CHAPTER 2
The XCellR8™ Approach:
Identifying Business Events

A business event is, very simply, something that happens in a business. It is a condition or situation to which the business must respond or an activity that the business needs to perform in order for it to reach its goal, accomplish its mission, or achieve its vision.

There are two categories of events: time-driven and external.

Time-driven events happen within the organization and are based on when the enterprise needs to perform them. A time-driven event is an activity that the business needs to accomplish when a certain situation occurs or when the result of another event is in a specific state. It is phrased beginning with “It is time to”; for example, It is time to review a purchase requisition, It is time to cancel a reservation, or It is time to rent a truck. Such events, however, are rarely triggered by time as dictated by the clock. For instance, It is time to open a bank account is really initiated at the moment a request to open a bank account is received from a customer, either when the customer walks into a bank branch or when he or she visits the bank’s website and makes the request.

An externally driven event is triggered by an entity outside the business department or organization. The timing of externally driven events is not necessarily controlled by the business. For example, a product shipment arriving from a supplier is an externally driven event. The shipment may arrive at any time. The organization does have control, however, of the process defined to respond to the event.

Events sometimes occur because a system is implemented, placing new constraints on the organization or necessitating additional requirements. For instance, when a client company implemented a warehouse management system a few years ago, the company had to introduce controls and procedures they previously did not have. These new procedures became new processes. These processes were not prompted by the business, but rather by the system implementation.

When naming an event, do not begin with a verb. That’s because an event is not a process—it’s a condition or state that must be supported by a process. The process that you eventually define to support the event will be named starting with a verb to indicate action.

Examples of events include:

A customer makes a bank deposit.

It is time to open a bank account.

A delivery truck arrives at the in-gate.

It is time to enable supplier payment.

A customer cancels his or her order.

A department manager launches a project.

If you have identified only one business event in the early stages of a project and can’t seem to find others to include in the project, think about whether there are events that oppose the one you’ve identified. For example, if you have an event called A customer makes a bank deposit, the opposing event is A customer makes a withdrawal. If the event is A delivery truck arrives at the in-gate, the opposing event is A delivery truck leaves the facility through the out-gate. If it is possible for the truck driver to drive out of the in-gate, which would require a different response, then this is a different event from A delivery truck leaves the facility through the out-gate. When identifying events, remember that details matter.

Using Business Rules to Find Events

Business rules are the guidelines that direct the operation of the business requirements. A rule is made up of conditions and actions. It defines what actions need to be taken under certain conditions. These actions can be the start of a new event, an alert, the issuance of a report, a corrective action, or a directive to ignore a condition.

There are different categories of business rules:

Organizational rules that govern the company from the top, such as bylaws

Financial rules, such as Sarbanes-Oxley

Process rules that govern the day-to-day operation of a business, such as hiring procedures

Production rules that govern product quality, such as product composition

Commerce rules that govern transactions between the organization and its external partners, such as payment procedures for vendor invoices or procedures for customer returns.

Let’s say that the chief financial officer of Sterling Corporation wants to implement some new business rules:

For contract work estimated at more than $50,000, a business approval request form must be submitted.

For contract work estimated to take more than 50 hours, a work order must be created.

What are the business events we can extract from these rules?

It is time to estimate contract work.

Contract work will cost more than $50,000; it is time to submit a business approval form (BAF).

Contract work will cost $50,000 or less.

Contract work will take more than 50 hours; it is time to create a work order.

Contract work will take 50 hours or less.

You can extract at least five business events from these business rules alone. There may be still more events, depending on what other rules apply when a BAF is submitted or when a work order is created. Once you have identified the business events, develop the event process model for the event, build the event entity relationship diagram, and define the objects and data attributes.

For example, if contract work will cost more than $50,000, ask these questions:

How do you know that the contract work is more than $50,000?

What information should be included in the BAF?

Who should submit the BAF?

To whom should you submit the BAF?

What will happen if the BAF is not approved? What will the state of the contract work be?

What will happen if it is approved?

How many approvers are there? If there’s more than one, is there a hierarchy? What rule should be followed to decide on the outcome of the approval process? e.g., If there are two approvers and one disapproves, is the BAF rejected? Should the rule be unanimous approvals only?

Is the selection of the approver based on the type of contract work? What business rules apply to the selection of the approver?

Case Study: Business Events for a Portfolio Management Project

Identify as many possible business events as you can from the project description below. Compare your answers to the list of business events appearing in Table 2-1. The list identifies only the events that can be extracted from this brief description and could change dramatically during the requirements discovery session.

Kumot Global Services is launching a portfolio management project that will allow the company to keep track of all of its projects. The following conditions—business rules—apply to all of the company’s projects:

A project may be cancelled for a number of reasons: if the budget is not approved, resources are not available, costs are greater than benefits, or the project is deemed high-risk.

When a project is initiated, the project manager prepares a project plan. This plan must go through an approval process.

Both internal and external resources may be assigned to a project. Vendors, for example, are external resources. Kumot’s current portfolio management project will include vendor invoice processing.

When an internal resource (a staff member) is assigned to a project, the project manager must make sure the staff person is available to devote time to the project and has the appropriate skills and knowledge to fulfill the assigned role.

A project’s schedule, internal resources, budget, and vendors may change at any time.

A project is prioritized based on several factors determined by the IT portfolio management department.

Once complete, the project will be evaluated against the original project plan.

TABLE 2-1: Portfolio Management Project Events

In Brief

When taking on a new project, it is easy to become overwhelmed and bogged down by details, especially if you cannot determine which ones are relevant and important. The best way to approach any project is to minimize its complexity. This can be done by following the XCellR8™ principle of breaking the project down into manageable chunks of work, each based on a single business event. Events are conditions or situations to which a business must respond to achieve some goal. They can be triggered by entities inside or outside the business. They may be based on business rules.