Business Object Model (BOM)

Definitions

Business Object Model (BOM)

the architecture work product that is typically produced during the business architecting activity that documents the object model of the customer organization’s business enterprise

Objectives

The typical objectives of a business object model are to:

• Model the customer organization’s business in terms of essential concepts (types), their responsibilities, and the semantically meaningful relationships between them.
• Clarify the terms in the glossary.
• Provide input to the business process model.

Benefits

The typical benefits of a business object model are:

• It analyzes the most important concepts that the business.
• It presents these concepts in a new organized manner that helps the customer organization better understand their business.

Contents

The typical contents of the business object model are:

• Overview:
  • Major Subdomains
  • Package Diagrams
• Packages:
  • For each Package X:
    • Package Definition
    • Package Responsibilities
    • Class Diagram (business types and semantically important relationships)
    • For each Type Y:
      • Class Definition
      • Class Responsibilities
      • Class State Transition Diagram (if any)
• Conclusion
• Appendices:
  • Major Issues
  • TBDs
  • Assumptions

Stakeholders

The typical stakeholders of the business object model are:

• Producers:
  • Architecture Team
• Evaluators:
  • Architecture Inspection Team
  • Customer Organization, which inspects the content for correctness
• Approvers:
  • Technical Leader
  • Project Manager
  • Customer Representative
• Maintainer:
  • Architecture Team
• Users:
  • Business engineering architecture team, which uses the business object model during the rearchitecting of the customer organization's business.
  • Application development requirements teams, which use the business object model as a source for their domain object models.

Phases

A business object model is typically produced during the following phases:

• Business Strategy: Completed
• Business Optimization: Maintained
• Initiation: Completed
• Construction: Maintained
• Delivery: Maintained
• Usage: Maintained
• Retirement: Archived

Preconditions

A business object model typically can be started if the following preconditions hold:

• The initiation phase is started.
• The architecture team has been staffed and trained in object modeling.

Inputs

The typical inputs to a business object model include:

• Work Products:
  • Class Responsibility Collaborator Cards
  • Glossary
  • Customer Analysis
  • Market Analysis
  • User Analysis
  • Business Vision Statement
• Stakeholders:
  • Business Domain Experts

Guidelines

• This is a living document that is developed incrementally and iteratively in parallel with other documents.
• The business object model typically starts by modeling the original business and evolves until it models the newly architected business.
• A copy of the business object model for the original business is often archived so as to enable a clear before/after comparison.

Conventions

The business object model is typically constrained by the following conventions:

• Work Flow
• Content and Format Standard
• MS Word Template
• XML Template
• Inspection Checklist

Examples

• Example Business Object Model