Other Methods and AM
The business description ecosphere is broad and fragmented.
- Some Assertions are the assessment of a Capability from BIZBOK.
- Assertions map to DDD components such as aggregates and entities.
- Some Assertions express information from a Process from BPMN
- Some Asserions are a Business Requirement for an Implementation
- Most Assertions can be categorized as TOGAF and Archimate elements
- A subset of Assertions to be Implemented defines an Agile Sprint
- When an Assertion is emited to its connectors it is a Business Event
- Assertions align to Use Cases but elaborate the information flows more explicitly.
BIZBOK
BIZBOK addresses a strategic perpective of an organization. It aims to align with other parts of traditional Enterprise Architecture.
BIZBOK’s core elements provide a powerful language for subdividing and expressing value in an organization.
AM aligns with BIZBOK in the sense that Assertions are used to to assess the status of the capability, perhaps in comparison to a target.
Currently Assertionizer supports tagging Assertions as Capability Assessments and can build the Capability Map from these assertions.
DDD
Domain Driven Design focuses on modeling software based on its real-world business domain.
In DDD Requirements are discovered through dialogue with domain experts.
Assertion models capture the business domains and their interrelationships. They define the ubiquitous language, and assertions map to DDD components.
The Order Entry Assertion Model was built to show how AM supports DDD
BPMN and DMN
Process Modeling embraces workflows, completing tasks and moving on to the next. Built on this foundation BPMN has added information flows and decisions, only of the next task to tackle. Anchored in notation diagramming elements have been added to make resolve how individual flows work together and break down into subtasks.
Trials aligning BPMN and AM have imported BPMN elements to prime a more extensive assertion model(a good way to start exploring Assertionizer).
Once built, perspectives can be identified that align with the original process flow. Trials are under way to explore exporting subsets of a larger assertion model into a BPMN structure.
Business Requirements
Typically requirements are delivered as lists, often within a use case perspective. Translated into JIRA tasks, they have difficulty in carrying the depth of business understanding analysts have gained in discussions. This moves communication of the business into agile team discussions, and finally only documented in code.
As assertions are elaborated, more discussions occur to capture a richer description at the source.
(How often is this done? Is it manual or can it be calculated? Does it create personal information? What information is needed? Who usesthe information created and how is it passed?)
The ‘why‘ of the assertion is how its information supports other decisions in the organization. And the other decisions may be operational, managerial or goverance.
See the example of Requirements in the AM Example Model of Recruitment.
AM and AI
Artificial Intelligence needs a bit of guidance. Actually a lot of structured guidance. Use your assertion model as the missing AI partner.
Other Methods
Here is an over-opinionated view of where we have been, or are, going..
- Enterprise Architecture and TOGAF and ArchiMate – Successful multi-element methodologies occupying practitioners with methodology discussions.
- Agile – a way of describing and automating business by word of mouth.
- Event Driven Architecture – A supporting perspective that begs assertion modeling.
- Enterprise Solution Architecture – A merger between Enterprise Architecture and Solution Architecture.
- System Thinking – An approach that needs an orderly way to capture and display the system at hand.
- Specification Driven Design(SDD) – Assumes you can ask AI to create specifications from broad goals. This gives you a one-size-fits-all solution, probably similar to software that already exists. But AM can provide a fulsome specification. You don’t avoid the work of describing business, just do it efficiently with AM.
- Information Management – Assertion modeling IS information management. The business object of information management is information, its meaning where it is created and used, and who is responsible. Decisions about information needs and quality, its location and how it is protected all are captured in AM.
- Content Management is about cataloging and finding unstructured information. In assertion modeling frames define both structured and unstructured information. Where the content was created and used are captured in the AM.