Validation of Service Blueprint models by means of formal simulation techniques

Abstract

As service design has gained interest in the last years, so has gained one of its primary tools: the Service Blueprint. In essence, a service blueprint is a graphical tool for the design of business models, specifically for the design of business service operations. Despite its level of adoption, tool support for service design tasks is still on its early days and available tools for service blueprint modeling are mainly focused on enhancing usability and enabling collaborative edition, disregarding the formal aspects of modeling. In this paper we present a way to support the validation of service blueprint models by simulation. This approach is based on annotating the models with formal semantics, so that each task can be translated into formal logics, and from them, to executable SQL statements. This works opens a new direction in the way to bridge formal techniques and creative service design processes.