Below is a table of definitions common to Service Architecture
| Phrase | Description |
| Band of Visibility | Activities and resources within a service relationship that are visible to both the service provider and the service consumer |
| Business Analysis | The practice of analysing a business or some element of a business, defining its needs and recommending solutions to address these needs and / or solve a business problem, and create value for stakeholders. Business analysis enables an organisation to communicate its needs in a meaningful way, express the rationale for change, and design and describe solutions that enable value creation in alignment with the organisation’s objectives |
| Business Case | A justification for the expenditure of organisational resources, providing information about costs, benefits, options, risks and issues |
| Cost | The amount of money spent on a specific activity or resource |
| Customer Experience | The sun of the functional and emotional interactions with a service and service provider as perceived by the service customer |
| Customer Journey | The complete end to end experience that service customers have with one or more service providers and / or their products through touchpoints and service interactions |
| Moments of truth | Any episode in which the customer or user comes into contact with an aspect of the organisation and gets an impression of the quality of its service. It is the basis for setting and fulfilling client expectations and ultimately achieving client satisfaction |
| Omnichannel Communications | Unified communications across multiple channels based on sharing information across the channels and providing a seamless communication experience |
| Outcome | A result for a stakeholders enabled by one or more outputs |
| Patterns of Business Activity | A workload profile of one or more business activities. PBA’s are used to help the service provider understand and support different levels of consumer activity |
| Persona | A fictitious but realistic of a typical or target customer or user of a product or service |
| Portfolio | A collection of assets into which an organisation chooses to invest its resources in order to receive the best return |
| Practice Success Factor (PSF) | A complex functional component of a practice that is required for the practice to fulfil its purpose |
| Product | A configuration of the organisation’s resources designed to offer value for a consumer |
| Risk | A possible event that could cause harm or loss or make it more difficult to achieve objectives. “Uncertainty of Outcome” |
| Service | A means of enabling value co-creation by facilitating outcomes that customers want to achieve, without the customer having to manage specific costs and risks |
| Service Empathy | The ability to recognise, understand, predict, and project the interests, needs, intentions, and experience of another party in order to establish, maintain, and improve the service relationship |
| Service Interaction | A value co-creating reciprocal action between a service provider and a service consumer |
| Service Level | One or more metrics that define expected or achieved service quality |
| Service Management | A set of specialised organisational capabilities for enabling value for customers in the form of services |
| Service Mindset | An important component of the relationship of the organisational culture that defines an organisation’s behaviour in service relationships. A service mindset includes the shared values and guiding principles adopted and followed by an organisation |
| Service Quality | The totality of a service’s characteristics that are relevant to its ability to satisfy stated or implied needs |
| Service Request | A request from a user or a user’s authorised representative that initiates a service action which has been agreed as a normal part of service delivery |
| Touchpoint | Any event where a service consumer or potential service consumer has an encounter with the service provider and / or its resources |
| User Experience | The sum of the functional and emotional interactions with a service and service provider as perceived by a user |
| Utility | The functionality offered by a product or service to meet a particular need. Utility can be summarised as ‘what the service does’ and can be used to determine whether a service is ‘fit for purpose’. To have utility, a service must either support the performance of the consumer or remove constraints from the consumer. Many services do both. |
| Value | Value is the perceived benefits, usefulness and importance of something |
| Value Proposition | An explicit promise made by a service provider to its customers that it will deliver a particular bundle of benefits |
| Warranty | Assurance that a product or service will meet agreed requirements. Warranty can be summarised as ‘how the service performs’ and can be used to determine whether a service is ‘fit for use’. Warranty often relates to service levels aligned with the needs of service consumers. This may be based on a formal agreement, or it may be a marketing message or brand image. Warranty typically addresses such areas as availability of the service, its capacity, levels of security, and continuity. A service may be said to provide acceptable assurance, or ‘warranty’, if all defined and agreed conditions are met |