IT leaders faced with evolving IT service management competencies are turning to IT service catalogs and internal Service Level Agreements (SLAs) to communicate the costs and expectations of IT services to the business. A typical fail point in this process involves not knowing the true associated costs, processes, and technical specifications associated with IT’s role in supporting the business process.
Business Activity Mapping (BAM), the process of linking specific business functions to IT requirements, lays the groundwork for calculating the IT activities required to provide support for specific business initiatives. This process is essential to strong IT-business alignment and facilitates a successful IT service model. This note addresses:
- The value of BAM.
- Why BAM is an essential first step for IT service documentation.
- Outlining the steps involved in BAM.
The note is concluded by recommendations for those embarking on a BAM process.