By Chad Greenslade

I have often been asked about my lessons learned in implementing an IT Service Management (ITSM) tool.  Below is the sixth in a ten part series examining my ITSM lessons learned.  I hope that these lessons help you on your journey to ITSM nirvana.

Lesson #6: Have Diligence Relative to Category, Sub-Category, and Item.  As I mentioned in Lesson #2, don’t take shortcuts or be short-sighted in the proper definition of your meta-data.  I realize that it may be impossible to know all the permutations that will ultimately exist for Category, Sub-Category, and Item when the ITSM platform is initially launched.  For this reason, you must make these fields not required for the user / customer, but required for the Service Desk prior to closing the service record.  The user will generally know if its hardware or software that is impacted, but they may not, or they may choose incorrectly.  Ultimately, it’s up to Service Operation to correctly append Category, Sub-Category, and Item to the service record and they must be empowered (authorized) to create new entries as needed in order to properly record the service record.