What is a Busines Designer?
A “Business Designer” is a defined role in the Rational Unified Process (RUP). Essentially the Business Designer details the specification of part of a business.

Note that in the RUP a role such as Business Designer does not relate to individuals. Rather it is a grouping of skills and competences.

The work of the Business Designer comes under the Analyst grouping. Their work is found largely in the Business Analysis and modelling disciplines.

Who are Busines Designers?
Clearly Business Designers are likely to be found amongst the Analysts on a development project. However unless the project is particularly large or has onerous modelling and analysis requirements, this is not likely to fill the time of a single person.

Indeed the role may not even be used. This follows on from the RUP guidance that the developing organisation should not slavishly create role defined in the process.

When does a Busines Designer do his job?
As with most methodologies the analysts workload is mainly in the early stages of the project.

The difference between the classic waterfall and the RUP is deciding when the job is complete/

In the Waterfall, the analyst undertakes all the analysis and modelling before any design work even starts. This can lead to misunderstandings and miscommunications. Risk also plays its part in that not until the last stages of development can the organisation have full confidence in the analysis.

In contrast the Business Designer in the RUP mostly works in the opening phases, Inception and Elaboration. In these phases the organistion is trying to mitigate business risk and architectural risk.

However work may still be needed in the construction phase, but at a much finer granularity.

How does a Busines Designer do his job?
The essential tool in the Business Designers box is the Use-Case.

A business’s workflow is specified in terms of business workers and entities. Further the behaviour is distributed to the business workers. Thus their operations, responsibilities, relationships and attributes are defined.

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