Business Modeling With UML: Business Patterns at Work [Paperback]

Magnus Penker (Author), Hans-Erik Eriksson (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0471295515 | ISBN-13: 978-0471295518 | Publication Date: January 2000 | Edition: 1

"An excellent hands-on book for practitioners eager to document the internal structure and everyday workings of business processes. This clear and practical book belongs on the shelf of everyone dedicated to mapping, maintaining, and streamlining business processes." -Richard Mark Soley, Phd, Chairman and CEO, OMG
"Eriksson and Penker have not just written another patterns book; this is a significant contribution to the key field of business-IT alignment. While capturing profound academic insights, what makes the book so refreshing from a practitioner's viewpoint is the richness of accessible, down-to-earth examples and its pragmatic, unpretentious style."-Paul allen Principal of CBD Strategies and Architectures, Sterling Software
"UML may have been designed by and for software engineers, but Eriksson and Penker have defined a practical extension to UML for describing business processes. They put this extended UML immediately to use with a gallery of common business patterns that should jump start any BPR effort."-Philippe Krchten, Director of Process Development Rational Software
"This book is a marriage between proven business modeling concepts and the techniques of UML. It provides real-world strategies for developing large-scale, mission-critical business systems in a manner accessible to both software and business professionals."-ScottW. Ambler, Author of Process Patterns
Following up on their bestselling book, UML Toolkit, Hans-Erik Eriksson and Magnus Penker now provide expert guidance on how to use UML to model your business systems. In this informative book, key business modeling concepts are presented, including how to define Business Rules with UML's Object Constraint Language (OCL) and how to use business models with use cases. The authors then provide 26 valuable Business Patterns along with an e-business case study that utilizes the techniques and patterns discussed in the book.
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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Until now, the Unified Modeling Language (UML) has been primarily used to design software, but should you use it to model your entire business as well? That's the intriguing argument of Business Modeling with UML, a text that combines leading-edge enhancements to UML with some solid thinking about business. Written for any manager with some technical background, this book looks at the possibilities of UML used to model entire organizations.

The book makes a strong case for the advantages of modeling businesses in UML. With models, an organization can provide better software, define and implement new goals, and even decide whether to outsource certain operations. The Erickson-Penker Business Extensions for UML, invented by the authors and presented within the text, permit UML to document the entire business enterprise. This book shows how to model businesses, from business architecture to processes, business rules, and goals. Short case studies--for Web-centric and more traditional companies--are used to illustrate key concepts here.

Later sections of the book will perhaps take a little more background in software engineering to appreciate fully as the book presents a handful of business patterns, which offer reusable solutions to common problems (just like software patterns). The authors also look at how to leverage a business model to create better software.

In engineering, a new car is modeled and thoroughly tested on a computer before any physical prototype is ever built. As the authors point out, a business that has accurate models can test out new ideas cheaply and then adapt to changing market conditions quickly. This title makes a case that UML--a tool traditionally used by software developers--is ready to tackle the job. Read this notably informative and intelligent book to see the possible benefits of business modeling in UML for your organization. --Richard Dragan

Topics covered: Business modeling basics, UML notation and Erickson-Penker Business Extensions, class diagrams and powertypes, object diagrams, statecharts, activity diagrams and swimlanes, sequence and collaboration diagrams, collaboration and use case diagrams, component and deployment diagrams, stereotypes, business architectures, business processes, resources, goals, business rules, Object Constraint Language (OCL) and collections, business views and patterns, business goal allocation, business goal decomposition, business goal-problem, and software architectures

Review

"...excellent value for money." (Computer Bulletin, September 2000)

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Product Details

• Paperback: 480 pages
• Publisher: Wiley; 1 edition (January 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0471295515
• ISBN-13: 978-0471295518
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 7.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #158,068 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #19 in Books > Computers & Technology > Programming > Software Design, Testing & Engineering > UML

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Interesting concept, great work on business modeling, April 3, 2000

By 

J. Chong (Dallas TX) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Business Modeling With UML: Business Patterns at Work (Paperback)

Sometime ago I have been wondering if somebody will try to bridge the gap between business modeling (the one used by consultants) and software engineering. It would certainly make it easier for people to understand and explain business operations.

This book is an application of the UML into the realm of business modeling. It is very good in the sense that it explains and goes through the patterns that form business models. The introduction on UML is pretty short and concise, so if you are new to it try using "Applying UML..." book to get an introduction. Be prepared to sit down and spend some time reading, since the material can be a little bit daunting to try to understand and remember all the patterns available. Overall, I wish I had this book for Systems Analysis instead of the outdated software engineering books that we used.

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Good for new business modellers, October 11, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Business Modeling With UML: Business Patterns at Work (Paperback)

Being relatively new to business modelling in the eCommerce arena, I purchased this book with the aim of guiding me to a consistent diagramatical notation/methodology for functional requirements. Whilst many customers are still more comfortable with the old flow chart and DFD, I was able to at least apply some of the principles behind the notation. I showed someone else in our workshop sessions and they took the details so they could purchase their own copy. I have compared notes with a few others and find that they either have the book or have at least seen it. I would recommend this to someone in the same situation as I was - relatively new to business modelling, yet not naive wrt analysis and design methodologies. For those who are old hands it might still be worth a look.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A very good guide to business-level modelling with UML, July 13, 2003

By 

A. K. Johnston "(www.andrewj.com/books)" (LEATHERHEAD United Kingdom) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Business Modeling With UML: Business Patterns at Work (Paperback)

One of the weaknesses of the Unified Modelling Language is its relatively limited support for modelling at the Enterprise level, especially to accurately model business processes. The UML purists believe that everything should be reduced to Use Cases, while these authors recognise that much more is necessary.

The book covers five quite distinct topics:
1. An introduction to business modelling and UML, explaining the problems the authors want to help solve, and describing each of the relevant techniques of UML,
2. A proposal for a group of extensions to UML (using that language's own established extensibility mechanisms) so that that it can better model business processes,
3. A description of the variety of views and models which will be required to establish a comprehensive understanding of the business, or at least part of it,
4. A repository of "business patterns", which you can use to model the business,
5. A comprehensive worked example.

Each of these is quite detailed. In particular, the book contains probably the best introduction to the Object Constraint Language (OCL), and its use to model business rules, that I have read anywhere. The sections on how to do business modelling are also very good, as are the introductions to the relevant UML techniques.

The "Eriksson-Penker extensions for business modelling" are important because several UML-based case tools have now implemented them as an emerging standard for business process modelling with UML. If you want to fully understand how these work, this is the book to read.

The business patterns are more of a "curates egg". Some are extremely useful, and others innovative which could easily solve your problems where there is an accurate match. That said, some are less good and seem to state the obvious, although with patterns it is always difficult to know if you are judging some harshly simply because you are so familiar with them and other readers will get more value. Some of the pattern explanations are a bit repetitive, and the "examples" often sound very artificial, but overall they are useful, and a single one which solves a real business modelling problem for you will justify the rest.

At over 400 pages, some of which is occasionally slightly slow and ponderous this is not an ideal book to read from cover to cover. But it is definitely one to study, focusing on whichever topic is most relevant to you at any time, and I can happily recommend it.