Requirements Analysts
Is a business process a requirement? Can you deliver the use-cases as the requirements? Are the data requirements separate? Could the user stories could be the requirements? Did you have time for interface requirements? Will the implementer use the requirements document to start implementation or just to estimate? When they start will they begn their own custom methodology tied to the modules they provide? Can you track as you close in to realize the benefits?
Now a requiremnts analyst can produce specifications that align more closely to the business. Specifications that show the business as a network. Specifications that can be subdivided with clarity of the interdependencies. Specifications that show where the business rules are applied. Specifications that suggest the test data.
Information Flows Are Requirements Too!
A working system must move information from its source, to where it is used. Sometimes across disparate environments. The connections must be implemented too. And the assertion model shows where, and calls them out. When information flows from inside an organization to the outside, who is responsible inside and outside. The assetion model shows the responsibilites; and it shows if the information is financial or private. All this discovered as te assertion model is designed, before implementation starts.
Business People
Ultimately, those who do business have the most to gain from being able to clearly articulate what they do, not just from an individual task basis, but from a broader perspective. If they can describe what they do, then they can ask for software to help them do it. Or they can see ways to make it better. or they can be clear on what information they should ask for.
But business people must be responsible for the design. They cannot pass ambiguity down the line. And developers, even those familiar with a domain, can not accept responsibility for business oversights. The assertion model is rich enough to expose the gaps early.
And, assertion models can provide simulations that are real enough to jog out some asumptions that are taken for granted.
Business Architects
Most Business Architects embrace capabilities and value streams (described by BIZBOK, or originating elsewhere). This perspective is needed to make decisions that span operational boundaries. But while relationships of the core business architecture to the business analyst’s domain are recognized, a gap has widened, particularly in documentation, between the two.
Capabilities and Value Streams can be identified in architecture models but the organization must be able to state they exist, and make assessment as to their quality and completeness. To define and execute strategy assertions are necessary to support re-assessments over time. Half way through an initiative, ask is the chance of an improved capability any closer? That is where the assertion model comes in. There may be an assertion that defines a fully opererational capability. But there must be an assertion that assesses the current state and assertions that show the decision authorize resource use to reduce the gap.
This represents a live, and changing, assertion model. When operational assertions are implemented, databases capture their current state. When management assertions are ‘implemented’ it is usually with periodic reporting, often in documents, emails. or performance reports. But they are still information flows that should be recognized.
In particular, identifying assertions in an initiative that will provide the information sowing the benefits have been attained requires careful rationale about risks that should be addressed early.
A common pattern in assertion models is a contribution perspective. It shows how information flows into an assessment from a range of sources (all assertions). These contributions are tributaries of the assessment. Each time an upstream assertion is re-evaluated, positively or negatively, the change ripples down with revised assertions that ultimately contribute to, perhaps, an assessment that cuts off resources to the initiative as a whole because the benefits are understood to be unatainable. Good governance of initiatives begs this contribution perspective, built on the logic that was documented and used to undertake the initiative in the beginning.
With assertions, modeling initiatives starts with measures. They allow a business design to be judged for its effectiveness as it is built.
Process Improvement Analysts
Often an initiative is undertaken in an organization to improve its processes. (Some call this paving the cow-paths; some call it RPA). This starts with capturing the process flows. Process analysts act as secretaries writing down what the user does step by step in the process model. Maybe there is time for a few token information flows but it is entirely sequential( with the occasional unhappy-path).
The intent is not to process an application, the intent is to capture a set of information necessary to build a subsequent relationship with the ‘applicant’ until a statement like ‘here is your grant cheque’ and ‘we have helped another student’ is made.
Start your business improvement initiative with the Assertions that frame the overall objective.
Agile Teams
In Agile ‘a feature is a service that fulfills a stakeholder need‘. In AM an implemented assertion fulfills an Authorities ability to make a determination. By describing a sprint goal as the implementation of an Assertion the goal becomes articulated by the specification of the Assertion and the information flows that accompany the Assertion are front and center in the sprint plan too.
Can you estimate story points from the Assertion (and its Connections) ? You bet!
Design Thinkers
What language do you currently use to define a users needs? Does it make it easy to challenge why they need certain information, or why they don’t? How do you capture your own insight to bring to the table? How easy is it to translate your description to a prototype?
An Assertion Model brings all these capabilities together.
Organizational Designers
What informs organizational design? Well, culture for one thing. AM does not solve culture issues. And it might not thrive in some organizational cultures. But sooner or later organizational design has to address job duties and then AM begins to shine. And the explicit responsibilities of a section or department, described in AM helps frame the design. And shouldn’t organizational design address optimizing information flows?
Auditors
If you are a auditor you probably have a checklist. And you probably get the information you need to perform a non-financial audit in a myriad of formats. But you can build an AM of the business of your audit. The exhibits provided by the client are information flows that support a number of auditing Assertions (assessments or findings). They ultimately compile to the audit as a whole. If the audit is done regularly then there is a pattern of good practice (describable in AM) that the the client could adopt, and implement, that would shorten audits significantly.
And this gives your client a big chance to adjust their AM to reflect the audit needs, cutting audit costs.
Interface Builders
As a large implementation initiative draws to a close, all that is left is to do is the interfaces between systems. Call in the programmers now, we have to roll out next month.
Or perhaps there was an Assertion Model that showed the information flows outside the organization, between departments, or between Assertions currently implemented in different systems. What if it actually stated the information structure needed for its business determinations?
Management Consultants
You deliver a range of services. Updated with the latest terms every year. And you have gurus who are masters of the various perspectives. Organizational Development, Governance, Information Management, Transformations, various Financial Services, Content Management, Records, Information and Privacy, Security. And you have some overarching frameworks that cobble these together. But the products delivered to the client are disparate. PowerPoint decks, spreadsheets with colors, Word documents, PDFs.
What if the AM you delivered for one engagement could be picked up for the next proposal for this client in a different discipline and provide a 20% head-start on the competition. What if the AM reference model you use for the discipline was already partly merged from the previous engagement? What if you already had information populated in your prototype ready for refinement?
Educators
Assertion Modeling provides a big opportunity for educational institutions to provide students with an underpinning of a coherent documentation approach to business. By embracing AM, an institution can give students a competetive advantage by tying in business subjects with a single conceptual base(system thinking with decisions and communication). If AM expertise is provided early, students can present assertion models to support assignments, displacing learning cycles away from spreadsheet formulas and diagramming tools.