CSDM terms for Digital Portfolio Management

  • Release version: Xanadu
  • Updated August 1, 2024
  • 3 minutes to read
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    Summary of CSDM terms for Digital Portfolio Management

    This content outlines key Common Service Data Model (CSDM) terms relevant to ServiceNow® Digital Portfolio Management (DPM) and Service Portfolio Management. Understanding these terms helps customers effectively manage services, products, projects, and applications in alignment with CSDM best practices.

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    Key Terms and Their Practical Use

    • Portfolio: A collection of related services, products, projects, or applications grouped to manage like items by business objective, capability, or organization.
    • Business Capability: High-level organizational abilities needed to execute business models or missions, often linked to specific business outcomes like demand management.
    • Service: Delivers value by enabling customer outcomes without owning specific costs or risks. Includes three aspects: Interaction, Offering, and Service System.
    • Service Types:
      • Business Service: Offered to business users, supporting business capabilities; orderable via Service Catalog (e.g., procurement).
      • Technical Service: Targeted at service owners, supporting business or application services; orderable via Service Catalog (e.g., storage).
      • Application Service: Logical representation of deployed application stacks (e.g., hosting, data backup).
    • Application: Deployed software programs providing specific functions, such as Apache Web Server.
    • Business Application: Encompasses software and infrastructure environments (dev, test, prod) used to perform business functions.
    • Service Catalog: Provides users a consumable view of available products, services, and offerings, acting as the starting point to request access.
    • Service Offering: Defines variations of a service by capability, availability, pricing, and packaging (e.g., ITSM Standard vs. ITSM Pro).
    • Service Commitment: Specifies agreed service delivery obligations, often formalized through contracts like SLAs, differentiating offerings by performance.
    • Configuration Item (CI): Physical or logical infrastructure components managed under configuration management, such as servers or routers.
    • Asset: Items tracked for financial value and lifecycle, which may or may not be configuration items (e.g., Microsoft Office 365 licenses).
    • Operating Model: A high-level, often visual, representation of how an organization delivers value, incorporating strategy, automation, and delivery models.

    Why This Matters for ServiceNow Customers

    Familiarity with these CSDM terms ensures that customers can accurately model, manage, and communicate their digital portfolios within ServiceNow's DPM and Service Portfolio Management applications. This alignment enables better governance, service delivery, and business outcome tracking, helping organizations optimize their service investments and delivery strategies.

    Because both ServiceNow® products of Digital Portfolio Management (DPM) and Service Portfolio Management closely align with the Common Service Data Model (CSDM), it's helpful to know the common terms when working in these applications.

    Table 1. Common CSDM terms used in DPM and Service Portfolio Management
    Term Definition Notes
    Portfolio Collection of services, products, projects, or applications. Used to manage like items together for a business. Portfolios may be grouped by objective, capabilities, organization, like projects or services.
    Business capability High-level capability that an organization requires to execute its business model or fulfill its mission. Typically described in the context of performing one or more specific tasks to achieve business outcomes. For example, demand management or financial planning.
    Service Means of delivering value to customers by facilitating outcomes customers want to achieve without the ownership of specific costs and risks. Typically has three aspects:
    • Interaction
    • Offering
    • Service system
    ServiceNow provides three base service types:
    • Business
    • Technical
    • Application

    Customers can extend the base types to align with the service types in their organization.
    Business service A service type that is published to business users and it typically underpins one or more business capabilities. Typically orderable by business users. Business users are able to select the desired offering and service commitment levels via the ServiceNow® Service Catalog. For example, procurement, shipping, and finance.
    Technical service A service type that is published to service owners and typically underpins a business or application service. Typically orderable by service owners. Service owners are able to select the desired offering and service commitment levels via the Service Catalog. For example, computers, storage, and networks).
    Application service A service type that is a logical representation of a deployed application stack. Examples of application services are hosting, data backup, and recovery.
    Note:
    There is not a 1-to-1 relationship between application and application services.
    Application Any deployed program, module, or group of programs that is designed to provide specific functionality on a computer infrastructure. Defines behavior and has specific functionality associated with it. Applications are typically discoverable functionality, like Apache Web Server.
    Business Application Represents all software and infrastructure environments (dev, test, prod) configured to provide functionality. Used to increase productivity and perform other business functions accurately. For example, Dell Online.
    Service catalog Provides consumable view of available products, services, service commitment options, and offerings.

    Helps manage what services a user may have access to. Also, catalogs are the initiation point for access to available services. For example, IT services catalog.
    Service offering A stratification of a service into capability, availability, pricing, and packaging options. Different levels of performance and features for a given service can be made available. For example, ITSM Standard and ITSM Pro.
    Service commitment Defines service delivery obligations agreed to between the consumer and the provider. Often manifested in the form of contracts such as service level agreements, operational level agreements, and underpinning contracts. Service commitments include specific performance characteristics that differentiate one offering from another.
    Configuration item (CI) Physical and logical components of an infrastructure that are currently or soon will be under configuration management.

    May be a single module such as a server, database, or router or a more complex item, such as a complete system. For example, a web server, database, or infrastructure.
    Asset An item whose financial value is tracked. Many assets are CIs and vice versa, but that is not always the case. Assets have a life cycle with financial considerations, for example, Microsoft Office 365.
    Operating model An abstract and ideally visual representation (model) of how an organization delivers value to its customers or beneficiaries. Typically represents the various elements of how an organization operates. It usually incorporates strategy positions such as the innovation model, degree of intelligent automation, industry alignment, provider delivery models, and the business expectations of IT.