Business Genetics

Acknowledgements ix

Preface xi

1 What’s the issue and why should I care? 1

2 Why are tools to understand business so inadequate? 5

2.1 How did we get here? 8

2.2 Business definition a la 20th century 13

2.3 But we have had some (limited) success 21

3 OK (enough already), so What must be done? 25

3.1 Purpose-based thinking 33

3.2 How we answer the W5 questions 35

4 What do genetic business models (xBML) look like? 39

W1: the What dimension 49

W2: the Who dimension 54

W3: the Where dimension 57

W4: the Which dimension 61

W5: the When model 66

W5I (integrated): the How model 69

5 How do we (quickly) create xBML models (aka Business Co-Formulation^TM) 81

6 The ‘So what’ (where’s my darn ROI?) 97

6.1 Some quantifiable types of business gain 102

6.2 Some more very real but less quantifiable types of business gain 116

7 How do I implement this? 131

7.1 Enterprise deployment? 131

7.2 But how do I implement or manage my xBML projects? 136

8 What about BPM (Business Process Management)? 141

9 What the heck is the difference between BPEL, BPMN, UML, IDEF and xBML? 149

9.1 BPEL 150

9.2 BPMN 154

9.3 UML 159

9.4 IDEF 166

9.5 xBML 167

10 Based on (anticipated) popular demand, more on auto-business requirements generation 173

11 COTS (commercial off-the-shelf) software selection 181

12 An added big, big takeaway 185

13 A quick last summary 191

Appendices 195

Appendix A: xBML example – Fill ‘a vacant job position’ 195

Appendix B: Potential knowledge sources 201

Appendix C: Some government laws governing commerce 202

Appendix D: Sample enterprise deployment what model 209

Appendix E: BRD 211

Appendix F: Can xBML be automated? 216

Glossary 221

Bibliography 235

Index 237