BIZSPEC: A Business-Oriented Model for Specification and Analysis of Office Information Systems

Normally, domain-independent methods, such as structure charts, data ow diagrams, and entityrelationship diagrams, are used to model the requirements of a business. We propose a model, called BizSpec, in which each logical business unit is de ned using business-oriented concepts: forms, unit ows, and policy. This model has three advantages over domain-independent methods: 1) it uses business-oriented concepts to improve communication between the end users and the systems analysts, 2) it represents each logical business unit independently to help the end users examine their part of the system, and 3) its speci cations are executable, so the end users and systems analysts can rapidly generate and analyze prototype systems.