UML brought valuable standardisation to object-oriented analysis and design, but leaves critical gaps: no standard process, weak dynamic modelling, and little architectural guidance for building flexible, maintainable systems. This book presents the Inspired Method — developed and refined over decades of commercial practice — as a comprehensive alternative covering the full lifecycle from business analysis through design, architecture, and delivery. It is aimed at developers and analysts building multi-user, database-backed commercial applications who need a rigorous yet accessible approach that actually works in practice.
Beyond Use Cases: A Better Approach to Business Process Modelling
UML's Use Cases are widely used for requirements capture, but they encourage a system-centric view too early and lack the semantics to properly model complete business processes — including flow, costs, timing, organisational responsibility, and manual activities. This paper proposes a richer process modelling notation that forms a superset of Use Cases and Activity Diagrams, and transitions seamlessly from high-level stakeholder models all the way to rigorous design specifications. The approach, developed and refined through teaching and consulting, addresses a persistent gap in object-oriented analysis and enterprise engineering.