Business Service Definition
In ArchiMate a business service is defined as representing explicitly defined behavior that a business role, business actor, or business collaboration exposes to its environment. While the definition is not “bad”, it does not capture the idea that business services are of interest for the value they create.’ As all human institutions exist for the value they create. The idea of value in a business design is central to be business and central to the notion of business service. I would accept almost any definition of business service that incorporated the idea of value, but offer the following: “A business service is an encapsulation of a set of activities and resources (and without exposing the details of how such resources are produced), of a business, accountable for producing a valued output“. The key points are: -encapsulation - the service hides all the details of how the output is created - accountability - the service (or service owner) is not responsible, (they do not necessarily do the work) but are required or expected to justify actions or decisions about the service performance - value - the service is acquired for the value it produces. A very tight SLA can be written around the value and the quality standards and commitments related to the value and this definition is consistent with the ArchiMate meta model and, I believe, its intent. Not only does this strengthen the idea of business service, but clarifies its relationship with business function, capability, and process.