- ebXML Business Process Analysis Participants
- Introduction
- Goal and Objectives
- Business Collaboration Overview
- Business Process and Information Modeling
- The Analysis Process
- Relationship Between Business Process and Core Components
- Analysis Aids: Worksheets and Tools
- References
- Disclaimer
- Contact Information
- Appendix A Context Category—Meta Model Cross-reference
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
9 Analysis Aids: Worksheets and Tools
People without the expertise in analysis and modeling will likely find that the UMM will be useful as a reference manual. These people will use UMM compliant approaches or, even, alternative methodologies during the analysis of business processes. Practical experience tells us that it will be more useful to the electronic business community to have an approach that does not require such analysis and modeling expertise. An approach that a businessperson can apply would be most useful. The Business Process Analysis Worksheets and Guidelines provide such an approach.
9.1 Analysis worksheets and guidelines
The ebXML Business Process Analysis Worksheets are a set of business process analysis design aids to be used with the UMM as a reference. The Worksheets allow users to capture all the information that is REQUIRED to completely describe a business process. This Worksheet content can be used to drive software, and can be registered, classified, discovered and reused.
9.1.1 Analysis worksheets and editor
It is intended that a browser-based form will be used to build the worksheets. The user can populate the worksheets through searches of the business libraries (Registries/Repositories containing catalogs of business process specifications) for items that have already been defined. This is shown in Figure 9.1-1. The items (e.g. business processes, business collaborations, document schemas, etc.) can be referenced (re-used as is) or copied to the worksheets and changed as needed. Over time, business process libraries will become populated with a sufficiently large number of business processes. When this happens, the analysis process will often be a simple matter of validating pre-defined business processes against requirements.
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FIGURE 9.1-1 Business Process Analysis Worksheets Usage
9.1.2
Business process editor and document editor
The creation and maintenance of the Business Process Analysis Worksheets and Business Process and Component Modeling/Analysis are provided in a business person friendly manner by application tools like Business Process Editors and Document Component Editors. These tools provide an effective means for business process and information modeling since they can connect directly to business libraries and trading partner directories. See Figure 9.1-2. The tools will support discovery, user friendly forms-based modeling, business process and business information comparison, documentation and help on the analysis process, and capabilities for submitting specifications to controllers of the business libraries. Tool suites of business process editors, document & component editors, and CPP/CPA editors will be instrumental in enabling ebXML based e-commerce.
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FIGURE 9.1-2 Tool Interaction