BM-01 · our practice ref · series-structure

State the business the firm is in

Practice BM-01 in the Business Management group. The basis is series-structure, and the row asks for 3 pieces of evidence.

At a glance

Ref: BM-01
Process: Business Management
Basis: series-structure
Source: Public abstract, process list
Evidence: 3 items
Gaps: 2 common

Evidence to keep

Business ManagementA one-page business statement with a date and an owner
Business ManagementA list of the customer types the firm serves
Business ManagementA list of the work the firm declines

Questions before you sign

What does the firm sell, and to whom?
What work does it deliberately not take?
When was the statement last reviewed?

The practice, in our words

Write down the business the VSE is in, the customers it serves and the kind of systems it builds. The business management process starts from that statement, because the projects are chosen to serve it and the process assets are sized to it.

What it means in a VSE

One page, written by the person who runs the firm, not by a consultant. It should say what the firm sells, to whom, and what it deliberately does not do. That last line is what keeps a small firm out of work it cannot deliver.

In a firm of 25 people or fewer, state the business the firm is in has to earn its time. The test for BM-01 is not whether the team understands it but whether the artefact exists at the end of the project. Shrink the meeting. Shrink the document. Keep the record.

How to evidence it

Attach the artefacts above to the State the business the firm is in row with the project name, the owner and the date. The anchor for BM-01 is A one-page business statement with a date and an owner. A named person must produce it on request.

For BM-01, the reviewer will sample one live decision and ask for A list of the customer types the firm serves. No artefact, no evidence. A file that depends on one person's mailbox is not a file for state the business the firm is in.

What an assessor samples

An assessor reads the state the business the firm is in practice, asks for its evidence and tests one project against it. For BM-01, the useful sample is the most recent project that used the practice, not the best one. A reconstruction written for the visit is a finding for BM-01 if the practice cannot be shown to have happened when it mattered.

Common gaps

A business statement copied from a website and never used
No statement at all, so every project is judged on its own

What changes from the 2019 report. For BM-01, the business management process is one of the four the public abstract names. The transition work is to give it an owner and a review, not to invent a new committee.

Where the draft fits

The public abstract places state the business the firm is in inside one of the four processes the Intermediate profile covers. For BM-01, the draft clause numbering and wording are not public, so this page cites Public abstract, process list and does not quote the draft. The basis label for BM-01 says whether the practice is stated in the public record, named as a process in the series, or our reading.

Related practices

Source for this page: Public abstract, process list. Open the record and compare it with the BM-01 statement above. Retrieved 2026-10-22.