Defining What IT Supports

The television in the lobby is not a computer. It has hung there for two years showing the welcome slide, and nobody has asked whose it is, because it worked. This morning it shows "No signal", and a visitor is due at nine. It has become a computer, which means it has become IT's. By lunchtime the sales team will want help with the customer database they bought without telling anyone. Somebody will also ask, kindly and with a cracked screen, whether you can take a look at their own laptop. You will say yes to some of it, and you will have no page to point at for any of it.

This series is about that page. It covers what a service catalog is without the platform: the written list of what IT provides, to whom, and how to ask. It covers where the scope boundaries go and how to hold them, including the gray areas every small organization shares. It covers what you will and will not do for personal phones and laptops, and what to do about the software departments bought themselves. It covers how to publish what you support so that people find it and do not feel scolded by it. And it covers how scope creeps, one "can you just" at a time, until IT supports the coffee machine. Each article has a template to copy, a short war story from a fictional organization, and a worked example with names and times.

Articles in This Series

• The Service Catalog Idea, Without the Platform
  What a catalog is in plain words, why a wiki page counts, and the ten services most small organizations run. Also covers how to write an entry, what is not a service, the first version in an afternoon, and a ten-service starter table.
• Scope Boundaries and the Gray Areas
  Why boundaries matter, and the three kinds of line (we do, best-effort, we do not). Covers the seven usual gray areas from personal devices to the cable that is also a desk. Also covers the exception path, and a scope boundary sheet to copy.
• Personal Devices: What You Will and Will Not Touch
  What IT will configure on a personal phone or laptop and what it will not. Covers the fifteen-minute rule, the security floor, the conversations when it goes wrong, the executive exception, and a one-page policy template.
• Unsupported Software and the Shadow Catalog
  How the shadow catalog forms, and discovery without a witch hunt. Covers the supported, tolerated and forbidden list with the test for each. Also covers what support means for tolerated tools, bringing a tool in, and the renewal question.
• Publishing What You Support
  Where the scope page lives, the tone that informs without scolding, the structure of the page, and keeping it current. Also covers the walk-up sentence, measuring whether it is read, and a scope page template.
• Scope Creep and the Expanding Catalog
  How a favor becomes a service, the intake question that catches it, and the four outcomes for a new request. Also covers retiring services nobody uses, the annual catalog review, and a scope-decision card.

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This series is part of the QuerySolv helpdesk topic library. It covers the foundations, processes, communication, knowledge, tooling, metrics, classic ticket domains, people and strategy behind a support desk that works. The library pairs well with the software we build: QuerySolv. It is a self-hosted help desk that runs as one Windows service on your own network. It is licensed once per installation, not per agent per month.