The Business Motivation Model

The Business Motivation Model (BMM) is a concept model/vocabulary of the concepts essential for business governance. Its focus is on why enterprises run their businesses the way that they do, and its underlying principle is "Businesses are driven, not by change, but by how they decide to react to change."

The BMM provides:

• a vocabulary for understanding critical business motivation and governance issues, including such concepts as 'business policy', 'strategy', 'tactic', 'goal', 'influencer', and 'assessment', along with the verb concepts that relate them, such as 'business policy governs course of action'.
• implicit support for an end-to-end process that runs:
• from recognition that an influencer (regulation, competition, environment, etc.) has an impact on the business
• to implementing the reaction to that impact in business rules, and organization responsibilities, and business processes.
• the basis for logical design of a repository for storage of BMMs for individual businesses.

The BMM was first published by the Business Rules Group (BRG) in 2000, under the title "Organizing Business Plans: The Business Rules Motivation Model." That original paper was updated in 2005 with a new title, "The Business Motivation Model: Business Governance in a Volatile World." For more on the background of the history and evolution of the BMM, visit businessrulesgroup.org/bmm.php The BRG's Release 1.4 publication is available in PDF format.

The Business Motivation Model in the OMG

In September 2005, the OMG voted to accept the Business Motivation Model as the subject of a Request for Comment (RFC). This meant that the OMG was willing to consider the Business Motivation Model as a specification to be adopted by the OMG, subject to comment from any interested parties. Adoption as an OMG specification carries the intention that the Business Motivation Model would, in time, be submitted to the International Standards Organization (ISO) as a standard.

Version 1.1 of the OMG standard was published in May 2010. The evolution of the BMM Standard continues, under the Charter of the OMG's BMM Revision Task Force. The most current version of the OMG's published BMM work is available on the OMG website.

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