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Refining User Requirements into a Better Use-Case Model |
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Requirements for the application you're going to develop will change. You can plan on it. New requirements that you discover can be incorporated into the existing iteration or scheduled into a future iteration, according to your business or safety priorities. In any case, always keep in mind that the organizations for which you're developing the application will change processes. Therefore, you must create dynamic models of existing processes, making sure your model remains flexible for change. |
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The purpose of your business process model can be to model either the existing processes or the desired business processes. Modeling existing processes is called reverse engineering. This is to be distinguished from reverse engineering code, however, although the patterns are similar. Modeling the desired process is called forward engineering. |
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New Term: Reverse engineering is an activity that involves modeling the current business processes. |
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New Term: Forward engineering is an activity that involves modeling the desired or proposed business processes. |
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It's easy to take for granted the meaningfulness of modeling existing processes. Some developers have even been tempted to misinterpret as frivolous those users who customize their business processes in strange ways. However, the fact remains that business processes typically change. That is, they evolve as new business needs, dictated by market forces, are discovered. Unlike object-oriented projects, real-world business processes tend to come into existence in a chaotic, unplanned way. As a developer, you have to accept this as normal, no matter how crazy the processes seem. Creating and elaborating a reverse-engineered business process model requires the help of your users. After this model is in place and able to be extended as processes change, you are better equipped to understand the problem you're trying to solve with Visual Basic. |
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Working with Business Analysts |
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Sometimes, trying to understand the problem you're solving through business process models can be overwhelming if you're also tasked with developing the solution in a short amount of time. In these situations, it's best to seek the help of one or more business analysts or business process designers. Management needs to give these individuals a mandate to reverse engineer the current set of business processes in your users' domain. The business engineering process itself can often be time-consuming, and not |
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