Must a Business Function Always Transform Data?

“Must a Business Function always create or transform data or information?” was question I was asked by a computing student last week.

The simple answer is “yes“,  But is is a very definitive “YES“. Because, if a “Business Function” does not create or transform information, then it is NOT a genuine Business Function.

This is one simple but essential quality check you must use when doing Information Flow Modeling.  If  ”Information In = Information Out” then the activity, whatever else it is, is NOT a Business Function and you have an error.

A typical occasion when this occurs is when an analyst models the activities of a location such as the post-room in a large organization.  Here  the analyst might show the information flow as information going into the post room in the form of, say, printed reports and the same information leaving the post-room on the same reports. So “Information In = Information Out”

This physical activity of transmitting information on paper is not a Business Function but a MECHANISM for distributing paper reports.