BMMF2 — BMM Comment

The Business Motivation Model appropriately defines a Means as a “device, capability, regime, technique, restriction, agency, instrument, or method that may be called upon, activated, or enforced to achieve Ends”. However, there is no provision in the model to define referenced elements of business model that are devices or instruments. Main categories of resources of a business are man, machine, material, money, and real property. Referenced elements of business model defined externally in the BMM are limited to Organization Unit, Business Process, and Business Rule. (RFC 1.4.2). The recommended solution is to add "Asset or Liability", or a suitable synonym, to the model as an externally defined thing. An Asset would include machine, animal, computer system, software program, raw material store, in-process inventory, finished goods, supply, real estate, and money and monetary instruments such as securities and budgets. Contracts may also be included as assets. Liabilities would include certain unfilled contracts, debt, lawsuits, and other obligations. Human resources would presumably appear to be handled in Organizational Unit models. Processes employ assets, which need to be defined and are the subject of policies and rules. Assets can be defined in models, including UML models and SBVR models. Many business policies and business rules of a company are related to the definition, acquisition, operation, and maintenance of its assets and liabilities.

Add placeholders for two new concepts:
· Asset, with two specializations:
· Resource: short-term, consumed and replenished
· Fixed Asset: long-term, maintained, reused, with one specialization:
· Offering: specification of a product or service
· Liability: claim on Resources to meet commitments

Add associations between the placeholders:
· Fixed Asset provides Resource
· Offering uses Fixed Asset
· Offering requires Resource
· Liability claims Resource

Emphasize that:
· These new items are placeholders. The real Assets and Liabilities are described in other systems. The BMM placeholders are references to them
· An enterprise BMM includes only those Assets and Liabilities the users want to include for their governance decisions. These do not have to be a complete and coherently-connected set. The full specifications and 'joined-up' structure are in the systems the placeholders refer to.
· This is an operational view. Although some of the terms have an accounting flavor, BMM users will usually want to refer to the actual things in the business, not their monetary values (the accounting view).

Connect the new placeholders to:
· Core BMM concepts: Course of Action, Directive
· Other Placeholders: Business Process, Organization Unit

Consequential effect:
· "Resource" in Annex G becomes "Resource Quality", an Influencer that is the quality or availability of Resources.