Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
A number of Branch roles, representing oces located around the world,
each of which deals directly with users and their broken phones, diag-
nosing them and either carrying out simple repairs directly or arranging
for their return to the supplier if things are more serious.
The second distinction we want to make is between the automated and
manual systems within the organization. We need to make this distinction
because we need to position the automated systems and user interfaces, which
will be the main focus of other viewpoints, within the business activities. In
our simple example, we divide each of the business units into a staff role and
a system role. Note that this refinement step is applied just to the PhoneMob
itself; the business partners are seen as black boxes here, since we do not wish
to make any assumptions about their internal structure. These two refinement
steps lead to the set of roles shown in figure 2.3.
«EV_Community»
Detailed Phone
Repair
has role
«EV_Role»
User
«EV_Role»
Customer
«EV_Role»
Logistics
Provider
«EV_Role»
Phone
Supplier
«EV_Role»
Bank
created by
refinement of the
Phone Repair
Provider role
«EV_Role»
HQ staff
«EV_Role»
HQ system
«EV_Role»
Branch
staff
«EV_Role»
Branch
system
FIGURE 2.3: The roles of the Detailed Phone Repair community.
The design is already getting quite complicated, so we divide the system
into a number of distinct activities, seen as smaller subcommunities. Each
of these subcommunities must operate in a way that is consistent with the
contract of the complete community and this will be expressed by associating
each of them with a specific simplified contract. The key activities are repair,
customer liaison, performance review and negotiation of contracts with the
subcontractors dealing with logistics and supply. Each can be described by a
simplified view of the complete community, containing just the roles engaged
in the particular activity. For example, the repair process does not need to be
concerned with the negotiation of customer contracts, and local branch repair
