3. Business Subject Matter Expert

As the name suggests, the Business Subject Matter Expert (BSME) is someone with deep knowledge of the relevant business for which the software is intended to serve.

This person, or group of people, is vital because their early input into the requirements gathering and design process is the starting point for much of the project delivery phase.

Modern business processes are complicated, even those that follow a largely standardized approach, such as, the "Order to Cash" and "Procure to Pay" processes. Assuming that no customization takes place, which would add an extra level of complexity to the requirements, automation of these complex processes requires a great deal of knowledge and insight into how these processes work from end to end. This involves understanding the stories and use cases of all of the users that contribute to the business process.

If you consider a factory workflow management application, there are likely to be multiple factory operators with unique roles, inputs, and outputs, as well as a monitoring and management information layer to supervise and control overall performance and throughput. Similarly, with consumer-facing software, such as Facebook, there is a complex management and administration layer that only the Facebook engineers see and use to manage their system, including a way to roll out trial features on a user-by-user basis, among over 2 billion users worldwide! Put simply, there are many facets to modern software and its usage.

The Business Subject Matter Expert's role is to represent the business users to the rest of the software project team, taking part in requirements gathering and solution design workshops, as well as end user testing.