THE BUSINESS VIEW:
The Business View (BV) is a series of contextual/conceptual models of the business as the “business manager” perceives it. It was researched and developed out of a pressing need to improve communication between the business and the Information Technology service providers. The BV contains simple visual models of “what is important to the business” along with definitions in supporting tables. While all the context/conceptual concepts and ideas in the BV are valid, they are not technical in nature.
The models are of two types: Architecture and Solution. The Architectural model contains ONLY one kind of thing, i.e., information and the relationships between different pieces of information. By referencing an architectural information model, the reader might discover how Customer relates to Order, Shipping Address, Payment, etc.
Architectural Models include: Information/Data, Process, Location/Network, Organization/People, Events, Strategy/Business Rules and their respective relationships. An Architectural Model contains only “the atoms” or primitive models.
Solution Models contain mixed architectural concepts to support a solution. A Solution Model contains the “different atoms to make a molecule” or composite models. A Solution Model might provide a visual demonstrating how a business process relates to an organization, events, location, and information. This is often expressed as a Process Flow style visual with “swim lanes”.
While it is the responsibility of the Business to provide the BV to the IT service organization, it is not done is isolation. The good news is that all the information about your business/enterprise already implicitly exists. The problem is that it is highly fragmented and disbursed as post-it notes, file folders, notebooks, personal memories, memos, emails, and more or less formal documentation. The existing formal efforts by the IT service organization, such as data models, network schematics, standards, etc., should be directly referenced in any BV. We do NOT want to “reinvent the wheel”. It is very useful to acquire true conceptual modeling tools with a common repository for enhanced productivity and re-usability. Drawing packages, such as Visio and PowerPoint, are inadequate.
In conclusion, the BIG IDEA is to provide a common “lingua franca” or common language to improve understanding between the business and the IT service organization. This means transforming the existing implicit models into an explicit BV. This takes time, funding, sponsorship, and commitment but the payoff is well worth it. |
