Service Portfolio, Service Definitions and Service Catalogs
Service providers should maintain a service portfolio that provides a complete overview of all services, and possibly one or several service catalogs for the customers. The detailed service properties are documented in service definitions.
Part of: Service management concepts
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The service portfolio
The service portfolio provides an overview of the services managed by the service provider.
The service portfolio contains high-level information on the services and is particularly important for managing the service inter-dependencies:
As a rule, every customer service relies on one or several supporting services (internal services not visible to the customers), which in turn may rely on further, lower-level supporting services.
See also: Service portfolio (document template / checklist)
Service definitions
Service definitions describe the properties of the services in detail, and every item in the service portfolio will typically be associated with (and contain a link to) a service definition.
See also: Service definition (document template / checklist)
Service catalogs
Many organizations also publish service catalogs, special views of the information in the service portfolio which allow current or prospective customers to obtain information about the service on offer. Service catalogs are often also "interactive", allowing customers and users, for example, to report incidents (service interruptions) or raise service requests. There may be several service catalogs, for instance for specific (groups of) customers or purposes.
Notes
By: Andrea Kempter and Stefan Kempter , IT Process Maps.
The service portfolio › Service definitions › Service catalogs