Codifying User Profiles

I am sorry, but if you were looking for a clear and concise description of the concept of codifying user profiles that is documented in the ITIL v3 Service Strategy volume, then all I can give you is my take.

(actually, the detail of the concept causes me to lose faith in the concept)

I can understand that users in an organization have profiles. Different levels of staff, have different requirements and generate differernt Patterns of Business Activity (PBA)... BUT the way it is represented in the text is just plain confusing.

The text tells me that codifying helps multidimenisonal analysis, using criteria like nearness and likeness.. it is heavy duty stuff, so here is my take.

People carry out a variety of different "jobs" within their actual job. A senior executive could one day be firefighting some operational issues and the next day they are involved in strategic decision making.

If we look at each of these "sub-jobs" the requirements for services differs in each one. Next we map each sub-job by how much of a particular service or service element the job requires. Give each of those sub-jobs a unique identifying code.

Next, each person (who has their own User Profile (UP) can be linked to one or more of these sub-jobs.

Now the benefit comes when you look down the list of User Profiles to see which sub-job codes they share. Understanding the level of sharing helps us to better predict demand of services and therefore respond with appropriate capacity.

If we give each of these "sub-jobs" a code then we