My first Publication Agile-Data-Warehouse-Design-eBook | Page 128

Modeling Business Processes
107
Figure 4-8
Adding CUSTOMER
ORDERS to the
event matrix
Modeling the Next Event
Having safely documented the first event on the matrix, you now want to model as
many related events as you can in the time available. You discover the next event,
in exactly the same way as the first event, by asking: “Who does what?”. If, at any
point, you sense hesitation, or you are intent on discovering events in when order,
you might want to direct the stakeholders’ attention to the last event on the matrix
(so far, the only one) by pointing at it and asking a more leading question:
Ask for a new event
to add to the matrix.
Or ask for the next
verb in sequence
What happens next?
Stakeholders might say that “Packing follows Orders” or “Shipments follow
Orders.” If you were given both of these verbs at once, the next one in time se-
quence would be obvious but when you are modeling less familiar events the
sequence many not be so apparent to everyone, in which case you can draw a
simple timeline to help sort them chronologically. With a mixed group of stake-
holders, the answer to “what happens next?” can vary depending on their individ-
ual departmental perspectives. What happens
Watch out for instances where multiple verbs refer to the same event. Stakeholders
may use several verbs for the same activity, or multiple activities may be indivisible:
captured as a single transaction by the source system. For example, if products are
packed and shipped by the same person within a short period of time, the two tasks
may be recorded as a single shipment event. If you have any doubts, model each
verb as a separate event but if you uncover no extra details, or later discover they
represent a single transaction, you can merge the events with no loss of informa-
tion. Once you have a new verb (assume it is “ship”) you can use it to ask a more
focused “Who does what?” question to get the next event’s subject-verb-object main
clause: Watch out for
Who ships what?
next depends on the
stakeholders’
departmental
perspective
verb synonyms that
represent
the same event