Services are designed to enable the Client’s business activity and every time an existing business activity changes or a new activity arises, demand for services is generated. Business activities are performed by Client’s assets such as people, processes and applications. Patterns of Business activities can be understood by observing the organization of these assets and/or the completion of tasks executed by these assets. These patterns of business activity (PBA) represent the dynamics of the business and include interactions with customers, suppliers, partners and other stakeholders.

Understanding and identifying the patterns of business activities that has an impact on specific Services will help the Engagement Manager to understand the demand for services.

Since the Services are in general organized directly to support the Client’s Business Activity it is important that Client’s Pattern of Business activity is properly understood and aligned with services to achieve better business outcome.

Once a Pattern of Business Activity has been identified, the details such as,

• Origination type (direct from the client or external).
• Workload that needs to be supported.
• Frequency, volume, location and duration.
• Resource requirements.

are to be documented in the Patterns of Business Activity artifact by the Engagement Manager.

User Profiles are dependent on the roles and responsibilities within the Client Organization. Various business processes and IT applications are identified as the users for the services provided and User Profiles need to be created for both. Each User Profile can be related to one or more Patterns of Business Activity and by establishing the relationship between these two, the Engagement Manager can have a systematic approach to understand and manage the demand from a specific Client.

User Profiles should have the user (business processes and applications) related information like:

• Roles.
• Responsibilities.
• Schedules.
• Work Environment.
• Social Context.

With the help of PBAs and UPs the Engagement Manager will have the necessary information to serve the demand by appropriately matching the services, service levels and service assets.

User Profiles are periodically reviewed by the Engagement Manager in conjunction with Patterns of Business Activity and necessary updates are done to reflect the user changes.