Process oriented management

All methods of management, either Quality Management, Organization management or engineering management, use extensively the concept of Business Process. In accordance, a lot of companies have spent efforts building Business Process Maps, in most cases, redondant.  Why ?

A Business Process is a set of correlated or interactive activities which transforms inputs into outputs (ISO 9000). A BP is a sequence of activities which, from one or several inputs produced an output representing a value for a customer (Hammer and Champy). You may notice that I stop there since authors in management are numerous.

 Applying these definitions, we may agree that most companies calls business  process what is, in fact, their business activities: design, production, marketing,  logistics, support,… Generally, for these companies, a strategic activity is under the responsibility of a cost center or a profit center. Finally, the BP mapping reinforces silos organization : each strategic activity is divided itself into real activities – for example logistics is made of planning, loading, transport, delivery -.

Happy new year 2007

Dear friends architects,

I am pleased to wish you an happy new year. Health and wealth for you and your family.

May I wish, as well, that this year be the Enterprise Architecture Year, especially in France, where the Open-Group Forum will be held, in Paris by april.

With entreprise architecture frameworks, CIO have now a really opportunity to prove how Information systems are critical for business changes.

In addition, God and us will be here for help…

I am, also, astonished by the well fitting of building architects thoughts to EA :

“Form follow functions” Luis Sullivan

“Less is More”  Mies Van Der Rohe.

I’ll  keep them in mind this year…