the Service Desk is to be the manager and negotiator of the Service Catalog and the resulting Service Level Agreements (SLAs).

So, in this client’s case, they don’t yet have a formal Service Catalog, and yet one of the key objectives of Phase 1 is to deliver a Service Desk that enforces SLAs… and offers a Service Catalog. So how are we supposed to do that?

Here’s where it may be useful for you: Even though these folks don’t have a formal, written Service Catalog, there’s nevertheless a large set of informal, unwritten services, expectations, historical precedents and other understandings that, in the customer’s mind, have the same effect as a Service Catalog with SLAs.

I’ll give you an example - the existing Help Desk has service hours and an expectation that the phone will be answered and calls handled within a certain timeframe. This has been the usual course of business for many years; all the customers and end users have the expectation, but it’s just never been formally written up, no underpinning OLAs have been negotiated and no customer has ever placed a signature, in ink, on an agreement. Nevertheless, the Service and the SLA exist.

As we investigate, we find dozens of other examples - for instance, an application support group that deals with a particular business unit has an understanding about turnaround times for small fixes and enhancements. It’s not documented and signed, as ITIL would specify, but the Service is (somewhat) defined and the SLA is reasonably solid (though not always measured effectively).

So as you look at your shop, start looking for the “hidden” services and SLAs that are probably already there - so instead of beginning a “from scratch” exercise, you’ll be doing a “document current state” exercise.

Also, check out our new White Paper on “How To Develop a Service Catalog”.

Scott Braden

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