This technique starts with generalized statements of business goals, with subsequent decomposition into sub-goals that must be met in order to fulfill the higher level goal. This eventually leads to a level of decomposition that supports the identification of services associated with the sub-goals. During this process, KPIs are identified and collected; along with the metrics that will be used to measure, monitor and verify the degree of success in actually achieving the goals.

Failure to clearly define business goals will make it difficult to determine if proposed candidate services are business-aligned and appropriate for use in an SOA based initiative. Since Goal-Service Modeling can also identify (not simply validate) candidate services, failure to create this work product could lead to gaps in the service portfolio. These factors could result in additional effort and cost due to the creation of unnecessary services, or reduced success of the SOA based solution due to gaps in the service portfolio.

Since the Goal-Service Model is important to defining the scope of other service identification activities, failure to create it could result in unnecessary effort being spent in other activities, or gaps in the output from those activities.

Although the Goal-Service Model is considered important, if not essential, for a majority of SOA based initiatives, there could be occasional circumstances where the focus is narrowed to the creation of services for common technology functions which may not appear to be easily aligned with specific business goals. It is worth considering that even in these scenarios the Goal-Service Model can be used to document goals related to the "Business of IT".