A Business Vision for the organization in which a system is to be deployed, referred to as the target organization, is
meant to be changeable as the understanding of what the objectives should be and what the change potentials are
evolves. However, change should happen slowly and normally only throughout the earlier portion of the lifecycle.
We suggest you express the objectives in terms of business use cases, business workers, and business entities, as these
are developed so you can see how the business vision is realized. The description of the objective should
eventually cover:
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The names and descriptions of the target organization's new or changed business use cases.
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An overview and brief descriptions of the future business use cases, emphasizing how they differ from the current
ones. For each such business use case, name the customer, supplier or other type of partner, as well as the input,
tasks, and resulting product. These descriptions do not need to be comprehensive or detailed they are intended to
stimulate discussion among senior executives, employees, and customers. Furthermore, these descriptions should
present the business philosophy and its objectives in straightforward terms.
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Measurable properties and goals for each business use case, such as cost, quality, lifecycle, lead-time, and
customer satisfaction. Each goal should be traceable to the business strategy and its description must say how it
supports that strategy.
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A specification of the technologies that will support the business use cases, with special emphasis on information
technology.
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A list of possible future scenarios. As much as possible, the specification should predict how the business use
cases will have to change in the next few years due to new technologies, new interfaces to the environment, and
other types of resources.
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A list of critical success factors; that is, factors critical for the successful implementation of the business
vision.
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A description of the risks that must be handled for the business-modeling effort to succeed.
This section suggests a number of questions to ask yourself in order to find areas in the target organization that can
benefit from business improvement.
Look at each business use case and ask these questions:
Keep three things in mind as you decide how to improve a business:
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Always prioritize your customer's needs.
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Focus on the core business and outsource those tasks the business does not do well.
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Don't pick the first idea that comes to you; there are always several ways to improve a business or solve a
problem.
There are many ways to improve a business. An important aspect is how you organize people working on the business
processes. The following guidelines are recommended:
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Build multi-competence teams to carry out core business use cases.
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Reduce the number of business workers involved in each business use case. This leads to reduced costs, fewer
handoffs, and fewer misunderstandings.
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Give the business workers involved more responsibility, then they won't wait for others to decide. If necessary,
they can change the way they work.
A basic way to streamline a business use case is to create teams that have the necessary competencies and
responsibilities.
Identify unnecessary work by looking for tasks such as:
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writing reports that no one reads
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storing information that is never used
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sending information to people who never read it
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approving results for no reason
Eliminate these tasks wherever possible.
You want to avoid performing the same work several times within the same business. You know that work is being
performed in several places when:
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Work is redone, either because people don't trust the results or they don't know what has been done before.
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Results are checked and approved several times.
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Same or similar information is stored in several places; for example, two similar databases.
To avoid these situations, change the way business is done by one or several of the following ways:
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Instill trust in results by officially releasing them.
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Educate people about how the business works.
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Combine similar tasks into one.
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Collect information in one place.
Lead-time, or lifecycle time, can be a problem even if everything is working well. To identify where time is problem,
analyze how time is spent in each business use case. Identify the relationship between productive time, waiting time,
and transfer time.
Change the business with one or several of the following actions:
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Change the order of tasks so they are performed in parallel.
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Assign several tasks to one business worker.
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Simplify interfaces between business workers, using predefined forms and templates.
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Cut waiting time. Streamline the workflow. Don't let things sit and wait.
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Let people have more responsibility instead of waiting for decisions from others.
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Improve the working environment. Check out the tools with which people are equipped. Are you using an old copying
machine to produce material. Consider buying a new one or outsourcing your copying.
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Cut waiting time by combining several tasks into one.
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Minimize the time it takes to move information or material between people by improving communication; for example,
use electronic media.
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Automate or mechanize human tasks.
One way to reduce cost is to reduce the number of people involved. Of course, you should try to make tasks less
expensive, but minimizing time is often the best way to reduce costs. Be careful reducing costs often adversely affects
the quality of the business results.
If many errors occur within the business or in the results the business produces, consider the following actions:
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Localize the source of the error and prevent it from occurring.
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Minimize the number of handoffs.
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Improve internal business interfaces. Clarify responsibilities.
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Conduct an extra review.
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Use forms and templates.
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Write simply.
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Simplify tasks.
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Simplify instructions, forms, templates, and so on.
Examples of problems in relationships with external suppliers and partners are long lead times, waiting, errors in
orders, and doing the wrong thing. Consider the following actions to remove the problems:
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Simplify communication. Assign someone responsible for the communication.
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Work closer with the suppliers and partners.
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Cut down the number of partners or suppliers.
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Instead of finding a supplier, consider doing it within the business.
We recommend you take a close look at how technologies can change the business and each individual business process.
This topic is typically covered in parallel with Task: Define Automation Requirements.
This section suggests a series of topics to discuss when your task is to restructure the business use cases of an
existing business or to add new business use cases to perform business reengineering or business creation:
When you are ready to develop a vision of the new business, we recommend you start by first establishing what the
entire business is-every business use case and all the business actors. The purpose is to identify changes and
improvements that affect how responsibilities are distributed among business actors and business use cases. This often
involves changing the interface between the target organization and the business actors, moving tasks between business
use cases, and even removing and merging business use cases.
Once you've decided which business use cases to focus on, we recommend you follow Davenport's [DVP93] structured way to develop a vision. This calls for a series of workshops, each
with a specific focus.
Look at this:
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Ask yourself this:
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Result:
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Each prioritized business use case
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How can we do things differently?
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Ideas of what business use cases to change and kind of changes you want.
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Each business use case
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How will it work?
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Ideas and suggestions about changing the following business use-case characteristics:
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Input to the use case.
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Output from the use case.
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The business use-case workflow.
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The organization required by the business use case.
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The technology required by the business use case.
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Each business use case
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How well will it work?
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New performance measures and metrics for the business use case.
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Each business use case
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What things must go well?
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Critical success factors, such as people, technology, and products.
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Critical success factors
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What things might not go well?
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Risk factors and potential barriers to the implementation of the business vision, such as
resource-allocation, organizational, cultural, technical and product factors; markets and
environments; and costs.
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Critical success factors are those factors essential to the success of the business-engineering project. [JAC94] classifies success factors in the following categories:
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Motivation
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Leadership
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Organization-wide ownership
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Vision
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Focus
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Well-defined roles
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Tangible products
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Technology support
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Expert guidance
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Risk taking
According to [JAC94], business-engineering risks roughly fall into two categories: risks associated
with the change process and risks associated with the technology used. [DVP93] classifies
risks into five categories:
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Resource allocation
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Organizational and cultural
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Technical
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Product factors
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Market and environment
Relationship of Business Vision to Subordinate Vision Artifacts
If the objective of the business modeling effort is to improve business efficiency and effectiveness through
restructuring, perhaps involving automation, then in the 'to-be' models, new and changed business systems, business
workers and business entities may be identified. The automated business workers may be complete systems in their own
right, and will be the subject of a separate development effort, using software or systems engineering techniques.
The business modeling effort, through the business use case realizations, will have identified the services and
interfaces to be supported by these business workers - and may have derived a set of subordinate use cases. The
examination of business goals will also have led to the discovery of the non-functional and quality-of-service
requirements for the new or changed business worker systems.
These desired capabilities, responsibilities, qualities and interface requirements can be summarized in a Vision artifact for the automated business worker - and this Vision,
the subordinate use cases, service and interface specifications and quality requirements - form the initial driving
artifact set for the subordinate development project.
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