Activity: Set and Adjust Objectives

Define the Boundaries of the Target Organization

Discuss the boundaries of what you choose to include in your modeling effort. Decide what constitutes the target organization. This can effectively (but not necessarily) be done using business actor and business use-case notation, should the involved audience feel comfortable with such notation. It is important to gain agreement on answers to the following questions:

• What important parties in the environment do you consider external to the target organization? This means identifying those parties whose work you cannot affect but with which you still need to have a well-defined interface. 
• If you are performing business modeling in order to define the requirements for a particular system, are there any parts of the organization that will not be affected by this system? Those parts can be considered external, since there is no point in using resources to produce descriptions of business processes that this project is not influenced by or cannot influence. 

The boundaries that you set for the target organization may be rather different from those that you consider to be the boundaries of "the company." For example:

• If your goal is to build a new sales support system, you might choose not to include anything that goes on in your product development department. Nonetheless, the product development department must be considered a business actor, since there are interfaces to it that need to be clarified. In this example, a party inside "the company" is considered external to the target organization and is therefore modeled as a business actor. 
• If the system you are building is airmed to enhance communication with partners or vendors (a business-to-business application), you might choose to include those partners or vendors in your target organization. In this case, a party that is external to "the company" is inside your target organization. Note that this type of categorization is useful only if you have some insight into and influence on your partner's method of operation. If you can influence only the interfaces to the partner, it should be considered external and be modeled as a business actor. 
• If the purpose of your project is to build a generic, customizable application (such as a commercial accounting application), the target organization must represent your assumptions about how the customers who buy the end product will use it. In this case, you are including an abstract party in the target organization. 

Identify Stakeholders

Stakeholders are those groups (internal and external, individuals and organizations) that are entitled to influence the outcome of the project or need to be kept informed of decisions made within it.

In the Target-Organization Assessment, you defined the stakeholders to the business. In the Business Vision, you must specify which of these stakeholders are to be considered within the boundaries of the project at hand. Your decisions in this regard will depend on the scope of the business-modeling effort (see Concepts: Scope of Business Modeling), as well on as what boundaries you have defined for the modeling effort. 

Gain Agreement on Objectives for the Effort

In order to define the objectives of the business-modeling effort and manage stakeholders' expectations, clear objectives must be set and agreed upon by involved parties. This helps keep the business-modeling team focused and prevents divergent expectations.

The objectives set here are not the same as the business goals that are identified later. These objectives apply specifically to what is to be achieved by the business-modeling effort. They are usually a combination of the following aspirations:

• Reduce costs (operational and distribution). This is often a secondary objective, achieved by reducing lead time and improving quality.
• Reduce lead-time. Improve responsiveness, shorten development cycles, improve productivity, and so on.
• Increase revenue.
• Increase the number of customers. 
• Reach new markets. 
• Improve the quality of both products and services.
• Improve inventory and procurement management. 
• Improve channel relationship (partners and vendors). 
• Increase customer satisfaction expressed in both objective and subjective terms.
• Make your employees more effective in teaming and collaboration. 
• Merge businesses. When two businesses are combined into one, you might need to merge some of their business processes.
• Outsource part of the business.

To help clarify objectives, it is useful to ask the stakeholders the following questions:

• If we say this is impossible, what would you do then?
• If we are successful, who will you tell about it?
• If we are unsuccessful, who will you not tell?
• What will happen if we are unsuccessful?
• Why do you think we are capable of solving this problem?
• How will you determine whether we have solved your problem?
• When will you consider the job done?

Identify Constraints to be Imposed on the Effort

You must consider a variety of sources of constraints. Here is a list of potential constraints and questions to ask about them:

• Political: Are there internal or external political issues that affect potential solutions? Are there interdepartmental issues?
• Economic: Which financial or budgetary constraints are applicable? Are there costs of goods sold or product-pricing considerations? Are there any licensing issues? Are there signs that things are changing?
• Organizational: Are there any other initiatives currently underway that may be affected? Is the organization changing? Do the involved parties know the history of the problem?
• Environmental: Are there environmental or regulatory constraints or legal issues? Are there other standards that might restrict us?
• Technical: Are we restricted in our choice of technologies? Are we constrained to work within existing platforms or technologies? Are we prohibited from using any new ones?
• Feasibility: Is the schedule defined? Are we restricted to using existing resources? Can we use outside labor? Can we expand resources? If so, can we do so on a temporary or a permanent basis?
• System: Is the solution to be built on our existing systems? Must we maintain compatibility with existing solutions? Which operating systems and environments must be supported?

Formulate Problem Statement

Most business-modeling efforts imply some change, and that change must be well motivated. You must formulate and document a problem statement in the Business Vision. This document, and the problem statement in particular, serve to convince stakeholders of the need for change and focus all involved parties on the issues that must be addressed.

In your Target-Organization Assessment, you might have defined a list of problems that the stakeholders have determined exist in the target organization. In the Business Vision, you need to limit the list of problems to the ones you intend to focus on solving within the boundaries of your business-modeling effort. While it is very difficult to identify one single root cause for all the problems you have found, you must always attempt to do this. Formulating a problem statement helps determine whether the perceived problem is in fact the real problem.

Working with the whole team, use easel charts to fill in the following template for each problem you have identified:

The problem of (Describe the problem.)
affects (List the stakeholders affected by the problem.)
the impact of which is (Describe the impact of the problem.)
A successful solution would (List some key benefits of a successful solution.)

The purpose of this template is to help you distinguish solutions and answers from problems and questions. For example:

The problem of untimely and improper resolution of customer service issues
affects our customers, customer support reps, and service technicians
the impact of which is customer dissatisfaction, perceived lack of quality, unhappy employees, and loss of revenue.
A successful solution would provide real-time access to a troubleshooting database by support reps and facilitate the timely dispatch of service technicians to only those locations that genuinely need their assistance.

Determine What Areas to Prioritize

You must discuss and agree upon what areas of the target organization your business-modeling effort should prioritize. This discussion may take slightly different paths, depending on the scope of your business-modeling effort. 

• If you are modeling to create a chart or to make simple improvements, you must look at your descriptions of the current business (its business actors and business use cases) and walk through the workflows step by step to determine areas that need improvement. See the Guidelines: Business Vision, the section on Finding Areas for Improvement. 
• If the purpose of your modeling is to create a new business or to radically change an existing one, you must focus on a larger scope. You can start by questioning the boundaries of your business. See the Guidelines: Business Vision, the section on A New or Thoroughly Restructured Target Organization. 

Document the Business Vision

The main result of this activity is a Business Vision that describes a vision of the future target organization. This document must contain:

• The names and outlines of the target organization's new or radically changed business use cases.
• An overview and high-level description of the future business use cases, emphasizing how they differ from current ones. For each business use case, the document must name the customer, supplier, or other type of partner. In addition, it must describe the input, activities, and product. These descriptions must present the philosophy and objectives of the business in straightforward and objective terms. However, they do not need to be comprehensive or detailed. They are intended to stimulate discussion among senior executives, employees, customers, and partners.
• Measurable properties and goals for each business use case, such as cost, quality, lifecycle, lead time, and customer satisfaction. Each goal should be traceable to the business strategy, and its description must indicate how it supports that strategy.
• Specifications of the technologies that will support the business use cases, with special emphasis on technology support.
• A description of imaginable future scenarios. As far as possible, the specification should predict how the business use cases will have to change in the next few years due to new technologies, new interfaces to the environment, and other types of resources.
• A list of critical success factors; that is, factors that are critical to the successful implementation of the Business Vision.
• A description of the risks that must be handled if the business-modeling effort is to be a success.

For more information, see Guidelines: Business Vision and Artifact: Business Vision. 

Evaluate Your Results

Check the Business Vision at this stage to verify that your work is on track, but do not review it in detail. Consider the checkpoints for the Business Vision document in Checkpoints: Business Vision.  Be sure to consider the stage in the project at which the review is taking place. For example, in the first iteration of Inception, the Business Vision can be only a fragmentary and preliminary sketch.

At the review, be sure to have representatives from the following groups:

• executive management
• the business-modeling team
• representatives of people who are to work in the target organization
• representatives of any partners who might be involved in your business improvements

This content developed or partially developed by Empulsys BV.

Rational Unified Process