Scenario Mapping Can Transform Accountants Into Database Planners

When pursuing a database design projectAlong these same lines, there is an increasing
objective, the question of scenario mapping arisesconcern that accounting is not expressive enough
often enough to be considered as a design issue.to match the potential created by the
The whole idea is to bring together twophenomenal growth of software language
environments that can only be connected bytechnology. And although accountants have taken
conscious effort and insight.a leading role in developing frameworks for
The business environment is the external activityperformance evaluations that encompass financial
that carries on in real-time transactions and theand non-financial measures, the outcome of
accounting language is the syntax and semanticsantiquated accounting systems design methods
of those transactions while the softwareprevent them from catapulting into similar growth
programming that supports this business activitypatterns.
resides in an unfamiliar and often unnoticed worldThis prevents accountants from fully availing
of electronic circuitry represented by severalthemselves of the opportunities to expand their
programming languages that control therole in supporting strategic management and
operational flow of these machines.control of innovative and accurate business
The one technique for recording andsystems. But through the use of scenario
communicating concepts that cover both themapping and the XML language the accountant
accounting world and the world of computers arecan provide greater support in this area through
natural language sentences that can begreater involvement in the design process.
understood and operated on by practitioners ofThis approach is particularly useful because these
both worlds. These natural language sentencesdesign models formed by scenario mapping can
(English in our case) can easily be woven intobe embedded into XML sub-tags and carried
requirements and specification scenarios for bothindefinitely through a projects life-cycle.
sides to allow for the design of a database drivenThis final linkage can provide the basis for
application that satisfies the business needs ofconceptual and working database processes
accountants and software engineers.allowing an integrated design framework to
This is the process of mapping referred to asemerge and enable the accountant to assist in the
scenario mapping and defined as the matching ofdevelopment of meaningful accounting information
business requirements with computersystems. This then strengthens the role of the
requirements. Thus, scenario mapping is the setaccountant to become an important contributor
of activities that transforms a person's action intoto the development and evaluation of corporate
the art or technique of bringing the two worldsstrategy and database planning.
together.