Wading Through Requirements on SOA/BPM/BAM Projects!

Jonathan Machules, Technology Director

On a recent project I was heavily involved in the requirements phase of SOA/BPM/BAM project. Requirements elicitation in its own right can be a challenge. On large projects with large teams and un-clear methodologies, approaches and tools/technologies, the issue is exacerbated.

Now throw in this whole BAM concept and things really get confusing. What I found is that BAM requires a customized approach for requirements elicitation. BAM requirements are all about the performance metrics of the business. But it is very easy for the Business Analysts and Business Owners to confuse the high level and low level requirements with design. It seems this is more of an issue with BAM due to the nature of the requirements. However, the Business Analysts and Business Owners need to focus on the scope of the requirements and the dimensions, NOT the design. When the business side elaborates on how they want to measure their business, there is a delicate balance between the calculations used to create the metrics and KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) themselves and the calculations, measures and metrics used to fulfill the requirement. Many times the business side not only gives you a description of the KPIs that they want to track, they also start to tell you where to gather data and how to calculate. This often imposes restrictions on the design that is the responsibility of the S/A and Designer.

In the end, we found that we had created a specialized approach for this project. We incorporated some specific BAM Specification and Design documents to help everyone understand the process and supply the necessary information for the BAM design team.

Some Definitions:

BAM (Business Activity Monitoring) - Gives insight into the performance and operation of your business processes real-time.

KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) - Significant measurements used to track performance against business objectives.

Monitor Dimensions - Data categories that are used to organize and select instances for reporting and analysis.

Requirements Dimensional Decomposition – The narrowing of requirements to the point of being clear, concise and unambiguous.

Metric - A holder for information, usually a business performance measurement. A metric can be used to define the calculation for a KPI, which measures performance against a business objective.


Jonathan Machules first joined Prolifics as a Consultant, and is currently a Technology Director specializing in SOA, BPM, UML and IBM's SOA-related technologies. He has 12 years experience in the IT field — 2 of those years at Oracle as a Support Analyst and 10 years in Consulting. Jon is a certified IBM SOA Solution Designer, Solutions Developer, Systems Administrator and Systems Expert. Recent speaking engagements include IMPACT on SOA End-to-End Integration in 2007 and 2008, and SOA World Conference on SOA and WebSphere Process Server in 2007.