Business Activity Mapping (BAM) is a method of charting relationships that documents and subsequently clarifies the connection between IT activities and business processes.
The process involves three steps:
- Mapping activities. Identifying and defining key business and operational activities.
- Assessing criticality. Classifying applications and IT services by importance.
- Defining service. Determining the level of dependency of those activities on IT services.
Benefits of Business Activity Mapping
Implementing a BAM exercise has significant payback as a strategic planning and business alignment tool. Its use as a planning tool can positively influence several IT governance activities.
BAM provides the following benefits:
- Clarifies impact for incident classification. By relating IT resources to business activities, BAM helps IT determine the impact of application errors on the enterprise. This creates a blueprint for incident management workflow based on business impact.
- Relates the ability of IT to meet service levels. Associating IT technical operations with business functions gives IT a better negotiation point for service levels associated with each application. It enables IT to have a broader understanding of the types of technical requirements that will be required to meet promised levels.
- Lays the groundwork for a service catalog. BAM is good starting point for an IT service portfolio. This can be boiled down to a service catalog which allows IT to present services from a business perspective instead of a technically-oriented perspective.
- Facilitates change management. Mapping out relations between businesses activities and IT assets allows IT to have a better understanding of how maintenance activities can be carried out with minimal disruption to the business.
- Outlines needs for disaster recovery. Aligning business activities to IT assets gives a clear indication as to which assets require what level of protection and redundancy.
Key Considerations
BAM is a good starting point for the development of service documentation because it addresses the most essential question in IT service management: What shape, form, and degree of IT services are required to support the business process? For a concrete example of the value of BAM to service documentation, consider the service catalog. Many organizations find a service inventory or service catalog is an effective means to communicate IT offerings and performance to a business audience. It can be used to set expectations, to report performance, and to clarify costs. However, service catalogs can be used for more than a PR tool to demonstrate IT value. To gain greater utility from a service catalog, add details such as:
- Service levels. A publication of the level of support business users can expect from IT.
- Cost to the business. A way to link costs to IT services whether or not IT operates on a chargeback model.
Service catalogs and internal service level agreements (SLAs) are client-facing documents. They represent a relationship between IT and the business. IT leaders must have the IT service portfolio established, and be aware of operating level requirements before publishing “what IT can deliver” to clients. For this reason alone, BAM is an essential first step when developing and publishing IT service documentation. It really is the foundation of the IT service portfolio.
In Figure 1 below, the client-facing documents are supported by a backbone of IT-facing documentation.
Figure 1. IT and Client-Facing Service Documentation
Source: Info-Tech Research Group
Service Documentation Glossary |
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Step 1: Map, Identify, and Define Key Business Activities and IT Apps & Services
The first step in BAM involves listing all enterprise activities. The level of granularity with which this is documented will depend heavily on the level of complexity and degree to which technology is involved in the business. The more involved IT is with the business and the more applications it supports, the more likely that each activity will depend on differing IT assets. These business activities are then mapped to IT services and applications (as seen in Table 1).
Table 1. BAM Sample: Sales Department
Source: Info-Tech Research Group
| Business Activity/Service | Desktops | Telephony | IT Help Desk Support | App Development | Printing | Email Collaboration | Project Management |
| Rentals | High | High | High | Medium | Medium | High | Low |
| Installations | High | Low | Low | Medium | Low | High | Low |
| Special Projects | High | High | High | Low | Low | High | High |
| Resale Program | High | High | High | Medium | Low | High | Low |
| Consulting Services | High | High | High | Medium | Low | High | Low |
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