Enterprise Business Motivation Model version 3.5

  • Article

For those of you who have been waiting for me to announce the release of the newest version of the Enterprise Business Motivation Model, I’m happy to announce that version 3.5 is available now. 

To visit a Wordpress site set up to explain the model, visit https://motivationmodel.com

To visit a web site produced by the Sparx modeling tool, allowing direct navigation of the model itself, visit https://motivationmodel.com/ebmm

To download a PDF document exported by the modeling tool (for those folks who love PDF files), visit this link here. 

Special Thanks

The Enterprise Business Motivation Model has gone through a long list of changes since the original article was published over two years ago.  I’ve spent considerable time working through the model and getting feedback from colleagues from around the world. 

I’d like to give special thanks to Michael Davison, JD Beckingham, Neil McWhorter, Bruce McNaughton, Henk Harms, Bill Ulrich, Jim Rhyne, Kirk Rheinlander, Leo de Sousa, Yelena Edelstein, Al Newman, Amy Nguyen, David Vugteveen, and many others who have commented, criticized, and asked for clarifications.  Without your concerns and your insight, the EBMM would not move forward.  Thank you!

Changes to look for

There are many changes since the last public version (v1). 

  • The business model description was updated to reflect connections between customer types and partner types, and to more completely cover the model elements of Alexander Osterwalder’s Business Model Generation. (model, description)
  • Porter’s Five Forces was added as a separate area clarifying the linkage between a Five-Forces analysis and business models themselves.
  • The dual notion of Business Capability and Business Unit Capability proved too confusing and arbitrary for a core conceptual model.  The single concept of Business capability remains.
  • The concept of Data object is now elevated to a top-level element in the model with necessary changes to the high level view. 
  • Business role was added with relationships to business processes and data objects.
  • The concepts of Regulations, Legislative Edicts and Charter Legislation were added to clarify the role of these key concepts to Government and Semi-private organizations.
  • The concept of “capability maturity” was expanded to “assessment metric” to allow a broader understanding of how measures can be applied to business capabilities in order to motivate and measure the success of initiatives.
  • Clear distinctions are made between an enterprise, a company, and a business. 
  • An additional relation has been added to business unit: relates to.  This allows models of the enterprise to include interrelationships between business units other than the normal hierarchical relationships that the existing “includes” relation allows.  This should enable a wider array of analysis models to be created for those architects who need to model a subset of the enterprise.
  • A page was created on the Wordpress site to discuss the difference between a Process and a Capability.  (link)

 

Of course, we are not done.  I am publishing version 3.5 in order to insure that my conversations with other Business Architects has a current footing.  The following concerns have been shared and are under consideration for future versions:

  1. Add the ability to attach a Value Chain Analysis
  2. Add the ability to represent the accountabilities of a team in relation to the business processes themselves
  3. <<your suggestion here>>

 

As always, I welcome feedback and input.  I’m proud of where the EBMM has come so far and look forward to working with exceptional people to discuss and describe future changes to the model. 

Note: I didn’t keep a careful list of the folks who offered valuable feedback on the model.  If you offered feedback, and I didn’t mention you above, please accept my apologies and send me a note.  I’ll update this post.