Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
look and feel, the actual “commodity,” and the entire purchasing experi-
ence. If there are difficulties in articulating the processes that underlie the
success of a business, the chances of success in franchising are greatly
diminished. Software development environments that aim for reuse should
study and use franchising as a model.
The same concept comes to the fore in outsourcing call centers, for
example. The ability to outsource the call center is a result of the
company's processes having reached a level of maturity where the steps
involved can be identified and documented well enough to be understood
by external vendors. Airline reservations is another area where this is very
evident. Global systems such as Sabre, Galileo, and Amadeus can be
designed because the ticketing and seat assignment processes are well
known and similar across airlines. Because the processes are well laid
out, these systems could be extended to travel agents so that they can
print tickets and boarding passes for their customers. The same processes
are now used for self-service on the Internet. Once processes are well
formed, they can be moved around.
Learning as Input to Processes
Processes ensure exchange of information across teams and generations
of teams. One's approach to a deliverable should not be limited to getting
the deliverable working. It should include communicating what one has
learned while building that artifact. The general assumption is that this
knowledge is communicated through the documentation associated with
the deliverable.
A better and more effective way of communicating what one has
learned is through improving associated processes because the processes
travel farther than documentation. Many software organizations miss this
last step. The last step is not lessons lear ned, but rather processes
improved. Organizations must work with an implicit assumption that
processes will evolve and adapt as the situation needs. Goss et al. (1993)
have argued that processes that undergo incremental improvement are
not sufficient for most companies today because they do not need to
change “what is”; rather, they need to create “what is not.” Processes thus
are also powerful agents of change.
Recognizing Processes
An important observation is that a process is not nec-
essarily linear. There are many steps within each phase
that overlap. Similarly, anything going forward is also
