Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 2
Enterprise Viewpoint
\I still don't quite see why we are going into so much detail on this," said
Eleanor. She was meeting with Alex to work on an enterprise model for the
PhoneMob, and they had started off with a fairly stressful cross-examination
by Alex about its likely structure after the reorganization.
Alex looked up sharply. \Have all your projects come in on time in the
last couple of years?" he asked, \or have there been any that slipped?" \Well,
we are getting pretty good at predicting the development time needed. There
have been a few occasions when Marcus has given us a hard time, but it's gen-
erally not really been our fault; the requirements have changed in midstream."
\What was the worst slippage?" \Well, I guess last June, when we got the rst
release of the new system for handling e-mail acceptance of repair quotes into
prerelease test before someone pointed out that a manager approval step was
missing; it had never been captured in the requirements review." \Didn't your
people know it was done that way?" \No; it had been in a manual part of
the process, so we knew nothing about it, and didn't know to ask the right
questions. We had to rework a significant part of the workflow design because
just sticking the extra step in would have violated the response requirements.
We missed the release target by over a month."
Alex leaned back. \And the customer design review didn't catch it?" \No,
worst luck. In the old process, that step was the point where responsibility for
the work moved from front oce to workshop, and both thought it was being
handled by requirements from the other." It was clear this whole incident was
one Eleanor was still angry about, although she could understand how it had
happened.
Alex smiled ruefully. \It can easily happen," he said. \Working on a small
piece of the activity in isolation just isn't enough." His voice was sad and
a little wistful, and he smiled sympathetically at Eleanor. \If the company
had maintained a proper enterprise description of how its organizational units
related to each other, and a proper view of its business processes, including
all the manual parts, then you could have seen there were things not being
covered. You might even have got a red flag from your design tools if some
obligations were not being fulfilled. Of course, the whole idea is not just about
preventing disasters | having a clear view of the organization helps improve
quality generally."
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