Solution Modeler :: Analyst Edition
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High productivity tools for Analysts Easy to use tools to take you from business case to solution definition with seamless integration
No more dead-end workstreams or throw-away work. Continuously evolve your solution. Communicate effectively with users, architects, developers, and project managers. |
Solution Modeler - Analyst Edition is a fully integrated and powerful set of tools that cover the complete UI protoyping and requirements elicitation function. Everything you need - integrated, and in one package.
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Overview
The Analyst Edition of Solution Modeler combines Nascent Blue's high productivity tools into a comprehensive solution. Analysts can quickly gather sufficient high quality requirements by holistically analyzing business data, processes, and system functionality.
- Use a comprehensive and integrated approach to rapidly gain deep insights into the business need and its solution without bogging down in technical minutia and large project teams.
- Replace document-heavy, labor intensive methodologies with analyst-friendly, light weight, lean-agile methodologies that reduce cost, speed delivery, and improve quality.
- Create artifacts that will be used across the project life cycle and throughout the product life cycle.
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Solution Modeler is a suite of simplified special purpose tools, including Business Modeler, UI Modeler, Requirements Modeler, and Domain Modeler. Unlike many other suites of tools, the Solution Modeler components were designed from the ground up to work together, eliminate rework, and simplify and compress the delivery life cycle. The result is no throw-away work or dead-ends.
Why should you care?
One of the most common complaints analysts have is that too many requirements continue to surface well into implementation and into user acceptance testing (referred to as "missed requirements"). Requirements are missed largely because it is very difficult to gain enough insight into the business need in order to recognize requirements are missing; especially when using traditional approaches based on verbose documentation.
The comprehensive approach enabled by Nascent Blue's Solution Modeler makes it much easier to gain the necessary insight using high level business concepts, process flowa, data elements, use cases, and UI mock-ups. These elements provide a 360 degree view of the application and give the business users a way to experience the application. This capability allows high quality requirements to be quickly and thoroughly elicited and specified in a way that is useful to all participants of the project without doing throw-away work.
In short, using Solution Modeler can reduce risks that commonly plague solution delivery, such as schedule and budget overruns, by uncovering better requirements earlier in the delivery process, eliminating the need to perform rework, and incurring excessive change requests and extra delivery cycles due to missed requirements. Since common elements are used throughout the delivery process, redundant effort and transcription of requirements into design is also greatly reduced.
Who can use Solution Modeler - Analyst Edition?
Business Analysts, System Analysts, Solution Architects, GUI Designers
Features and Benefits Summary
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Business Modeling
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UI Wireframe Modeling
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Requirements Modeling
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Domain Modeling
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Seamless Integration
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Easy to Use
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Standards Based
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Example
This example shows a typical collection of diagrams for defining a solution with Solution Modeler:
- Business Modeler
- Requirements Modeler
- UI Modeler
- Domain Modeler
The purpose of this example is to illustrate how Solution Modeler can provide a comprehensive view of a solution to simplify and improve solution delivery. The scope of some of the tools within Solution Modeler may be broader than a single project, so this example overlooks the more comprehensive capabilities of Solution Modeler. A solution does not need to follow the specific set of steps in the order presented. In fact, one of the powerful features of the Solution Modeler - Analyst Edition suite is that all of the tool components are interoperable and integrated. This means the tool is able to capture any aspect as it comes up during the elicitation discussion. Solution Modeler makes it easy to switch between elements and correlate them. This ensures that a complete and integrated picture of the user's requirements evolves and can be validated.
UI Modeler - Screen Flow
It is difficult for many people, especially business users, to understand what they need by simply listing requirements or even reading use case models. UI Modeler lets you engage with business users using visualizations that are more familiar and natural to them - Screen Mockups / Wireframes. UI Modeler also lets you assemble these screens into a Screen Flow to depict how the users will experience the system (click here to learn more about UI Modeler).
UI Modeler - Screen Mockups
The screen references on a screen flow diagram reference a live diagram - called the Screen Diagram. These diagrams provide a high fidelity mockup / wireframe of the screen. Unlike other screen mockup tools, these diagrams are first-class elements and are directly traced to other elements (such as data elements, requirements, etc.) in the delivery life cycle. As such, these screens live throughout the solution's life cycle and are never thrown away.
Screens can be as simple or complex as they need to be. UI Modeler provides a rich set of essential graphical widgets familiar to most users. It is not the intention of UI modeler to precisely represent the look and feel standards of your company. This will be incorporated later by GUI architects.
Business Modeler : Process Architecture Overview Diagram
Start by capturing the business process to understand the nature of the solution that is needed by the business. The process architecture overview diagram visualizes the tasks, process roles, and business events related to a given process. Business Modeler can be used to capture other business aspects of interest, such as organizational structure, business motivation, products, etc ... (click here to learn more about Business Modeler)
- Identify the tasks in the process
- Identify the process roles responsible for performing each task
NOTE: Business Modeler supports full RASCI analysis - Determine which business events trigger which tasks in the process
NOTE: Not all processes and tasks are triggered by a business event - Determine if the process emits any business events that initiate external processes
NOTE: Not all processes and tasks emit a business event
NOTE: Events are used between processes in different Value Chains - Determine how the tasks flow
NOTE: A process or task should not have both an incoming flow and a triggering event
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Business Modeler : Process Activity Diagram
The process can be specified in more detail using a UML or BPMN activity diagram (this example uses UML). Modeling the process activity (aka, "workflow") helps ensure that all the needs of the business are understood and uncovered. The purpose at this level of modeling is only to understand the process; not to execute it in a BPMS infrastructure. That will come later using Nascent Blue's Process Modeler.
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Business Modeler - System Scope Diagram
When using the Analyst Edition of Solution Modeler, the intent of business modeling is to establish the business context for a system to be built or enhanced, and in turn the scope of the project that will deliver the new capabilities. The system scope diagram illustrates which processes and tasks will be supported by the new solution. This is a high level scope that is elaborated upon in more detail using Requirements Modeler (see below).
- Identify the information that is used throughout the process by each of the tasks
- Determine what level of access each task has for the information (create, read, update, delete)
- Determine what systems are used by each task in the process
- Determine what information is managed by each system and at what level of quality (e.g., SoR)
Best Practice: Each system should have its own scope diagram
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Requirements Modeler - System Context
Requirements Modeler lets you create traditional system use cases for performing goal-oriented requirements elicitation and documentation. The system component comes from Business Modeler, so this diagram implicitly traces the Use Cases to the Business Model.
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NOTE: It is sometimes unnecessary to perform Use Case modeling when using UI Modeler (see below) when the system scope is small enough or the requirements are already well-understood by the development team.
Requirements Modeler - Requirements Specification
Requirements can easily be captured during any diagram activity. Normally, requirements are first captured while creating the Use Cases. However, Requirements Modeler lets you capture requirements when creating any type of element within Solution Modeler. Each requirement has an ID, Name, and Description (ID and Name are shown in the example below). Requirements can also be classified, categorized, and characterized (click here to learn more about Requirements Modeler).
Domain Modeler - Order Delivery Domain Model
Domain Modeler lets you capture information/data elements. These diagrams are a precise and concise way to specify data requirements, structural business rules, and behavioral business rules. It defines a common vocabulary used for documenting requirements and specifications to make requirements more understandable and less interpreted.
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