The Power of the Core Service Catalog

Michele Morrison and Judy ShandlerEDUCAUSE – Tuesday, October 10, 2006

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 ManagementSLA – Service Level AgreementOLA – Operation 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 – Operating 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.)

250 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 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 and II on the web and in

hardcopy format • Started to create SLAs for groups with differing

needs.

How we defined our services

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

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

How we defined our services (cont.)

Phase II:• Messaging & Collaboration• Application and Database Hosting• Web & Portal.

What’s next

• Establish formal role for Service Level Manager • Continue to identify groups with unique SLA

requirements (based on business requirements)• Define, negotiate, sign-off and publish remaining

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/its/services/HDI - www.thinkhdi.com/itSMF - www.itsmf.comOGC (ITIL) - www.ogc.gov.ukPINK - www.pinkelephant.com/ITIM - www.itimassociation.com

Questions?

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

www.bcit.ca/its/services/

Thank you!

michele_morrison@bcit.caJudy_shandler@bcit.ca