Lorenzo Oldain Thompson

Business Areas:

Software Engineering Process

Business Modeling

This Business Modeling discipline is tightly coupled with the Enterprise Project Management Methodology (EPMM), using several of the EPMM outputs for creation of business modeling artifacts. This discipline also marks the first stage in the evolution of the application's use cases and data structures.

Discipline Details

The business modeling discipline is the first chronological discipline within LOT SEP. As such, a good deal of information for this discipline is derived from project management inputs, as illustrated in the above diagram. During this discipline, the business architecture is created using a number of inputs from the project management process. Also, the existing glossary is expanded to include terms from business modeling activities. The two new artifacts created as part of this discipline are the business use case and conceptual data model. These two artifacts represent high-level views of the business scenarios and critical data that will be necessary for requirements capture and analysis activities.

Roles and Activities

Business modeling activities are completed primarily by business analysts in conjunction with agency staff and end users. In addition, business designers are used to help flush out use case details and critical business data elements. The primary activities completed during this discipline are:

Business architecture analysis
Definition of critical business terms
Business use case modeling
Business data analysis and capture

Optional activities for this discipline include: further strategic, organizational, and human resource analysis. These are used to augment the business architecture analysis as well as business process reengineering activities in conjunction with business use case modeling.

Artifacts

Four artifacts are produced or refined as part of the business modeling discipline. These artifacts are:

Business Architecture Document - The business architecture document provides a comprehensive overview of the business architecture using well-known architectural views: business process view, market view, organizational view, human resource view, and the communications view. The diamond in the artifact image indicates that this artifact aggregates material from several existing artifacts, including artifacts produced during EPMM phases.
Domain Glossary - The domain glossary includes terms used throughout the project that are important to a variety of stakeholders. The downward arrow in the artifact image indicates that this artifact is derived from an existing artifact, notably the glossary produced during the phases of the EPMM.
Business Use Case Model - The business use case model provides a high-level, business process driven, view of the business for which the application is being built. The business use case model is refined as part of the requirements discipline, when the system use cases are created.
Conceptual Data Model - The conceptual data model establishes business-critical data and any facts about this data critical to understanding its applicability to the business solution.

Tools

There are two primary tool groups used to support business modeling activities and produce artifacts for this discipline. These tools are:

Requirements Management Tools - Requirements management tools are used to capture a broad set of business use cases during the business modeling discipline. These use cases can be further expounded upon during the requirements and analysis and design disciplines.
Database Design Tools - Database design tools are used to visually model the database organization and structure, illustrating facts about data critical to the business solution.

External Dependencies

The business modeling discipline is dependant upon both external processes and other SEP-internal disciplines. The business architecture artifact aggregates information from work done during the EPMM phases while the domain glossary extends the glossary inherited from the EPMM. Both the business use case model and the conceptual data model are further refined in other LOT disciplines, the requirements and analysis and design disciplines, respectively.