Design Science Research: A Suitable Approach to Scope and Research IT Service Catalogs

Abstract

Based on the best-practice framework ITIL, an IT service catalog is a system which displays all live IT services but does not manage service requests. Moreover, an IT service catalog also shows how IT services are technically realized. When implementing an IT service catalog as part of the IT service management, firms often struggle with service catalog implementation projects as it requires portfolio-wide information and knowledge about service design, service operations, the customers' use of services, service level agreements and service costing. There is a lack of existing literature on how to design an IT service catalog to fit the individual context and service offerings of companies. This concise paper proposes an approach based on design science for defining the initial design requirements for IT service catalogs. Using this approach in practice resulted in the identification and scoping of the design objectives of IT service catalogs to the needs of individual firms. Moreover, the explorative knowledge on how to design an IT service catalog has been validated by following rigorous research guidelines set out by the design science research method.