Business modelling in software development

Hafedh Mili et al recommends that teams should use a core language for modeling, and then use different parts that suit the process from other languages. In this field, it appears that experts agree that even the languages should be driven by the tasks.

Choosing an approach to BP Modeling is just as essential as performing it. The approach, based upon the actual task itself, is not a one-size-fits-all affair.

Some classifications should be made before a project is undertaken. According to Bider , professionals should consider three factors: the actual business processes, the characteristics of the modeling environment, and the intended use of the model. These three factors may be broken down into specific business considerations.

Since there is no universal approach to BP Modeling, experts recommend considering all of the unique business factors. Some pros recommend a specified formal approach that gathers all of the information before choosing tools, while others recommend specific tools that have worked for them in the past.

Two of our experts make their recommendations below. Once you know what the requirements are, i. When it comes to process engineering at Local Fame, we always have efficiency and effectiveness in mind - the most cost-effective, timely and optimized manner that a process can flow. For this purpose, I always approach the task from a few different angles - from the start of the process, as well as from the end of the process backwards.

When you do not limit yourself with the direction of the process flow you can identify gaps and possible flaws in the strategy and implementation, as well as possible bottlenecks.

Once I come up with a few different models I test those applying different scenarios in order to understand how sustainable those are in turbulent environment. This is when usually you sift through the best models and shortlist one or two successful ones. Additionally, an intrinsic part of business process modelling for me is risk management, more specifically, identifying the potential flaws of the model and where and under what circumstances the model can fail.

Identifying those weaknesses of the process helps you create contingency plans and backups, and as you often may find yourself, you get to optimize the process even further and scrap some of the chunks you initially considered essential, but later on realized you could go without.

When thinking about risk management, however, one should know a risk could be both a positive and a negative, risk can create opportunities for the process to fail or get delayed, but also speed up and become more efficient, which again leads to the process optimisation and potential changes in the model. Tools I often use when doing business process modelling are Gliffy, Activiti Modeller, and Gantt charts.

To conclude, when modelling a process or re-engineering an existing one, I usually approach the task from a project management perspective analysing the requirements fully before moving to the design stage. After design stage, I test the model numerous times in different scenarios and if needed I return to different stages to optimise and tweak it further. Lastly, I always think about risk management and contingency to make sure that the process is resilient and sustainable.

I always start with examining the problem and finding out the history of the problem, the different parts of the problem, and the effect the problem has on the business. Understanding the problem and components are core pieces to developing an effective process model to improve.

Start with the problem. Examine the parties involved. Understand the current performance and measurements. Define the performance improvement goals. Outline an efficient process which drives results and displays success. Some experts consider BP modeling for software development to be a before and after prospect that revolves around the introduction of web services.

Before the development of the web, the main approach for developing processes was workflows. In the workflow approach, the business processes are pre-determined. The workflow approach was criticized as not being very flexible in a modern environment. Process modeling is based upon the flexible composition of business services.

Services carry out small tasks, such as data development, or simple service procedures. Taken all together, BSOA makes an extremely reusable system that can be fixed and regularly upgraded.

This approach is credited as being Agile, and applicable to many different types of organizations. Between all of the standards and standardized languages, some professionals think that the creativity in designing processes is being leached out.

Alternative approaches can restore some of that creativity. Some of the most popular techniques that can stand-alone or even complement more formal approaches are the following:.

This has been true in my career as a wealth manager, a Healthcare IT executive, and now as the founder of a digital marketing agency that specializes in SEO. Nevertheless, I've found the creative aspects is what separates the pretenders from the achievers. We are Google partners so we believe in the usual success measurements, but get there differently.

YouTube, Geo-Tagging, and unorthodox combinations of our client's digital properties consistently land multiple properties on page one for the most important keywords. Process mapping is a high-level review of an organization as a single entity with interconnecting parts.

The flow of business processes through the organization is reviewed to clarify who does what, how processes are performed, and by what standard they are judged.

In process modeling, professionals are more focused on how efficient the processes are, using business and economic best practices. Although both depict the processes graphically, process modeling is a deeper dive into the relationships that produce the services and outcomes. The on-premises business model for software development presupposes that software is installed and functioning within an in-house infrastructure of the client. Why is on-premises software model the number one choice for particular companies?

The on-premises distribution business model allows customizing a product as well as adjusting it according to the requirements. Besides time-consuming implementation, it requires in-house server hardware and a support team. Distributing a product via a license model may prevent potential customers from making big investments due to the risks. Moreover, upgrading of customized on-premises software is a difficult process.

The cloud-based distribution approach or Software as a Service business model is a method in which the software functions in the cloud service or at a hosting provider. With the Software as a Service business model companies have access to the software via mobile device or a browser without installing software on their data centers.

Nowadays more and more businesses opt for cloud hostings like Amazon Web Services or Microsoft Azure. Some businesses prefer a hybrid business model for software development. This is a combination of on-premises and SaaS models which lets your customers have their application installed on-premises and take advantage of cloud services as well. The balance of the strategies is determined by customers according to their needs. The hybrid business model for software development is flexible allows transfer data between cloud services and on-premises data centers ; allows sending huge files and making seamless updates; allows storing sensitive data on-premise.

However, the approach is twice as difficult as on-premise or cloud model alone. It requires a bigger team of front-end developers to handle the interface tasks, updating software, and dealing with limited customization opportunities. There are two models of source code licensing: proprietary or open source software business model. Open source software business model is totally opposite — users get access to both software and source code. Once you know your product distribution strategy choose a software revenue model for your income source.

Mostly, companies use a combination of revenue streams to increase the number of users and income. Software companies inevitably choose between two types of business model interactions while forming its business model.

It can take a form of one-to-many or many-to-many. The former is traditional value delivery, when a provider directly solves customer problems Trello, Microsoft Office, Photoshop, etc. The latter implies that a company creates a platform where both end-providers and customers meet Airbnb, Uber, or Upwork. But more on that below. B2C or B2B market. Eventually, a company must choose the target audience that it sells products or services to, which would lead to the company taking the business-to-business B2B or the business-to-consumer B2C approach.

B2B means that company sells services to other businesses and B2C means selling a product or service directly to a consumer. The traditional distribution approach has been used for many years by such companies as SAP, Oracle, and Microsoft. The main characteristic of the cloud-based distribution approach is that the software runs at a hosting provider or in the cloud service. For instance, software as a service SaaS is a cloud-based distribution approach in which a provider hosts its applications and makes them available to customers via the Internet.

They can access the software using a Web browser or a mobile device. SaaS is typically delivered via a term-based subscription. Some software companies have a hybrid distribution approach. Hybrid in this case is the approach that combines a SaaS solution with an on-premise software application.

So, a cloud-driven technology complements an on-premise one. For instance, Adobe Creative Cloud combines on-premise products like Photoshop with additional cloud services like libraries, presets, etc. Besides, on-premise software gets updated as if deployed on the cloud, regularly and without asking the client to purchase a separate license for each new version of a product.

As high-speed Internet connection has become a new standard, hybrids will become increasingly more common.

Another way to realize the hybrid deployment is to let customers choose between a SaaS service or an on-premises solution and provide the opportunity to switch from one to the other if needed. For example, Microsoft Outlook can be deployed on-premises but can also be accessed online. The hybrid approach combines and amplifies the difficulties of both SaaS and on-premise approaches. In this case, code written in a high-level language is assembled in a machine language, which is executable by a machine but unreadable by a human.

Most companies make their software products proprietary to protect it from copying, changing, or emulating. There are exceptions. Sometimes, software protected by copyright does have code available for alteration by users. Open source software means that users get software and access to source code free. Nowadays, an increasing number of technology companies create open source software. Black Duck Software , the open-source software OSS solution provider that helps maximize value by minimizing risks from open source software, has disclosed the results of The Tenth Annual Future of Open Source Survey.

According to the research, 78 percent of respondent companies run part or even all of their operations on OSS, and 66 percent said their companies create software for customers built on open source. At the picture below you can see that operating system, database, and development tools are the top OSS areas in The main drivers of growing open source adoption in are the quality of OSS solutions, feature support, and susceptibility to customization.

The vendor charges for customization, support, and maintenance are traditionally the main open monetization mechanisms for open source software. This includes user support, product maintenance, hosting, consulting, and defining the product strategy. Process analysis is the rational segmentation of business processes into different phases to understand them and look for ways to improve their overall efficiency.

It refers to their full-fledged analysis, which also includes a series of logically articulated routine tasks that utilize organizational resources to transform a work process with the aim of benefiting the process and maintaining its excellence.

In various software engineering methods, the approach taken for requirement engineering often includes comprehensive modeling of distinct aspects such as data, system structure, or behavior. These models are the basis from which system design and implementation are contrived in the later stages of the development process and are the flagship mode of communication between expert users and system developers. Because requirement specifications' quality is a determining factor for correction costs and software quality, a huge chunk of the effort is dedicated to system modeling in software development's early stages.

It is for these reasons that organizations often set down process models describing the workflows or processes of a business in a graphic format to accomplish a specific goal. Process models are usually set down through different graphing methods and are normally utilized to examine and represent a range of activities that occur periodically and on a regular basis.

They can and are used to model the workflow between departments and people, or the flow of activities in an application or a system. These models have a set beginning and end, desired goal, structure of activities, and variable results based on the decisions taken through the process's course.

Software process modeling is used to provide a simpler representation of a software process. Each model represents a process from a specific perspective. In any organization, software processes range according to the needs of a specific group or project. In order to help organizations achieve their required objectives fairly easily, there have been many developments with respect to life cycle models.

The most important and popular of them are:. Waterfall Model. The waterfall model involves breaking project activities down into a sequence of linear phases where each phase is dependent upon the deliverables of the previous one. The V-model is considered by many as an extension of the waterfall model and includes bending the process steps upwards after the coding phase instead of moving downwards in a linear way.

It represents the relationships between each developmental phase. Incremental Model. In the incremental model, the model undergoes gradual designing, implementation, and testing in incremental phases until the product is finished. The product is finished when it meets all its requirements.

Iterative Model. In stark contrast to the other models, the iterative model doesn't start with a given set of specifications of requirements. In other words, this process model begins by defining and executing just a part of the software, which is then evaluated and prioritized accordingly. RAD Model. Rapid application development RAD is an incremental software development prototyping approach that places less importance on planning as compared to adaptive processes.

Spiral Model. A risk-driven software development process model, the spiral model, resembles a spiral with numerous loops. The number of loops in the spiral is undefined and varies from project to project.

The spiral's loops are called a "Phase," and the number of these phases required to build the product can be decided by the PM after looking at project risks. Agile Model.