Service Catalog Best Practices

Overview

One of the most common problems is the fact that enterprise services are disjoint (i.e., disconnected) across different sites. It is common for organizations to have different sites or intranet sub-sites owned by different departments, each with their own services and very different service experiences. The service management tools and technologies behind the services are often different too, creating inconsistency, confusion, poor user experiences, and frustrated customers.

Best Practice

Design, publish, and maintain a Service Catalog Taxonomy as part of your Enterprise Service Catalog.

Benefit(s)

A Service Catalog taxonomy:

• Allows the design and coordination of how services are linked together and acts as a sitemap that leads customers to each service area and its underlying services.

• Improves search experience, allowing for rapid and consistent indexing and searching.

• Allows for easier automation — a taxonomy can be fed to an API generator that creates all APIs as stubs to be populated with backend automation code.

Service Catalog Taxonomy Example

[CODE]

/enterprise-root

/enterprise-root/business

/enterprise-root/business/other

/enterprise-root/business/human-resources

/enterprise-root/business/human-resources/services

/enterprise-root/business/human-resources/services/employee-onboarding

/enterprise-root/business/human-resources/services/employee-offboarding

/enterprise-root/business/human-resources/services/employee-office-move

/enterprise-root/business/human-resources/services/other

/enterprise-root/business/etc…

/enterprise-root/information-technology

/enterprise-root/information-technology/other

/enterprise-root/information-technology/helpdesk

/enterprise-root/information-technology/helpdesk/services

/enterprise-root/information-technology/helpdesk/services/change-password

/enterprise-root/information-technology/helpdesk/services/other

/enterprise-root/information-technology/etc…

[/CODE]

Figure 1: The Service Catalog taxonomy hierarchy — from Enterprise Root through Business and IT domains, sub-domains, services, and catch-all entries at every level.