Using Business Canvas Models to Define Business Services

I was reading the Forrester article Identify Essential Methods For Your Business Architecture Program and how the business canvas model can be used to describe the business from a high level. An example of the business canvas model was in the areas of

• Key partnerships
• Key activities
• Key resources
• Value proposition
• Customer relationships
• Channels
• Customer segments
• Cost structure
• Revenue streams

Once defined, key capabilities can be developed to develop the purpose of the business. From here by leveraging the business canvas model and the capability map, business services can be defined to establish service level agreements such as cost, quality, speed, capacity, geographic reach, and timeliness. Business architects can then use these business services to identify which processes implement the services by linking processes to the capabilities.

In my day to day working with clients in implementing their configuration management database, they often defer to my organization to identify their business services. We often define business services in three different categories. The first being the business service itself which I’ve already discussed. The second being technology services which can make up one or more business services. Lastly, the third type is supporting services which can be a technology service or business service that supports an overarching business service. Most clients only define their technology and business services.

The challenge with implementing business services in our client projects is that the business is never involved. Instead business services are defined by IT so it doesn’t necessarily define the overarching business services. In 2018, one of my goals as part of the leadership team in my organization is to determine how we can have conversations with the business to help define their business architecture and their business services.