About Enterprise Architecture (AboutEA.com) - An Information Technology Weblog

Where Is An Example Of A Best Practice IT Service Catalog

IT Service Catalog - The Central Component Of IT Governance:

"Many IT organizations on the leading edge of IT best practices are currently leveraging these tools to implement Service Catalog-centric IT Governance frameworks. They are defining the services being delivered, implementing systems to manage the delivery of these services, developing metrics and KPIs to measure the quality and cost of delivering these services, and using this information to improve their delivery processes."

OK, I'm sold already! Where can I find the framework for a best-practice IT Services Catalog?!

ITSM Gives IT A Business Process Orientation

The Growing Importance of ITSM:

"...it will allow you to put in place repeatable processes that are based on twenty-plus years of industry best practices therefore relieving you of the burden of having to figure everything out for the first time, every time."

This sounds gloriously like the case I'm trying to make for documenting business architecture, including business processes. To implement this, I need to get my hands on what a standard IT Services Catalog contains and begin to use it to structure the IT process documentation.

My research to date seems like that's easier said that done. Is all this work done just by consultants who don't share their work? Or am I missing some great open resources on IT Service Catalogs?

If I'm Documenting IT Processes Am I Designing A Service Catalog?

Does an IT Service Catalog equate to a process framework for IT that can be used to organize the processes of an IT organization? In reading The Boris Files - Secrets of Successful CIOs: Best Practices for Service Catalog Design, it seems like it is, but I'm in dire need of some confirmation of this, so I can bring it to IT folks that are beginning to document their business processes and need a structure for doing this.

Here's an interesting graphic from the article that shows what I think are different branches of the IT Services tree (although the reverse-stairstep nature suggests a hierarchy itself).

I'm helping to organize a process framework for my business, to enable us to all speak a common language, take advantage of standard benchmarking data, and just be organized. One framework that I'm looking at using (mostly because I haven't found another one as complete) is the APQC Process Classification Framework. The PCF has a branch called 7.0 Manage Information Technology and Knowledge.

But there is lots of talk in our IT organization about aligning along IT Services and ITIL. Some groups in IT are starting to document their processes, which I believe equate to ITIL Services .

The big question for me is should we swap out the APQC PCF 7.0 section for something that is more ITIL standard, like this concept of an IT Service Catalog? Is there a hierarchy or outline for IT Services based on ITIL that presents itself more like the APQC PCF outline?

Feedburner - News Feed Subscription Management

Feedburner provides the service I'm currently using to manage subscriptions to my weblog updates. Feedburner provides my weblog readers with a way to easily subscribe to the updates in all the big news feed aggregators, like Bloglines, Newsgator, Rojo, NetNewsWire, and in their favorite personal 'My' Portals, like My Yahoo, My AOL, My MSN, etc. My weblog readers can also subscribe to get updates delivered by email if that's there preference, and Feedburner manages that too (with strong email address privacy protection). For me, Feedburner provides statistics on number of subscribers, what they may be reading and clicking to, and ways to make my feeds more usable to readers and more financially benefitting to me (eventually). I've added the Feedburner Blog, Burning Questions, to My Application Architecture so I can follow the happenings there and provide new features as they come out.

I've also retired Feedblitz which was an RSS Email Subscriptions tool I was using to the Application Archive. I will add Bloglet, another similar tool I've used in the past, when I swap it out for subscription management on this very blog. More on that to come soon.

Managing An Application Architecture

Staying current with the application and service tools you use in your enterprise, be it a personal enterprise for communicating with your family and social networks or a business enterprise providing products and services to customers, is important and one way to do that is to utilize news feeds from both service vendors and independant sources. Which is why I built the My Application Architecture category in my Bloglines account.

Eventually, this will get unwieldy because the services any enterprise uses get to be really large, especially business enterprises. So there will need to be some means of categorizing the application architecture so it is meaningful and useable. My gut tells me the way to do this is some sort of tagging or categorizing by the process the service supports, be it photo management, personal communication, or financial management.

One other thought is for storting information about both future services to follow and archival of information sources on application services that have gone along the wayside. You don't really need to follow these old application information sources, but having them around to check in on every once in a while isn't a bad idea. So, I've added an Application Archive folder to my Bloglines account and moved the FeedBlitz RSS Updates By Email tool there (I'm using Feedburner for this now).

Here's what the Application Archive folder looks like currently...

My Application Architecture

My Application Architecture describes the software and system services I use to support the processes in my life, whether they are the ones I use in my career as a Business Process Architect and Internet Community Services Consultant or in my life as a citizen journalist (someone who wants to share what's going on with family, friends, community, and anyone who wants to listen!).

One way to keep up on the software and services I use is by following official (provided by the software / service provider) and un-official (provided by unofficial sources, such as service users like us) news feeds provided by these sources of information. I follow these and other news feeds using a service called Bloglines, and in particular, in a folder of news feeds called, appropriately, My Application Architecture (here's the latest news from the feeds in My Application Architecture).

I've started out following and describing My Application Architecture with services I use for tracking and sharing news feeds (Bloglines), post and share calendar events (Eventful), and post and share pictures (Flickr). As I find more sources for the applications I use, I'll add feeds to My Application Architecture and blog about them here.

Here's the current list of news feeds I'm following about My Application Architecture...