Structure, content and use of IT service catalogs:empirical analysis and development of a maturity model

IT service catalogs are a pivotal element for managing IT services in many organizations, in accordance with common practice IT service management frameworks such as the IT Infrastructure Library. However, both in theory and practice, IT service catalogs are underspecified as much emphasis is put on the structure and content of the catalogs while the use and integration into IT service management processes are often neglected. Consequentially, the aim of the present paper is to propose a maturity model for IT service catalogs that covers structure and content as well as use and integration. This advances our understanding of this pivotal artifact in many IT service management systems and helps practitioners to identify improvement potentials for their IT service catalog-related practices.