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every analyst will be knowledgeable about object-oriented business process modeling methods. You might need to assist them in understanding how to capture meaningful models of the business processes your application will affect. The important thing is that if you effectively involve your users in the development of the solution, they will appreciate it when you improve their otherwise tedious tasks. |
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Involving users in the refining of your use cases and sequence diagrams goes a long way toward filling in gaps in business activities you've modeled. Users can also help to validate your assumptions about how your Visual Basic application will solve their problems. At the end of each iteration, you should plan on user review and testing. |
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Executives and upper-level managers are a skeptical bunch. Given the notoriety of many unsuccessful software development projects, this skepticism is probably justified. Typically, your executive sponsor will request from you, as the architect, or your project manager, periodic updates that answer the following questions: |
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Given the current state and cost of the project, how long will the project take, and what's the estimated project cost? What's the opportunity cost of not continuing with this project? |
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What meaningful objectives have the project achieved? What goals remain to be achieved, and will the achievement of those objectives lead to some increase in the effectiveness of business processes? |
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If you measure the complexity of the project by the number of classes developed so far, how many classes will it take to deliver a solution? |
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While redesigning business processes, you should begin to see light at the end of the tunnel. That is, you should be able to visualize the potentially positive effect your application will have on the users in the domain. However, don't become lost in your dreams. In redesigning business processes, you have to continually wear the hat of an abstractionist, looking for key concepts hidden deep within the processes. |
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Finally, the development work you're doing has implications for the bottom lineincreased revenues or reduced cost. Executives want their investment in your skills to deliver a solution that means increased profits. The term for this in financial circles is return on investment (ROI). However, the funny thing about this financial expectation is that some executives analyze the ROI for only a single project. A real return on investment should be measured across several software development projects. Executives should be looking for how a component, developed in project A, can be effectively reused in succeeding projects B, C, D, E, and so on. Reuse of components is like having |
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