Read this a while ago. Still has some interesting musings.
The service catalog seems to be more operational in flavor than the application portfolio.
I agree, but the operations are different. The catalog is operational in that it has to support the PODI cycel of Publish, Order, Deliver, Integrate; while the portfolio supports a Publish, Budget, Agree, Plan cycle. The former is for consumption by consumers, the latter for budgeting and planning.
A savvy investor would of course be very concerned with how the offerings of their companies were being received, but the service catalog per se wouldn't necessarily have all the information needed to assess itself;
This is the confusion between the service catalog and the backoffice of IT. The service catalog is part of the front office of IT. Other elements of the catalog "front-office" are ordering, configuration (to-be, not the as-is that is tracked in the CMDB), relationship management, provisioning and delivery elements. It's these elements together that give the service catalog it's actionable nature.
the service catalog is just that, a catalog -- not all the operational information associated with every item in it, which is what is needed for the portfolio management process. However, having established a formal service catalog, it would seem to be a good thing to have the tools and processes supporting detailed record-keeping with respect to those services.
Absolutely agree with this notion.
More at: erp4it: IT portfolios, service catalogs, and enterprise architecture.
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