Background

Some organisations use very ad hoc approaches to selecting and acquiring software that may result in them not being aware of appropriate products, or in choosing non-optimal software. Using a systematic approach to software evaluation is important to ensure that software that meets organisational requirements.

The modelling will be done using a visual modelling language for representing processes called BPMN 2.0 (see Topic 5). Undertaking business process modelling and improvement requires appropriate modelling software. This assessment is intended to give you practical experience with evaluating software and also with report writing to document the evaluation process.

• Introduction. This section should introduce the purpose of the report.

• Criteria. This section should:
  • describe how you identified relevant criteria
  • provide a brief discussion of potential criteria
  • include your final set of criteria (note: there must be at least 6) and why each of them was chosen to include as important in the decision
• Relative importance of criteria. This section should discuss and justify the relative importance of each criteria for choosing a tool to undertake the Business Process Management assignment (your 2nd assignment). It should include the percentage weighting of each criterion.

1. Investigate criteria that might be important in making a decision about which modelling software package to recommend. You should consider what you will need to do to complete the modelling in the Business Process Management assignment (your 2^nd assignment) and also what has been written by others about selecting this kind of software.
2. Choose the set of criteria to be used in the evaluation (note: there must be at least 6). You will need to justify the choice of each criterion.
3. Determine the relative importance of each of these criteria for choosing a tool to undertake Business Process Management. The outcome of this will be a relative weighting for each criterion.
4. Identify 3 possible modelling packages that support BPMN 2.0 these will be your alternatives. Microsoft Visio should be one of them. You must be able to get access to all of them for the purposes of the evaluation this could be by downloading a full copy (e.g. obtain Visio from Azure Dev Tools), obtaining a trial copy or getting permission to test it on someone elses machine.
5. Use the weighted score method to evaluate your alternatives using the criteria and weightings you have specified. An Excel spreadsheet should be used to support the evaluation and identify which product has the highest ranking. This should use the variation of the weighted score method that includes raw scores and final scores for each criterion.
6. Determine which modelling software package you recommend.