Fast forward to today, and I am firmly entrenched in the wonderful world of Business Software Development Tools. I'm not so much interested in building software for businesses as I am in enabling businesses to build their own software - or at least play a much larger role in building that software.
One aspect of enabling business dudes is BPMN - Business Analysts and Programmers using this shared notation to carry on discussions. BPMN is pretty good, and reasonably easy to learn - When used properly it does embower business dudes without pissing off the programmers (too much).
Unfortunately, a Process Definition just isn't enough. It's important, but at best it's only half of the solution - You've got to define the Data too.
BPMN evangelist Bruce Silver is quite frank about this:
"Let's face it, without referencing data you can’t do a whole lot in BPM."If you follow this link you'll see more from Bruce:
"Data modeling is a thorny issue in BPM because developers assume, often correctly, that business people do not understand all the technical details of data elements needed for optimum executable implementation."Guilty as charged... I clearly remember getting a "D" in Information Structures at UTA on my first attempt- perhaps I was preoccupied chasing girls at the time, but data modelling is hard and I don't expect business folks to "get it".
Still... we do need a Business/Programmer shared language for Data Modelling. The business dudes need to be able to specify the information that they need to do all the things they do, while the programmers need to be able to augment and enhance (scrap and replace) those definitions to make the software actually work.
In all honesty I don't know what this should look like... but I do know from first hand experience that some very smart business people don't have a clue what a Boolean is (until I explain it to them).
What do you think? Can we come up with a Data Modelling Notation that Mom can use?
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