serviceportfolio

A service portfolio is a formal, centralized repository of information about all services managed by a service provider, covering their entire lifecycle from ideation to retirement. It serves as the primary input for strategic decision-making, financial planning, and governance, helping ensure that service investments align with business objectives.

The portfolio is commonly organized into three sections: the service pipeline, the service catalog, and retired services. The service pipeline contains ideas, business cases, feasibility analyses, and roadmaps for services that are not yet available but are under consideration. The service catalog lists services that are actively available to customers and used in operations, including service levels, pricing, and supported business units. Retired services include offerings that have been decommissioned or are no longer supported.

Management and governance: The service portfolio is typically overseen by a service portfolio manager or an equivalent function and interacts with demand management, financial management, capacity planning, and risk management. It uses metrics such as return on investment, total cost of ownership, time-to-market, and value realization to gauge performance and guide prioritization.

Relationship to other artifacts: The service catalog is a subset of the portfolio, representing live services, while the pipeline represents proposed and future services. The portfolio provides the governance view and decision-rights needed to balance supply and demand, allocate resources, and manage risk across the service offerings.

In practice, the service portfolio supports alignment between business strategy and service offerings, informs investment decisions, and enables transparent communication with stakeholders about value and risk.