Artifact-centered operational modeling: Lessons from customer engagements

For almost a decade, the artifact-centered operational-modeling approach for modeling business operations, also referred to as the “business artifact method,” has been practiced and refined. This approach has been used in a variety of engagements, and each engagement has brought forth innovations that have enriched and strengthened the approach. In this paper, we describe three of these engagements in order to illustrate the method and highlight some of the lessons learned. The main objective of this paper is to establish the value of operational modeling in business transformation and to incorporate the lessons we have learned into a more comprehensive account of the method. We also describe the model-driven business transformation toolkit, which adds a unique value proposition to the method—the rapid and effective transformation of operational models into implementations that are manageable and can be monitored.