Business patterns catalogue and selection proposal for the conceptual model of a software product

Abstract

Context: A pattern is a model that allows reusing a successful solution to the same problem in a different context. A pattern implementation could be the elaboration of an analysis model to incorporate good practices patterns Conceptual Modelling of Electronic Government systems. Defining a new pattern, and selecting a previously existing one from a limited set, called catalogue, are essential activities that every analysis model must solve when using patterns. Goal: The present work describes a proposal to manage a Business Patterns catalogue that can be applied to Conceptual Modelling of software products. Business Patterns allow to model and design business processes inside an organization, being it public or private. Methods: An application, called “PatCat” (Pattern Catalogue), was developed to test de proposal, using the Business Model of an Information System for a public education institution as a pilot. Conclusions: The introduction of patterns at the beginning of the Modelling Process allows to simplify and clarify the requirements elicitation, amongst other benefits. Thus, a specific management application for a pattern catalogue is useful to standardize and speed up this software design task.