Deriving Requirements from the Process Model

How to get to the Requirements from the Processes?

When the goal is to automate a process, process modeling, in addition to understanding the organisation and workflows, can also be a source for extracting business and software requirements for building or contracting an information system that supports the process.

From the process model, already existing in the organisation or during an ongoing process modeling project, it is possible to extract business rules, business requirements and even data or information from the future system.

The idea of extracting the requirements from the process models is to ensure that the specified system will provide the business with the necessary support. The technique can be used to develop new systems, hire systems development, purchase off-the-shelf software or software selection.

The requirements can be derived from models in any language or notation (BPMN, EPC etc.) for business process modeling.

For example, a company has its headquarters in several locations and each location has its access system. It intends to hire a single system for all locations. However, all features present in old systems should continue to be supported. In addition to some new features that need to be included in the new technology that it wants to deploy.

One way to define the requirements for contracting this new system is through process modeling.  From the models of the access processes that already exist in each location, it is possible to define the important requirements of each old system that must remain and the problems that must be addressed and solved.

Another case is when the company already has a defined process, for example, a service contracting process. However, this process is supported only by spreadsheets, generating, in this way, inconsistencies, ambiguities and risks. In this scenario, the desire to replace these spreadsheets with a system is born. Through the process, it can be concluded what the requirements for this new system that will be developed are.

dheka has its own working method, which starts from the process model and generates the requirements’ specification. For the method to be effective, it is necessary that the process models are updated and consistent with the reality of the company’s functioning.

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