Service catalogue management (ITIL 4)

Parent Process Reference Framework: ITIL 4

Service Value Stream Activities

Highly impacted Service Value System(SVS) Activities:

• Engage 

Description

The purpose of the service catalogue management practice is to provide a single source of consistent information on all services and service offerings, and to ensure that it is available to the relevant audience.

The list of services within the service catalogue represents those which are currently available and is a subset of the total list of services tracked in the service provider’s service portfolio. Service catalogue management ensures that service and product descriptions are expressed clearly for the target audience to support stakeholder engagement and service delivery. The service catalogue may take many forms such as a document, online portal, or a tool that enables the current list of services to be communicated to the audience.

The full list of services within a service catalogue may not be applicable to all customers and/or users. Likewise, the various attributes of services such as technical specifications, offerings, agreements, and costs are not applicable to all service consumer types. This means that the service catalogue should be able to provide different views and levels of detail to different stakeholders. Examples of views include:

• User views Provide information on service offerings that can be requested, and on provisioning details.
• Customer views Provide service level, financial, and service performance data.
• IT to IT customer views Provide technical, security, and process information for use in service delivery.

While multiple views of the service catalogue are possible, the creation of separate or isolated service catalogues within different technology systems should be avoided if possible as this will promote segregation, variability, and complexity.

For the service catalogue to be perceived as useful by the customer organization it must do more than provide a static platform for publishing information about IT services. Unless the service catalogue enables customer engagement by supporting discussions related to standard and non-standard service offerings and/or automates request and order fulfilment processes, the chances of its ongoing adoption as a useful and meaningful resource are minimal. For this reason, the views of many organizations on the service catalogue are focused on the consumable or orderable elements of service offerings. These are often called request catalogues.