bpmn - visual modeling

7/25/2019 BPMN - Visual Modeling

1/754 PM NETWORK MAY 2015 WWW.PMI.ORG

NowYouSee ItWhen gathering requirements gets murky,

visual modeling can clear the way.

BY ALMA BAHMAN

PORTRAITS BY NICK SIMONITE


2/7 MAY 2015PM NETWORK 55

Joy Beatty,Seilevel, Austin,

Texas, USA



As project managers determine the requirements

needed to get a project from inception to comple-tion, what may seem simple enough at first can

quickly grow into a tangled morass of requirements

and their myriad dependencies. Visual models can

streamline those complicated details, turning them

into a discernible, easy-to-follow story.

Visual modelswhether tables, flowcharts,

maps, matrices, tree diagrams or othersturn

overwhelming amounts of intricate text into read-

ily analyzable images. Tey thus shorten projects

development phases and increase productivity, says

Shilpa Gnaneshwar, PMP, project manager at GEAviation, a PMI Global Executive Council member,

Bengaluru, India. When presented in text format,

relationships among requirements can remain stub-

bornly opaque; modeling makes them apparent. If

done correctly, Ms. Gnaneshwar says, modeling

will remove redundancy and ambiguity in data.

Whats at stake is much more than a simplified

project management process, however. A model

that clearly illuminates a projects requirements has

a direct impact on its chances of success. Almost 40

percent of unsuccessful projects fail primarily due

Its easy to getbogged downin the details.

If done correctly, modelingwill remove redundancy

and ambiguity in data.Shilpa Gnaneshwar, PMP, GE Aviation, Bengaluru, India



requirements are sitting out in the open, she says,

like berries waiting to be picked. Requirementselicitation means posing the right questions to get

the needed information. Visual models can help

project practitioners understand what those ques-

tions should beand which stakeholders should

answer them.

Ms. Beatty likens the process of eliciting require-

ments to building a house. You can build a house

without talking to the people who are going to live

in it, but youll build a better house if you did.

A project doesnt have to be reduced to just one

visual model. While every house, for example, hasthe same basic componentsfour walls, a roof

and a doora feature-tree model could diagram

residents specific needs. Te models trunk rep-

resents the house while a branch represents each

bedroom, with smaller branches describing the

rooms size, the type of flooring and so on. From

there, a process-flow model could map out the

steps for the contractor, from hiring subcontrac-

tors to applying for permits to procuring materials.

Even blueprints are a visual model, Ms. Beatty says:

Heres the floor plan, heres the electrical, and

to inaccurate requirements gathering, according to

PMIs 2015 Pulse of the Profession: Capturing theValue of Project Management.

Te value of a picture is that its a neutral, agnos-

tic language, says Howard Podeswa, CEO of Noble

Inc., oronto, Ontario, Canada. It draws a logical

connection between things.

PICTURE THIS

Modeling might seem like an extraneous, time-

consuming activity, but spending a bit more time

up front can save time in the end. When people

think about models, they sometimes think, I donthave time, I can barely get the requirements done,

says Joy Beatty, vice president of SeiLabs at Seilevel,

Austin, exas, USA. But you should take that time

to do it now, instead of having to do it later.

A visual model doesnt have to be a great work of

art. You can use templates and frameworks, Ms.

Beatty says. With each initiative, project managers

can customize those templates.

Rather than using the standard term require-

ments gathering, Ms. Beatty prefers requirements

elicitation. Te word gathering suggests that

The valueof a picture

is that itsa neutral,agnosticlanguage.It drawsa logicalconnectionbetweenthings.Howard Podeswa,Noble Inc., Toronto,

Ontario, Canada

SAMPLE MODEL: FEATURE TREESFeature trees organize features into groups,

capturing the entire scope of a project in a

single, high-level visual model.

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When people thinkabout models, they

sometimes think, I donthave time, I can barely

get the requirementsdone. But you shouldtake that time to do itnow, instead of having

to do it later.Joy Beatty



Tey helped the project by organizing the require-

ments to tell a story.

Te team also discovered missing requirements

and project areas that had no written requirements

at all.

ON THE SAME PAGE

Visual models can help ensure that all project teammembers share the same understanding of the

projects requirementsespecially since different

people see the same things differently,

Mr. Podeswa says. While team mem-

bers might grasp only their respective

project components, a model displays

the whole picture.

Not everyone thinks at the same

level, says Pierre Gagn, president of

Insurance Frameworks Inc., Quebec

City, Quebec, Canada. Some thinkclose to the ground and some think

strategically.

And some team members can get

so mired in the technical details of a

project that they miss critical pieces

of information.

When a Canadian regional government had to

update its human resources software, Mr. Podeswa

was brought on to help select and purchase a new

system. He started modeling with a group of busi-

ness analysts who had already been working on

everything is in the blueprint and laid out on top

of each other.

If visual modeling relies on the old adage that a

picture is worth a thousand words, Ms. Beatty finds

another number equally useful: seven. Based on the

work of psychologist George A. Miller, PhD, Ms.

Beatty uses this concept to explain the useful role of

visual requirements models. As Dr. Miller showed,peoples short-term memory can absorb about

seven new things at a time, give or take two. Ms.

Beatty often sees this play out on projects.

One such project aimed to build a game-like sim-

ulation for a government contractor. Te customer

handed us their list of 2,000 requirements, and said,

Help us figure out if were missing anything, Ms.

Beatty says. Not only would parsing through the list

of 2,000 items take the project team too much time,

but Ms. Beatty still wouldnt have been able to figure

out everything the project needed.As I was reading through, somewhere around

number 10, I forgot what number one was about,

Ms. Beatty says. Reading through is impossible for

comparing requirements and looking for redundan-

cies or missing pieces.

Ms. Beatty and her team mapped the list of

requirements onto models: requirements map-

ping matrices, process flows and context diagrams.

When it was just a list, no one really could under-

stand the essence of what the system did, but these

models tied the requirements together, she says.

As I got moreinvolved in theup-front aspectsof projects, Irealized that thesemodels, if drawnat the beginningof a project, wouldreveal to me missingrequirements.Howard Podeswa

SAMPLE MODEL: BUSINESS OBJECTIVE MODELOrganizations use business objective models (BOMs) to document

a projects value. BOMs comprise business problem/objective pairsthat culminate in a product concept. Success metrics in these mod-

els state the goals against which the project will be measured.

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the project. Minutes into the conversation, Mr.

Podeswa says, the group members realized they

had missed a vital piece of information that would

inform the new system: the fact that employees

could belong to more than one union.

As I got more involved in the up-front aspects

of projects, I realized that these models, if drawnat the beginning of a project, would reveal to me

missing requirements, he says. Modeling helped

strip away the technical steps from the software and

offered a clear look at requirements and rules, Mr.

Podeswa says.

Like Ms. Beatty, Mr. Podeswa said that clear

view helped him know what he required from the

projects stakeholders. Missing elements in the

diagram pointed to questions I still needed to ask

my stakeholders, he says.

FILLING IN THE BLANKS

Even when project practitioners dont have an

abundance of project data, modeling can help them

fill in the blanks. While working on a software proj-

ect, Ms. Gnaneshwar used models to make sense of

a complicated competition analysis.

I was doing a market analysis on the possible

modules for a software product expansion. Te

analysis was based on geographic region, the busi-

ness segment, the module affordability, economic

zones and many other factors, she says.

After finding limited data in text form online

from various sources, trying to consolidate and

analyze the information was getting to be a chal-

lenge, she says. rying to transform it to a format

that I could deduce from was not easy either.

o bolster the analysis, Ms. Gnaneshwar relied

on visual models. Plotting data onto line graphshelped identify customers inclinations toward cer-

tain software and other areas the com-

pany intended to invest in. Maps visually

highlighted relevant regions and displayed

customers levels of interest. Modeling the

data revealed the trends Ms. Gnaneshwar

was looking for more quickly than if she

had parsed through each text document.

It is like a jigsaw puzzle, she says.

You have bits and pieces of information,

and you are trying to build a picture outof it.

A model can be as complicated as a

process flowchart with hundreds of steps

or as simple as a tree diagram with two

or three branches. Te project manager

must determine when to use a model,

what model to use and how detailed to

make it, Mr. Podeswa says.

Just like a recipe book, you pick what you want

from the recipe and make it your own, Mr. Gagn

says. PM

When it was just alist, no one reallycould understandthe essence ofwhat the systemdid, but thesemodels tied therequirementstogether. Theyhelped the projectby organizing therequirements totell a story.Joy Beatty

SAMPLE MODEL: PROCESS FLOWSProcess flow models include process steps connected by directional arrows that indicate all possible paths. These models

have clearly defined starting and ending points. They can also feature other symbols, as seen below.

IMAGECOURT

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