A box analogy technique (BoAT) for agile-based modelling of business processes

This paper reports on our experience on developing the Box Analogy Technique (BoAT) an agile-based approach to extract business process models as part of the requirements elicitation phase. Business processes models have been established as an effective way of capturing and reasoning about organizational operational processes, and although having been used as part of requirements elicitation, their definition is a heavy process not aligned with agile principles. BoAT provides a complement for requirements gathering based on agile practices for process modelling combined with a cognitive-visual analogy focused on business view. The technique has been applied in three public and private organizations in a Brazilian state capital, and its artefacts have been compared against those obtained through a traditional interview technique. Results show that BoAT has indeed improved the communication with stakeholders, increasing the quality of the collected artefacts.