Canadian Distributor for ProVision Workbench

ProGuide

"Best Practices"
for
Business and IT

The only guide that shows you proven techniques for improving your business modeling and application development projects

ProGuide Overview

ProGuide was developed by Proforma Corporation as a direct result of extensive consulting experiences using the principles of Business Process Modeling, Object Modeling, Information Engineering, Application Design, Component Development, and System Implementation. The intent of ProGuide is to provide an integrated set of repeatable "Best Practices" or processes that an organization can successfully employ when performing model-based business modeling, requirements analysis, and application development projects.

ProGuide's content is stored as a set of "Best Practices" models within ProVision Workbench. The contents of ProGuide can thus be viewed, modified, and published using the facilities of ProVision Workbench. This provides the following key advantages:

• A formal and rigorous definition of project structure and deliverables, the key components of a useful methodology, is provided.
• ProGuide models may be reviewed and updated as appropriate for the specific uses of an organization.
• Additional software need not be acquired. All ProVision Workbench licensees may automatically view and publish the contents of a Best Practices notebook using the facilities of ProVision Workbench.
• Maintenance, distribution, and publishing of the Best Practices notebooks may be managed through the use of the BOSS, ProVision Workbench's multi-user administrator software.

Best Practices Notebooks

The Best Practices "Process" Notebooks of ProGuide describe the different project structures, along with their activities and deliverables. These process notebooks are entitled:

Business Domain Profile
Business Object Analysis
Distributed Design
Packaged Software Implementation
System Development and Implementation

In addition, a Best Practices "Techniques" Notebook describing detailed procedures for developing model-based deliverables is provided. This notebook is entitled:

Techniques

An introduction to each of the Best Practices Notebook is provided in the following sections.

Business Domain Profile

Business Domain Profile is the Best Practices process for examining a portion of the business or business process at a high level. Its purpose is:

• to scope the business domain
• to partition the business domain into manageable Business Object Analysis projects and subsequent in-house development
• to provide a business definition for the evaluation or acquisition of vendor-supplied software

The results of the business domain profile effort are structured in the form of a profile document. This document may indeed replace (or serve as a starting point for) the profiling effort in the subsequent business object analysis projects.

Business Object Analysis

This notebook is the Best Practices process for applying an object-oriented approach to defining the requirements of a business domain. BOA also employs special meeting facilitation techniques and a workshop environment to develop these business requirements. A typical BOA project involves a team of business experts of less than ten individuals assembled for a workshop of approximately five days. This team is responsible for articulating the business requirements, and becomes the defacto authority for the business domain under analysis.

Distributed Design

This notebook is the Best Practices process focusing on the specification of an application system. Its purpose is to take the business requirements defined in an analysis exercise and create technical specifications for a distributed, heterogeneous environment.

The Distributed Design process addresses the design of distributed applications using a "broad" definition of client/server. Technically, a client is a software application or node that requests services from another software application or node (known as the server). A server is a software application or node that provides a service to a requestor (client) when initiated by the requestor. In a distributed environment any node may serve in the role of client and/or server. Using this definition of client/server, the distributed design project template may be used when implementing almost any application system in a distributed environment. Therefore, this template addresses not only the "narrow" definition of client/server environments (data on a central server and presentation on a local workstation), but also all environments that call for distributed system components (such as cooperative processing, distributed processing, cooperative server, etc.).

Packaged Software Implementation

This notebook is the Best Practices process for identifying, evaluating, recommending and implementing a commercial software package. This project template identifies business and technical requirements to determine the acquisition criteria of a software package. The criteria are used to create a Request for Proposal (RFP) which is sent to potential vendors. Vendor responses are evaluated on their capabilities of the software package and capabilities of the vendor to support their package. The recommended software package is analyzed to determine the extent of modifications necessary and the cost of implementation. Once acquired, enhancements are designed for the software package.

System Development and Implementation

This notebook is the Best Practices process for constructing and installing an application system. The source of the application system design may be an enhancement to previously purchased packaged software, or a newly developed set of system specifications resulting from a distributed design effort. In this project plan the system specifications (or package enhancements) are constructed and tested. The resulting application system is then installed across each of the locations where it is to be implemented.

Techniques

This notebook contains the Meta Model for model-based deliverables of ProVision Workbench. It also contains detailed techniques for developing the primary model-based deliverables required by the ProGuide Best Practices processes.

ProGuide Architecture

The ProGuide architecture is expressed in the following simplified meta model. The meta model shows the basic objects of interest and their associations to other objects in ProGuide.

High-level view of the ProGuide meta model objects and their associations.

ProGuide Models

ProGuide Process and Technique models are stored in a world-class business modeling tool, ProVision Workbench. The sophistication, integration, and ease-of-use of ProVision may be used by an organization to customize the ProGuide models and thus the Best Practices processes and techniques.

By being a "model-based" and housed in a modeling tool, ProGuide allows you to:

• Change any of the Best Practices processes to fit the specific needs and characteristics of your organization.
• Combine different portions of the Best Practices processes to create a consolidated single process.
• Create your own Best Practices process following the ProGuide Architecture.
• Add standards documents, procedures, sample or recommended deliverable formats, recommended tools, etc. to the objects of ProGuide to support the standards of your organization.
• Enhance the generic Organizational Roles names to be specific to named job classifications in your organization.
• Modify existing, or create new, detailed techniques as discovered through your organizations usage of ProGuide

Process Models

A Process Model is a hierarchy that structures processes and activities. A process is a flow of work that produces a deliverable of value (it is functional in nature). An activity is a subdivision of a business process that is assigned to a particular organizational or project role for performance.

In the following example, the work breakdown structure for a portion of the Business Object Analysis process is shown.

 

 

A portion of the process model (or work breakdown structure) for the Business Object Analysis process.

Goal Models

A Goal Model is a composition model that organizes the goals that are accomplished by the processes of ProGuide. More specific goals are organized below it to support or further describe the root. The lower in the hierarchy the goal appears, the more detailed the goal. Goals are mapped to Processes to assist in understanding the objectives of a process and select the right process for the type of project that ProGuide is supporting.

In the following example, the goals for the Business Object Analysis process are shown.

ProGuide goal model for the Business Object Analysis process.

Organization Models

The Organization Model shows the different team members and their roles. Organizational Roles are mapped to Activities by using a Role in either a Workflow Model or a Use Case Model. The responsibilities of team members are visually documented in the Workflow Model. If a team member participates in an Activity but is not responsible for producing the deliverable, the Use Case Model is used to show this relationship.

In the following example, the Business Object Analysis organizational roles are broken down into its composite team members and roles.

ProGuide organizational roles involved in the Business Object Analysis project

Workflow Models

The Workflow Model gives a more detailed view of a ProGuide process, helping you visualize and analyze how multiple organizational units or project roles work together by evaluating their internal activities and the passing of deliverables among them.

The workflow model is a representation of a process in terms of its component activities, and the flow of work among the activities. A workflow model concentrates on the flow of work through the process for a single output or a single input. Because the process may cross organizational boundaries, the workflow model depicts the organizations performing the activities, as well as the communication between the activities.

Each ProGuide Process Notebook contains a set of workflow models mapping the activities and deliverables of the process starting with its initiation, tracing work as it passes from organizational role to organizational role, until its ultimate deliverables are produced.

The following example shows the flow of work and deliverables among the activities that comprise the "2 Business Profile" activity of the Business Object Analysis process. The organizational role responsible for an activity is indicated by placing the activity in the horizontal workflow lane that represents the role.

The "2 Business Profile" activity workflow model from the Business Object Analysis process.

You can also use ProVision’s Workflow Modeler to define cost and time estimates for each of the activities that comprise a ProGuide processes. Cost and timing estimates will be accumulated and rolled up to the highest level of the workflow and is displayed as part of the Process or Workflow interpreter report.

Use Case Models

The Use Case Modeler enables you to show all the different organizational units or project roles that "participate" in the activity. This differs from the activity-role mapping of the Workflow Model. In the workflow model, mapping an organizational unit or role to an Activity indicates that the organizational unit or project role "is responsible for" an activity.

In the following example, the 2.2 Develop Profile activity from Business Object Analysis process is further analyzed to show how different project team members participate in performing the activity.

 

The Use Case model showing the different roles participating in the "2.2 Develop Profile" activity.

Object Models

The Object Modeler provides the main inventory of ProGuide "objects of interest" and their properties. This enables you to understand the interrelationships of objects and the terminology used to define the deliverables used by the ProGuide processes.

In the following example, an object model showing the key business process components and their properties is shown:

 A portion of the ProGuide Object model for describing the concepts of a Business Process.

Method Models

Method Models are used in ProGuide to describe the procedure for building one of the model-based deliverables called for in a ProGuide Best Practices process.

The following example shows the development methods for building a process model:

The Method Model for developing a process model.

Methods have detailed technique level specifications that describe the steps necessary for performing a method. The following example shows the technique level description for performing the "Develop Process Model" method.

Detailed technique for developing a process model.

Tools and Documentation

For both the Process and Technique Notebooks, Additional Documentation may be attached to any object of a methodology models using ProVision Attachment facilities.

ProVision Workbench is a Windows Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) container. This means that you can embed external programs, graphic and text files, and other application objects in your ProGuide objects. This allows ProGuide objects to reference things such as standards and procedures, forms, articles, sample deliverables, instructional courseware, etc. that further supplements and enhances the ProGuide Best Practices Processes and Techniques.

Publishing and Distributing ProGuide Models

Numerous options exist in ProVision Workbench for making the contents of your ProGuide notebooks and models available to other interested members of your organization or project team. These options include:

• (Re)printing the Notebooks via publish lists
• Creating HTML output for Web-based viewing
• Creating a PVW file for distribution and import
• Providing access to a single shared ProGuide repository using the BOSS

Each ProGuide Notebook comes with a "Publishing List" that allows you to reprint the ProGuide models and interpretation reports in the same format and sequence as the original ProGuide Best Practices documentation.

The Publish List may also be directed to create HTML pages and files. These can be loaded on your organization's inter/intranet for distribution and review. Once published to HTML, all the models and their interpretation reports are displayed in the appropriate scrollable frames. An example of a Web page generated from the Publish List of the Business Object Analysis process is shown below.

HTML output, viewed by Internet Explorer, generated from the Publish List for the Business Object Analysis process of ProGuide.

To view your generated HTML output, from your Browser, load the "index.html" file from the directory you specified for the HTML files. This will bring up an initial HTML page listing the model images and reports generated from the Publish List. From here you can navigate to the items in the index.

If you have any questions please call or email us.

Email: liscot@liscot.com    Phone (905) 333-3562