Sunday, December 22, 2013

Business processes and systems processes

When we describe a enterprise there are a number of perspectives we can take e.g. those relating to:

  • offerings: products, services i.e. how we make money
  • markets: sectors, customers, accounts i.e. who pays us money
  • behaviour: functions, processes, etc.
  • decisions: strategies (decision on how achieve), policies, rules, etc.
  • knowledge: information, data, etc.
  • communications: messages, message details, etc.
  • organisation: unit, role, posotion, person etc. (who do, know, communicate, etc.

Where the enterprise is enabled by rigid systems these things will often be represented within the systems. Systems oriented people therefore have perspectives on these things that relate to their need to implement systems. There is a tendency in ICT oriented people to assume that these implementation and systems specific views should be used at higher levels for business planning, transformation and governance.

These low level implementation specific views are necessary when implementing specific changes to the details - but most of governance, transformation and planning takes places at a higher level.  

This slide show gives a perspective on the issue from a process perspective:
http://www.slideshare.net/billpoole/eba-and-bpm-7510328

Technology vendors with their huge marketing budgets have continually spruiked the languages and methods associated with implementation in order to promote their technologies (which obviously need to be implemented). With no equivalent countervailing level of promotion for higher order views of enterprises there is tendency for these technology driven methods to have a preternatural dominance. For most technologists in businesses - the specific business they are in is a transient - the technologies are the things are really attached to so they also gravitate to methods attached to technologies and technology outcomes rather than the business and business outcomes.