Business Modeling with UML: Business Patterns at Work (OMG) Book

The Unified Modeling Language is an object oriented language specifically designed to model business processes. Although it only dates back to 1997 UML is becoming increasingly important through its association with IT and information systems. A major problem for business support program authors is a lack of precision in their knowledge of the way the business itself works. UML can be used to model every aspect of a business and provide the scaffolding on which support programs are built. Business models are also useful for identifying areas where the business efficiency can be improved, redundant activities and areas ripe for hardware or software automation. Many business processes are complex and come in the form of assumptions staff pick up by osmosis. Defining rules for these often hidden processes can be tricky. In Business Modeling with UML, authors show you how to define usable business rules with UML's OCL (Object Constraint Language). Inevitably, the authors devote a great deal of the book to business patterns--26 of them in all. However, these follow logically from the earlier chapters. As well as providing a basis for your own models these patterns illuminate and expand on the earlier explanatory material. Interestingly, one of the aims of Business Modeling With UML is to extend the usefulness of the technique from software engineers--by and for whom it was designed--to a range of business processes not necessarily directly concerned with programmatic information systems. In practice, it's hard to see a general manager sitting down to model processes in UML. UML itself requires a grasp of object oriented programming techniques you're unlikely to pick up by accident. However, this excellent book should help IT managers demonstrate how they can proactively contribute to a company's success instead of being seen as a low level resource called on only when a new accounting module is needed.--Steve PatientRead More