IT Service Naming Recommendations

Recommendations and best practices for naming IT services at UW-Madison

What's (really) in a Name?

A good IT service name establishes a meaning and a context for the service. Although there may be a need for an exception, an IT Service name should consider these recommendations to avoid difficulty:

  1. Be unique
  2. Be descriptive of the service that is being offered
  3. Be agnostic of any protocol or delivery mechanism - as protocols may change
  4. Be agnostic of any vendor - as vendors may change name, be purchased, or change branding
  5. Not use an acronym unless it is universally understood across the UW university system. May contain the acronym in parentheses for Help Desk reference
  6. Not contain a number or version
  7. Refrain from containing the word “Service” in the name, except for consulting services
  8. Provide the appropriate context, and define the service scope. Service names should be assigned differently, depending on service type.
  9. Avoid using ambiguous naming
  10. May contain a hyphenated “surname” to reflect scope or eligibility, that is, a 2nd name part defining a specific customer, if needed to differentiate the uniqueness of the service / support
  11. Avoid commas or periods as punctuation in the IT Service name. Punctuate the service name only using “-” or parentheses “()”.
  12. Avoid starting the service name with "UW-Madison" or "UW"

Relevancy - Where Technical Service Names are used

Technical Service Names are used in different parts of DoIT for different purposes. Changing an existing IT Service Name can cause a difficulty to the numerous processes which utilize a service's name. Places where IT services names are used may include:

  • Outage Page(s)
  • WiscIT (CMDB)
  • Help Desk KB - Handling Documents (Internal)
  • Help Desk KB - Technical / Troubleshooting (Internal and External)
  • Service Provider KBs (such as Learn@UW KB or WiscWeb KB)
  • SNCC KB
  • COOP KB
  • Incident assignments
  • API's
  • https://it.wisc.edu/services/
  • metrics-gathering scripts
  • various known/unknown scripts and email processes (e.g. automated ticket creation via email monitoring, etc.)
  • other service catalogs and inventories
  • Historical records and metrics for Changes/Incidents/Problems/Outages
  • some Change Request workflows
  • Searches saved in WiscIT
  • Dashboards


Keywords:
IT Service Name Naming Recommendations Best Practice 
Doc ID:
122378
Owned by:
Jennifer S. in ITSM
Created:
2022-11-08
Updated:
2023-11-08
Sites:
DoIT IT Service Management