Executive's Guide to IT Governance: Improving Systems Processes with Service Management, COBIT, and ITIL

CHAPTER TWELVE

IT Service Catalogs: Realizing Greater Value from IT Operations

AS WE HAVE DISCUSSED IN PREVIOUS CHAPTERS, in the earlier days of IT systems, business users went to their IT department managers or systems personnel and requested that they upgrade their existing IT systems or launch new ones. Requests then were often for little more than new or different format paper-based reports. These users, however, often complained about poor IT service because their requested systems projects were delivered late, did not meet expectations, or had other problems. This was in the days when there were limited IT systems and services and certainly before the days of the Internet. The requesting users typically outlined their needs and completed some type of formal request for IT services. IT would review, often approve, and schedule the requested work—sometimes sooner but more often later than the desired user-initiated request.

IT services today are much more complex than just the regularly delivered financial and operational reports of years past. System users today often have needs for special analyses based on other existing systems; they may have some special procedure timing needs due to international legal reporting requirements, or they have an interest in some new technology they encountered at a trade show and are interested in seeing the same in their enterprise. IT functions usually have many systems and tools at their disposal, but members of user community departments ...