Well-engineered work-flow and workgroup applications are raising white-collar productivity
Scott Wallace
Work flow is a topic that increasingly captures the attention of technologists and operations people alike. This growing interest in work flow is an acknowledgment that while the primary platform for contemporary computing is the individual's desktop, a group usually gets work done, not someone working alone.
In most organizations today, groups are supported by an often eclectic combination of leading-edge and ancient services. Couriers, postal delivery, and phone and fax communications are mixed with LANs and desktop computers supporting applications ranging from E-mail and office productivity suites through work-flow and document management to desktop videoconferencing and intelligent information-gathering a
gents (see the figure "Workgroup Support Applications"). The goal of each is to support the detailed and diverse flow of information and services throughout working groups within and across enterprises.
At the core of these working groups--and of all groupware, for that matter--is a model, implicit or explicit, of the workings of the group. Effective use of any kind of group-support service requires a clear, unambiguous understanding of what the group is trying to do and how it goes about doing that. And tools that analyze and document the group's purposes, processes, interactions, and information needs are critical to developing an explicit understanding and a model of work and its flow.
BPA and Reengineering
In most organizations, BPA (business process analysis) and modeling tools have been introduced either through work-flow applications or reengineering initiatives. Historically, work-flow vendors were pioneers in routing electronic objects around the office, and many have built on their
experience to develop strong process-analysis and modeling offerings.
Reengineering--often associated with work-flow implementations--is also driving interest in process analysis and modeling. A recent survey of Business Week 600 companies showed that reengineering is on the corporate IT (information technology) agenda and that process-modeling tools are playing a critical role in focusing reengineering efforts and making them effective. Many organizations reengineer without using process-analysis tools, but adding process modeling to the reengineering effort nearly doubles the probability of success (see Thornton May's "Know Your Work-Flow Tools").
Reengineering initiatives, while often driven by new systems or functions, must effectively leverage old equipment and software investments and legacy skill sets. (Meichun Hsu and Mike Howard address work-flow-legacy integration in "Work-Flow and Legacy Systems.") In many enterprises, contemporary analysis and modeling tools provide a bridge between
the old and the new, supporting efforts to reengineer legacy systems with new GUI-based software running on relatively open Unix, DOS, and Windows platforms. This happy coincidence means that legacy tools are not necessary to reengineer legacy systems and that programming and support staff can gain experience with desktop operating environments as they maintain and link legacy systems to newer applications.
New Tools, New Benefits
Newer, more graphics-oriented BPA tools help to smooth gaps between applications by supporting the capture, depiction, and detailed modeling of these relationships. Indeed, process repositories that describe in comprehensive operational terms the interaction of process, data, and system elements are rapidly becoming one of the most important information assets of an enterprise. These process repositories are today at least as critical to effective return on IT resources as data repositories were in database development efforts. Some would argue that work-flow and reenginee
ring initiatives are more instrumental to increasing productivity than modernized data repositories.
All this may sound suspiciously like the kind of talk one heard five years ago concerning upperCASE tools. The difference is that, today, process-analysis and modeling tools support the kind of interprocess and cross-operations analysis and modeling that was missing before. Process has become a first-class citizen, rather than a second-class cousin to data.
New Experiences
What about organizations using these new tools; are they finding tangible improvements in their analysis and modeling and in the systems that result? The answer is yes; they are also finding that such systems cannot be engineered in a glass house. To generate appropriate and robust systems, analysis must be guided by the details of daily operations and the hands of business managers, not IT managers. Systems analysis disciplines alone cannot ensure success, in part because many of the obstacles to success are to be found in
business operations, not in the IT department or the systems it develops or supports.
Many enterprises are concluding that leadership of work-flow and reengineering initiatives, and the analysis and planning that is found early in such efforts, must come at least as much from line management as from IT. Contemporary modeling tools, in contrast to earlier analysis and CASE products, offer sufficient user-friendliness that operations managers, rather than systems analysts or IT professionals, can take advantage of them. As a result, more process-related information is captured and accurately modeled, and the resulting applications and systems more effectively serve the organization.
Figure: Workgroup Support Applications
Process analysis and modeling are at the core of a wide variety of workgroup support applications.
Scott Wallace is a BYTE technical editor. You can reach him on the Internet or BIX at
swallace@bix.com
.
Working Smarter
