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Modeling Business Events
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BEAM✲ in Action: Telling Stories
Modeling an event is an alliterative three-step process: discover, document, describe.
Think of these as the 3Ds to go along with the 7Ws. Table 2-3 shows the steps and
their matching techniques.
S TEP BEAM✲ T ECHNIQUE
1. Discover an event Ask “Who does what?”
2. Document the event BEAM✲ table
3. Describe the event The 7Ws and event stories
The following sections describe each of the event modeling steps using an order
processing example for Pomegranate Corp., our fictional multinational computer
technology, consumer electronics, software, and consulting firm. In this initial
worked example, order creation will be modeled in detail as a discrete event. In
Chapter 4, shipments, deliveries and other related events will be modeled at a
summary level. In Chapter 8, several of theses events are combined as a single
evolving event that allows stakeholders to more easily measure the performance of
the entire order fulfillment process.
Table 2-3
Event modeling
steps
Imagine you are
modeling
Pomegranate’s
order process
1. Discover an Event: Ask “Who Does What?”
BEAM ✲ modelers discover business events by asking a deceptively simple ques-
tion (using the first 2Ws):
Who does what?
The answer to this blunt opening question is an event. An event is an action. An
action means that a verb is involved. When a verb is involved, there is someone or a
something doing the action: the subject, and someone or a something having the
action done to it: the object. So linguistically, the answer will be a subject-verb-
object combination: the simplest story possible. You are asking for
“Who does what?” is really a mnemonic, a way of remembering to ask stakeholders
to name the subject, verb, and object that identify an interesting event. It’s a short
way of saying: “Think of an activity. Who (or what) does it? What do they do?
Who or what do they do it to?”. Whatever form of the question you use, what you
actually want to discover is an interesting business activity (verb) that is in scope, so
it may need some qualification to work well. You might begin with your version of: You do this to
Who does what, that we want to report on within the scope
of the next iteration/release?
a subject, a verb,
and an object
discover interesting
business activity
that needs to be
measured