Greetings and Salutations, fellow bloggers; it is I once again. Recently I have been spending a considerable amount of time helping organizations think about establishing Service Level Management within the context of ITSM process improvement projects. It is increasingly apparent that to derive real value from a Service Catalog, one cannot focus on this tower of knowledge independently. There needs to be equal focus in establishing the CMDB (which is the other needed knowledge tower). This is largely due to the significant dependencies that a catalog has on a CMDB.

Why do I say this? The reason for this is due to the dependencies that a Service Catalog has upon a related CMDB. Without a CMDB (in place or at least in some significant state), true Service Level Management (including a value-providing Service Catalog) cannot be reached. A catalog needs the support of a CMDB to provide its true value to the organization. While an initial catalog is developed as an independent knowledge tower, the maintenance and development of such a structure becomes a resource burden, and when those resources are challenged, the structure often ends up abandoned. The true value of a catalog can be found only when it is integrated with the CMDB and is employed as part of the operational fabric of the organization.

This is not to say that the approach should change to anything but iterative. It is just acknowledging that the value of a catalog is contingent on the maturity of the CMDB structure. Consequently, if the desired goal is to implement a catalog to return real value to the organization, it is imperative to coordinate the development of both towers of knowledge: catalog and CMDB.

Thoughts?

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

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