Determine the scope

In fulfilling their daily activity, people working in an organisation don’t interact together in a purposeless manner – there is usually some a business process objective or end goal involved[1].

Therefore, for any business modelling to occur such goals must be identified, relating to the scope of a particular problem domain (in this case security management).

Some typical end to end objectives relating to security:

	“improved security around administering external users”
	“risk mitigation concerning the use of specialist roles”
	“reduce scope of error with software deployment”
	“manage the live environment in a secure way”

In describing these goals, an understanding of the external stakeholders is also required. These are parties who sit outside the business process, but either benefit, judge it, or hold it to account in some way.

These external stakeholders and their goals can be formalised in a scope model such as the one shown in the following figure:

Figure 1: Scope example

[1] Although in the case of security these goals can often be the mitigation of key, named risks.

This paper has been prepared by Codel Services Ltd to illustrate how structured business modelling can help your organisation. Codel Services Ltd is an IT Consultancy specialising in business modelling. If you would like further information, please contact us at: Deryck Brailsford, Codel Services Ltd, Dale Hill Cottage, Kirby-Le-Soken, Essex CO13 0EN,United Kingdom. Telephone: +44 (0)1255 862354/Mobile: + 44 (0)7710 435227/e-mail: info@codel-services.com