• Professional service
• End user service
• Application service interface

The processes map to the entry points as follows:

Table 4. IT processes and Service Entry Points

All of the services may be represented in a modern service catalog, but the fundamental differences between Professional Services, Service Desk services, and Application services must be reflected in the structure of any Service Catalog.

The high profile activities of Project, Release, and Change have specialized entry points requiring trained professionals and sometimes longer standing relationships on both sides of the interaction. Service Requests and requests for service restoration may be more commoditized. And Demand, while often seen as entry to professional services, needs to encompass the other types of services as well.

From the senior executive down, the business/IT interactions can be defined:

Service consumers and entry points

These service entry points need to be broadly understood in the IT organization and every IT staff person should be educated that any contact with business customers or users should be assignable to one of these categories.

Software development is an interesting service entry point. The primary service entry point of concern to the software development capability is requirements capture. The Agile movement in particular sees this as an ongoing interaction.

Such requests for enhancement are still demand requests, and depending on the service model for the application service, might be prequalified or discretionary. As noted elsewhere, this book views Agile pipeline systems as compatible with a Service Request Management system platform.