Business and Source-System Unit of Work (they’re not always the same)

How a software system depicts the unit of work, relationship or participating business entities in a transaction may be different to how the organisation’s own business rules see these business interactions. No one purchases commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) software that doesn’t automate parts or all their business processes, but you may find that how the software vendor depicts those rules and processes do not exactly fit how you would like to depict or report on them. There may be a myriad of reasons for this such as inadequate testing of the source platform before purchase, lack of support for changes or simply that the budget dictates you implement a less than optimal software package to automate your business processes! This is the reality!

And so, if the source cannot match your business processes and rules exactly and are not able to mould their processes to mirror yours, you may need to solve these business process gaps for yourself. Most of the time, this occurs because that vendor needs to look after their own bottom line and thus have a more generic view of that process or rule to cater for a wider range of their own customers.

Today’s topic is focused on how to depict source-aligned units of work with the business’ unit of work (UoW), they may differ, and by example we’ll discuss why and…