Understanding the Business Model

Introductions. The participants introduce themselves, and the session objectives are reviewed. Education. Education is provided on the relevant concepts, on the process, and on the starter model. Review and refinement of subject areas. The subject areas in the starter model are reviewed, and a set of subject areas is derived. Definitions for those subject areas are then reviewed and refined. Refinement. The list of potential subject areas is reviewed and refined to arrive at the set of subject areas. A critical part of the agenda for the first session is education. During the educational portion of the meeting, the facilitator explains what a subject area is, how it should be identified and defined, and why the resultant model is beneficial. The processes (for example, brainstorming) to be employed are also described along with the rules for the facilitated session. TIP If some members of the group understand the concepts and others don’t, consider having an educational session before the actual facilitated session. This provides the attendees with a choice and does not force people who know the topic to attend redundant education. The remainder of this section presumes that the group is not beginning with a starter model. Following the educational session, the group engages in a brainstorming session to identify potential subject areas. In a brainstorming session, all contributions are recorded, without any discussion. It is, therefore, not uncommon for people to identify reports, processes, functions, entities, attributes, organizations, and so on, in addition to real subject areas. Figure 3.1 shows the potential result of such a brainstorming session for an automobile manufacturer such as the Zenith Automobile Company. If you look closely at the flip charts, you’ll see that most of the second sheet and part of the third sheet deviated into too great a level of detail. When this happens,