Why grandma trims the brisket: Resource flows as a source of insight for IT-enabled business process design

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." © 2011 Springer-Verlag.