Products
The services provided by an organization are based on products. The organizations own or have access to certain resources. These resources include: organization and employees, information and technologies, processes and value streams, partners and suppliers. A product is a configuration of all these resources developed to offer unique value to the consumer.
The consumer typically does not have access to the whole product and only gets access to a portion of it instead. The organization defines which parts of the product should become available to the consumer within a service and tailor the product to suit the desired target groups.
The interaction of consumers with the product takes place in the form of a service. To offer a product, an organization needs to:
- Create a service offering based on the product.
- Add this offering to the Service catalog.
- Arrange the service support and the collection of improvement requests.
In such a way, the organization that develops the product becomes the service supplier to make the product accessible to the consumer.
Example: An organization has developed a piece of software and supplies it to the consumer. In this case:
- The organization is the product manufacturer and service provider.
- The software is the product comprised of the company resources to offer unique value to the consumer.
- The delivery of the product instance, granting access to the product and its support are the services offered by the organization.
Role required: admin, product_manager. An employee with the product_agent role can edit the records for which they are the Product owner.
To create a product, complete the following steps:
- Navigate to Value Stream Management → Products.
- Click New and fill in the form fields.
- Click Save or Save and exit to apply the changes.
Product form fields
| Field | Mandatory | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Name | Y | Specify the product name. |
| Description | N | Add a product description. |
| Product owner | N | Specify the product owner employee. |
| State | N | Select the current product state. Available options:
|
The Activity Feed widget is available on the form. The changes of the record field values are stored in it.
Apart from that, the following related lists are available on the form:
- Services – the list of services based on the product. The products can only be connected to the Business services.
The following related lists display the resources, the configuration of which creates the product:
- Organizations and Employees – the list of employees working on the product. The products can only be related to the employees who work in the companies with Internal class.
- Information and Technologies – the list of CIs that comprise the information and technologies used in the product. This list cannot include Services (sys_cmdb_ci_service).
- Partners and Suppliers – the partners and suppliers involded in the product. The products can only be related to the companies of the following classes: Service Partner, Manufacturer, Vendor, Service Provider.
- Product Modules – the modules the product contains.