Highlighting Value and Effort Drivers Early in Business and System Models

In complex business modelling and software development projects, we often observe that teams focus on those aspects of a system that are well understood or easy to resolve, while a blind eye is turned (consciously or subconsciously) to the actual value and effort drivers i.e. those components that require higher effort due to their intrinsic value, risk, complexity or uncertainty. In this paper, we introduce a pragmatic approach for highlighting elements of high-level business and system models with visual annotations that mark particular issues, requirements or complexities that would otherwise not immediately meet the eye, and would thus present risks to a project's successful completion if uncovered too late.