"Done correctly and accurately, this maps out how IT works, and establishes the Demand side of the IT Supply equation. This also helps the maturation and professional development that is sorely missing in many companies. This can be used to map out and plan how to make the environment agile (from the theoretical to the practical), in a business viable way.

"The premise is fairly simple, but the implications huge (it's not a simple path to tread, but definitely can be done fruitfully)," he says. "There are two basic parts:

• Level of services the corporation requires: Basic IT infrastructure services (not common, and very outsource-centric), infrastructure and responsible for application services (but not application development), to full application ownership.
• Type of operational model the corporate requires: Cost recovery, profit centre, service centre, etc.

"Once these are established, the service model can be constructed and the catalogue derived. This model and catalogue then becomes basis for all communications, projects and alignments - within IT and with the business! If this is approached in other ways: SLA first, catalogue first, or whatever, you run the potential of entering into a near death spiral! The development of a model should only take a day, and the catalogue skeleton (for almost any size organization) should take no longer than a week to compile! The detail does take longer!

"The model and catalogue should be used as a communications vehicle and focus structure efforts. It can also be used as the principle collaboration mechanism to partner with the business units.

"The other extension to this is with a model and catalogue, then trust can be built, and more advanced alignment started - alignment of criteria, strategies, etc.