A business use
case canvas map

The business use case canvas must tell a compelling story—what challenge we face, why solving it matters, the solution, and the cost of inaction. It transforms complex issues into a clear, business-relevant narrative that inspires alignment, drives urgency, and ensures every team understands the value at stake.

A business use case canvas map visually communicates to stakeholders and cross-functional teams the value that governance brings to a specific use case. This map can be adapted to create derivatives for data, AI and various other business use cases:

Business issue: The fundamental challenge that clarifies the underlying reason for the use case
Impact if ignored: Highlights the consequences or risks if the issue is not addressed
Data problems: This area identifies specific data- or AI-related barriers or deficiencies contributing to the business issue
Data solution: This outlines the approach, technology or governance initiatives designed
to resolve the identified problems
Business outcomes: Focuses on the measurable benefits and value the organization expects from implementing the solution

User stories

As a Business Analyst, I need to discover and work with data assets that have clear business definitions that facilitate the creation of accurate insights
As a Report Writer, I need to easily work with data assets to build reports that are trustworthy, performance and audit-ready
As a Marketing Analyst, I need to work with a wide variety of data which includes customer, product, pricing, inventory, social media and clickstream analytics across all channels
As a User of data assets, I need to be able to interact with asset owners and stewards directly, to quickly get answers about existing application and systems
As a Data Engineer/Application Developer, I need to easily identify and access the correct data sources (based on the region, version, etc.) for integration and development purposes

As a Data Steward I need to be able to monitor and enforce data policies and standards across all organizational assets, to ensure compliance and mitigate risks
As a Support Engineer, I need to be able to quickly identify the owner or domain owner of a system or application, to expedite troubleshooting and support processes
As a CMO, I need to understand which products drive campaign ROI with usage, quality and cost-to-serve metrics so I can allocate budget for different marketing campaigns across different channels
As a CDO, I need enterprise-wide adoption, quality, lineage and policy-compliance dashboards at the data product level so that I can prioritize investments, calculate ROI and pass audits