An Object Oriented Approach to Business Modeling in Information Systems Development*

Developing a business information system (BIS) is a very complex process that involves not only the application of modern information and telecommunication technologies but, most important, a good understanding of its application domain: the organization. Nowadays, object oriented methods and languages are commonly used in many BIS development methodologies. However, most of these methods focuses only on the representation of the objects or entities of the BIS domain and the interaction between the BIS and its domain through use-cases. When applied to the development of BIS, most of the OO methods ignore other important components of the BIS domain, such as the organizational culture, the business ends, the business rules and, even, the job structure. Business modeling can help the BIS analysts and designers to gain a more comprehensive understanding of the problem, the business needs, and the BIS objectives, which is essential to identify, analyse and specify user ́s requirements. We present in this paper an object-oriented business model that captures the main components of an organizational system. This model is then used as a framework for describing an object-oriented method for business modeling in the context of BIS development.