Issues for Business Motivation Model 1.1 Revision Task Force

List of issues (green=resolved, yellow=pending Board vote, red=unresolved)

List options: All ; Open Issues only; or Closed Issues only

Issue 11812: Should BMM include business rules, decisions, both, or neither
Issue 12280: Issues on BMM Beta 3 dtc/07-08-03 table 8.2
Issue 12281: Issues on BMM Beta 3 dtc/07-08-03 table 8.9
Issue 14187: Support demand side as well as supply side motivation elements
Issue 14188: Support Decisions
Issue 14189: Support modeling assessment criteria
Issue 14190: Support services for realizing business motivation
Issue 14191: Standard UML profile for BMM
Issue 14806: Triangular specialization
Issue 14807: Offerings as Assets
Issue 16005: Incomplete Application of Closed Issue 10113 - Actionable to Practicable
Issue 16397: MOF compliant BMM
Issue 17091: Statement misplaced
Issue 17242: BMM should specify/standardize a UML profile to support BMM models in UML tools

Issue 11812: Should BMM include business rules, decisions, both, or neither (bmm-rtf)

At the BMI meeting on 10Dec07/Burlingame, there was a discussion on decision modeling and its relationship to existing modeling needs and standards. An action from the meeting was to raise the question of whether business decisions per se should be defined in BMM alongside, or instead of, business rules, or whether business motivation per se should be independent of business decisions (and/or business rules). 

 

{This was considered a possible issue for a BMM v2 RFP, but I am raising it with the RTF on the basis that it is up to the RTF to determine whether any “issue” is for a future version or not.}

 

[From my understanding of BMM v1.2, processes are defined outside of BMM, and probably decisions are related more to processes and are guided by business rules / driven by policies.]

 

Caveat: this is going to be difficult to answer without a formal definition of a decision model. And I am not going to define one at this stage of discussions! J 

However, it is probably safe to assume that a Decision Table (which I define as a table of conditional elements with some action as a conclusion, rather than the fact definition type of “Decision Table” that Donald was telling me is defined as a part of SBVR) is an instance of a Decision Model. And that you invoke decision tables (and services) in process activities in order to direct processes (and services). But decisions may be defined separately from process, of course, although their “execution” (manual or automated) context is probably always going to be in a process of some kind.

 

Disclaimer: this issue may be subject to revision as the terminology is refined. 

 

2 cents of Comment: I think the answer is “yes, decisions are related to motivation but are not part of motivation”. I will leave to others the discussion on whether (SBVR type) business rules are part of motivation or a simply related to motivation. 

 Table 8.2 has a duplicate line:

EU-Rent           To provide industry-leading customer service

 Table 8.9 has the first entry duplicated in the second (which has some additional text)

BMM could consider the tntroduction of outside-in/demand side views of business motivation including DesiredResult ValueProposition and CourseOfAction Capability to compliment the inside-out/ supply-side view. 

BMM could consider supporting Decisions as a placeholder for realizing business rules. Further information is available from Larry Goldberg of KPI and in his book "the Decision Model: A Business Framework for SOA" 
  

BMM could consider supporting a MotivationElement for assessment criteria - name/value pairs that could be used to quantify an assessment and enable comparisons of different assessments. This could be used to create "heat maps" of goals and strategies that have the greatest potential effect on the system. 

BMM could consider adding a service placeholder for indicating a means of realizing business motivation (ends or means). This could align with the BMM integration defined in SoaML. 

BMM could consider defining a standard UML profile for BMM including icons for representing MotivationElement. This would provide a convenient surface language for BMM that would be integrated with UML

Figure 7.4 in section 7.5 and figures 8.21 as well as 8.22 in section 8.5.3 say that an "Offering" is a specialization of a "Fixed Asset". However, figure 8.20 in section 8.5.2 says that an "Offering" is a direct specialization of a "Asset", which is a generalization of "Fixed Asset". This is redundant (triangular specialization).

The definition of an "Offerimg" on page 66 says that is is a "Fixed Asset" that is a spefification of a product or service that can be supplied by the enterprise. On the other hand, on page  we see that a "Fixed Asset" is an asset that is maintained over time and reused with examples such as Production equipment, IT equipment, buildings, vehicles, patents, brands, licenses, designs, and people’s skills. So, is an "Offering" not rather an offering of an asset rather than a (relevant) asset in itself?

Description

The very first sentence of the resolution to closed issue 10113 says: "The resolution is: · To align BMM definitions of 'directive' and 'business rule' with corresponding definitions in SBVR, using "practicable" and "directly enforceable" instead of "actionable". ..."

I find two instances of "practicable", both in the current definition of business rule:

business rule 
Definition directive that is practicable 
Note ‘Practicable’ means that a person who understands a directive could observe a relevant situation (including his or her own behavior) and recognize directly whether or not the business was complying with that directive. 

It looks like to me, the voted resolution of Issue 10113 was simply not propagated to the remainder of the text. I find 10 instances of the word "actionable". All seem to be in explanatory text, not definitions. Here is one example in section 8.2.9. This text is in exact contradiction with the definition above.

Business Policies provide broader governance or guidance that is not directly actionable. Business Rules provide specific, actionable governance or guidance to implement Business Policies. 'Actionable’ means that a person who understands a Business Rule could observe a relevant situation (including his or her own behavior) and decide directly whether or not the business was complying with the rule. 

Proposed Resolution: Change all 10 instances of "actionable" to "practicable".

I would like to use BMM in a MDA transformation using QVT. Therefore it would be helpful to have a MOF compliant metamodell with BMM. Is a mapping from BMM to MOF already available? Or is it planned for future versions of BMM?

It seems that the statement “directive governs use of asset” on page 61 appears a bit too early. It should probably be moved to top of page 62.

BMM should specify/standardize a UML profile to support BMM models in UML tools