This post will only be of interest to other people working in IT departments supporting their community with tech needs.
IT Service Management (ITSM) is the industry standard term which includes help desk (service desk) functions, as stated within the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) framework.
One aspect of Service Design is the Service Catalogue, which is at the centre of some important organisational aspects required to manage your IT department. A Service Catalogue lists all the services that are offered by a department. To my mind here is how the Service Catalogue informs other important processes and procedures:
The Service Catalogue is a living document, whenever a new service is introduced it needs to be added to the catalogue and all the connected aspects considered and laid out. For instance, if you adopt a new piece of software, you might choose to have a specific category listed in the service desk, which routes incidents and requests to the appointed person(s) and allows reporting on the issues encountered. The appointed person might need to have new duties added to their job description, or perhaps attend a professional learning opportunity, or depending on the scale of the new service a new position might need to be created to oversee it. Either way, the service catalogue will inform the process coherently.
A Service Catalogue isn’t in any way new or groundbreaking, however, is your IT department using a Service Catalogue? If not, I presume that departmental organisation isn’t optimal.