BDL: evolutionary and revolutionary

BDL is at the same time both evolutionary and revolutionary. From the technical perspective it is evolutionary, because it marked a logical ‘step upwards’ in application of object-oriented approach.

This approach started at software engineering level (with C++, Visual Basic and other object-oriented programming languages), then rose to the level of information systems engineering (UML) and now progressed to the level of business (organizational) systems analysis and engineering (with BDL).  On the other hand, it is quite revolutionary, because prior to the advent of BDL no one applied object-oriented approach to business systems.

From the corporate management perspective, it is also evolutionary, because it just delivers what the ‘classic’ (process-based) reengineering promised – the quantum leap in corporate performance.

True, BPR (business processes reengineering), did deliver some impressive quantum leaps – but only at local (suboptimization) levels. Why? Because if you ever try to build a comprehensive corporate-wide map of business processes, you will very quickly find out that you simply can not do it. This map will very quickly become totally unmanageable – even with all fancy software tools.

With BDL, you can easily build a comprehensive map of corporate objects. Which is really not surprising at all, because our world is object-oriented, not process-oriented. And humans think in terms of objects, not processes.

Therefore, it is only natural that object-oriented approach replaced the process-oriented one in business systems analysis and engineering. Because that’s exactly what it did before: first, in software engineering and then – in information systems engineering.

On the other hand, being able to make a quantum leap in aggregate performance of an entire company instead of individual business processes, is quite a quantum leap in itself. And, therefore, very much revolutionary.

You can make similar arguments in favor of both evolutionary and revolutionary nature of BDL in two other of its aspects: (1) transition from ‘balanced’ scorecards (BSC) to object performance measurement scorecards (Aggregate Performance Scorecard and Object KPI Scorecard); and (2) from just one valuation model (for the entire business entity) to a whole system of such models – for various corporate objects, projects and processes. As well as from Customers Relationship Management (CRM) systems to SRM – Stakeholders Relationships Management system.