We present a longitudinal project using action design research, which is a four-year collaboration between two EPFL entities: The research Laboratory for Systemic Modeling (LAMS) and EPFL’s IT department, called the VPSI. During that time the VPSI was going through a transformation into a service-oriented organization. The research project began as an open-ended modeling of some of the VPSI processes. It slowly matured into the design and development of a visualization tool we call service cartography. During this research, we learned that, to successfully apply service-orientation, focusing purely on IT architecture and end-customer value is not enough. Attention must be given to the exchange of internal services between the service organization members and their alignment with the services expected by the external stakeholders. In this paper we present the evolution of (1) our understanding of what services are, and (2) our conceptualization of how the service cartography facilitates the service-oriented thinking.