Business Process Implementation for IT Professionals

Robert B. Walford is Manager of Advanced IM Technology at GTE National Operations. He received his MS and Ph.D in electrical engineering from the University of Southern California and is a certified public accountant (CPA). Dr. Walford is a member of the IEEE, National Society of Professional Engineers (NSPE), and the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA).

This book is a comprehensive blueprint for translating business processes into applications to enable those processes. The author approaches this challenging and complex undertaking by framing the blueprint within the context of the development life cycle.
A few key items about the approach: (1) it's based on data and models, which is a correct approach in my opinion, (2) it fully supports component-based architectures, which in turn, promote reusability, and (3) it does not end with release - the author addresses post-deployment issues.
The heaviest emphasis given in this book is on modeling, which depends greatly on requirements management and validation. I especially like the emphasis given to business rules because I believe them to be the best way of documenting and expressing requirements. The reason for this is business rules are expressed in a logical manner and are elicited directly from the intended users. Moreover, well expressed business rules are testable, which means that verification and validation can begin early in the life cycle of an application or system. However, business rules are but one aspect of the approach - the author prescribes an integrated set of models (process, scenario, role, workflow) that enable you to capture the business process being automated from a number of views that will be integrated into requirements and specifications, and translated into the application which will support it. I also like the fact that important milestones, such as test and release to production, are accounted for in the approach.
As much as I like this approach, I am not sure that many organizations will adopt it in its entirety because of the numerous competing methodologies that have found homes (at least in name and lip service) in larger companies. It's the larger companies that typically embark on projects of the magnitude described in this book. However, even if the entire approach is not adopted, many components of the author's approach can certainly be adapted to fit within any methodology. Also, some of the boutique consulting companies might find this approach useful because if it's followed with a strong commitment to *completely* perform in accordance with the author's methods it can be used as a differentiator in a competitive bid.