The Power of the Core Service Catalog

Michele Morrison and Brian HosierEDUCAUSE – Wednesday, October 19, 2005

Copyright Michele Morrison 2005. This work is the intellectual property of the author. Permission is granted for this material to be shared for non-commercial, educational purposes, provided that this copyright statement appears on the reproduced materials and notice is given that the copying is by permission of the author. To disseminate otherwise or to republish requires written permission from the author.

Agenda

• Definitions• How it all started • Our support

environment• Getting up to

speed and process to date

• What’s next?• Keeping it current• Lessons learned• So what is the

power of the Core Services Catalog?

Acronyms

ITIL – IT Infrastructure LibrarySLM – Service Level ManagementSLT – Service Level TargetsSLA – Service Level AgreementOLA – Operational Level AgreementUC – Underpinning contract

Definition

Core Services Catalog • Default SLA for an organization• Defines base level services for all clients• In most organizations it should cover 80%

of your clients support requirements• Part of an overall SLM strategy• Starting point to define specific SLAs for

clients with differing support requirements

Service Level Management

Service Desk / Service catalog

SLA

SLA SL

A

SLA

SLA

SLA

SLA

SLA

Staff Faculty Students Tenants

PCNET

LAB APPAPP

Clients

IT Services

OLA – Operational Level Agreement

UC – Underpinning ContractsVendors

How it all started

• A need for improved customer service by managing client expectations

• No clear definition of what we supported • Client complaints about inconsistent

service • Some SLAs were being developed for

departments with special needs• SLAs needed for the rest of the Institute

BCIT’s IT support environment

• We support: – Students– Faculty – Admin staff– Tenants– BCIT community groups (e.g.

Student Association, Unions, etc.)• 2,000 employees• 16,000 full-time and 32,000 part-

time student registrations• 5 major campuses• 12 – 15 satellite campuses • 80+ IT staff at two locations

BCIT’s IT support environment (cont.)

100 Servers(Novell, Windows, AIX, Linux, Solaris)

2,000 Staff PCs

300 Software

Apps

2,400 Lab PCs

165 Computer

Labs

Increasing demand for

7 x 24 Support

Getting up to speed• Help Desk Institute (HDI) training on Service Level

Agreements (2002) • ITIL Fundamentals (2002) and Practitioner training–

Service Management (2004) • PINK Conferences (Toronto 2002, Orlando 2003 and

Vancouver 2005) – attended sessions on Service Catalogs (e.g. Justice Cluster of Ontario, ABN Amro Bank, etc.)

• HDI Conference (Vancouver 2003)

We learned about industry best practices before we started – Don’t start cold!

What to include in in the Core Services Catalog

• Service name and description• Service availability• Identification of the clients/customers• Metrics• Business process supported by the service• Customer role• How to access the service• Version numbers and creation/revision dates

Process to date

• Defined our services • Divided the project into two phases• Marketed the need for a core service catalog

internally • Involved team leaders to help define and write

content• Reviewed UCs • Established a review cycle and editing process

Process to date (cont.)

• Developed an OLA for IT staff • Conducted focus groups and updated content

based on feedback• Integrated service level targets into our Help Desk

tool• Published Phase I on the web and in hardcopy

format • Started work on Phase II

How we defined our services

Phase I:• Help Desk• Network Infrastructure & Printing• Enterprise Server & Centralized Data Storage • Lab • Desktop• Appendices:

– List of Supported Products– Current Computer Specifications– Service Request Estimates

How we defined our services (cont.)

Phase II• Messaging & Collaboration• Application Hosting• Web & Portal• E-Learning

• Professional

What’s next

• Complete Phase II and publish (both web version and inserts for hardcopy binders)

• Establish role for Service Level Manager • Identify groups with unique SLA requirements

(based on business requirements)• Define, negotiate, sign-off and publish SLAs• Annual review and updates of Service Catalog

and SLAs

Keeping it current

• Need to ensure that ongoing resources exist to keep the catalog and SLAs up to date

• Client community needs to have input into the catalog during updates

• Update schedule:– Core Service Catalog – annually– Appendices – quarterly– SLAs - annually

Revision Process

• Process for both annual and quarterly updates

• Updates go through change management process

• Updates are communicated to the Institute

Computer Resources - Service Level Management Service Catalogue - Revision Process

Review with Customers and content owners(3 months prior)

Submit RFC as Significant

Change

Update changes

Recreate/revise Index

Recreate PDFs

Republish to CR Web

Master update complete?

Communicate to BCIT

Revision Complete

Word DOC Master

Yes

No

Annual

Rob / Michele update Appendix

content

Quarterly

Lessons learned

• It is all about building relationships• You need to educate your contributors • Writing is quick, getting everyone to agree on

what was written can take weeks or months• Get commitment and support from all IT

managers• Create IT department buy-in early

Lessons learned (cont.)

• Involve your clients and/or customers• Services need to be measurable • Include an index• Communicate what you learned about what the IT

department does within the department• This is not an “off-the-side-of-the-desk” project• Need the ability to translate technical jargon to

client-friendly language

So what is the power of the Core Services Catalog?

• It becomes the starting point for an ongoing dialogue between the IT department and its clients

• It is a set of common language/definitions for the clients and within the IT department

• It clarifies what is supported and sets expectations for how the service will be delivered

• It becomes the starting point in the process to create SLAs

Resources

BCIT - www.bcit.ca/cr/services/HDI - www.thinkhdi.com/itSMF - www.itsmf.comOGC (ITIL) - www.ogc.gov.ukPINK - www.pinkelephant.com/Examinations - www.exin-exams.com/

Questions?

Feel free to look at our Core Services Catalog on our website:

www.bcit.ca/cr/services/

Thank you!

michele_morrison@bcit.cabrian_hosier@bcit.ca