Business Process Modeling for Software Developers

As a software developer I never thought I'd be saying this (I suppose eight years of working for the company that invented this technique might bias me), but you can not underestimate the value of business process modeling when starting a new project. This is especially true if it's a small project and you don't have the benefit of a dedicated requirements analyst. As a consultant (or as a person who is learning someone else's business) your job is to understand your customers existing business better than they do themselves. And you need to be on the same page with others regarding how you are going to change their day to day functions. And that's what business process modeling is for. You may ignore this document after the first week on the project, in fact I would encourage you to. But even if you throw it away immediately after creating it, the process of developing the document will still: * Flush out important questions * Show your customer you understand their world * Help document the project to other developers * Facilitate communication (especially with the people who pay the bills) * Generate user stories (requirements) * Identify the entities that can feed into an Entity Relationship Diagram (or database I suppose) * Aid making good choices for the decisions it be hard to undo later (like whether to manually code workflows or use Windows Workflow Foundation) * More clearly identify pain points and areas where your software can help end users; and * Identify metrics that can help determine project success from an ROI and product owner's perspective Convinced this is a tool you need in your toolbelt yet? As long as the answer isn't "I only write code leave me alone" then check out this quick how-to: