Abstract
Systems analysts and organizational designers are increasingly called upon to rethink business processes both to respond to changing conditions and to realize the potential of new information technologies. Existing process modeling tools typically represent one particular version of a process but do not represent the alternative ways in which that process could be organized. Dependency diagrams offer analysts a way past this difficulty by representing the underlying coordination issues in a process, allowing analysts to consider alternative process designs. Unfortunately, dependency diagrams can be difficult to draw because dependencies can be difficult to discover. This paper describes Resource Flow Graph Analysis (RFGA), a method for developing dependency diagrams which leverages the observability of activities and resource flows to allow analysts to systematically uncover the dependencies which shape a given business process. The potential application of the method to process analysis and system design is illustrated by a “design exercise.”
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Avison, D.E., Taylor, V.: Information systems development methodologies: A classification according to problem situation. Journal of Information Technology 12, 73–81 (1997)
Curtis, B., Kellner, M.I., Over, J.: Process modeling. Communications of the ACM 35, 75–90 (1992)
Basu, A., Kumar, A.: Research commentary: Workflow management issues in e-business. Information Systems Research 13, 1–14 (2002)
Davenport, T.H.: Process Innovation: Reengineering Work through Information Technology. Harvard Business School Press, Boston (1993)
Hammer, M., Champy, J.: Reengineering the Corporation: a Manifesto for Business Revolution. HarperCollins Publishers, Inc., New York (1993)
Malone, T.W., Crowston, K., Lee, J., Pentland, B., Dellarocas, C., Wyner, G., Quimby, J., Osborn, C.S., Bernstein, A., Herman, G., Klein, M., O’Donnell, E.: Tools for inventing organizations: Toward a handbook of organizational processes. Management Science 45, 425–443 (1999)
Malone, T.W., Crowston, K.: The Interdisciplinary Study of Coordination. ACM Computing Surveys 26, 87–119 (1994)
Crowston, K., Osborn, C.S.: A Coordination Theory Approach to Process Description and Redesign. In: Malone, T.W., Crowston, K., Herman, G. (eds.) Organizing Business Knowledge: The MIT Process Handbook, pp. 335–370. MIT Press, Cambridge (2003)
Hevner, A.R., March, S.T., Park, J., Ram, S.: Design science in information systems research. Mis Quarterly 28, 75–105 (2004)
March, S.T., Smith, G.F.: Design and natural science research on information technology. Decision Support Systems 15, 251–266 (1995)
Yourdon, E.: Modern Structured Analysis. Yourdon Press, Englewood Cliffs (1989)
Larman, C.: Applying UML and Patterns: An Introduction to Object-Oriented Analysis and Design and Iterative Development. Prentice-Hall PTR, Upper Saddle River (2005)
Rumbaugh, J., Jacobson, I., Booch, G.: The Unified Modeling Language Reference Manual. Addison-Wesley, Boston (1999)
Balasubramanian, P.R., Wyner, G.M., Joglekar, N.: The Role of Coordination and Architecture in Supporting ASP Business Models. In: Thirty-Fifth Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. Computer Society Press of the IEEE, Waikoloa (2002)
Iyer, B., Shankaranarayanan, G., Wyner, G.: Process Coordination Requirements: Implications for the Design of Knowledge Management Systems. Journal of Computer Information Systems 46, 1–13 (2006)
Zlotkin, G.: Managing Shared Resource (1995)
Wyner, G.M.: Let a Thousand Gardeners Prune: Cultivating the Distributed Design of Complex Organizations (2000)
Liu, X., Wyner, G.M.: Coordination Analysis: A Method for Deriving Use Cases from Process Dependencies. In: 4th International Conference on Design Science Research in Information Systems and Technology (DESRIST 2009), Malvern, Pennsylvania (2009)
Basu, A., Blanning, R.W.: A formal approach to workflow analysis. Information Systems Research 11, 17–36 (2000)
Kumar, A., Zhao, J.L.: Dynamic routing and operational controls in Workflow Management Systems. Management Science 45, 253–272 (1999)
Tillquist, J., King, J.L., Woo, C.: A representational scheme for analyzing information technology and organizational dependency. MIS Quarterly 26, 91–118 (2002)
Reijers, H.A., Limam, S., van der Aalst, W.M.P.: Product-based workflow design. Journal of Management Information Systems 20, 229–262 (2003)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Wyner, G.M. (2011). Why Grandma Trims the Brisket: Resource Flows as a Source of Insight for IT-Enabled Business Process Design. In: Jain, H., Sinha, A.P., Vitharana, P. (eds) Service-Oriented Perspectives in Design Science Research. DESRIST 2011. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 6629. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-20633-7_29
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-20633-7_29
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-20632-0
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-20633-7
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)