Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Sequence of business activities
An
activity
is a black box piece of work that contributes directly to achieving a business
goal. We surely need to understand how the activity is performed. However, as we say, it is
a black box, because from the process' perspective, the only things important are the inputs
it needs and the outputs produced. The activity performed can be very simple or very com-
plex, depending on the perspective of the process definition.
What is considered an activity in one process perspective can be composed of a group of
low-level processes, which are in turn composed of a series of simpler activities. For ex-
ample, a high-level process in a car factory can have an activity called "Build the Car's
Engine", but from a lower-level perspective, activities could be detailed to the point of just
telling a robotic arm to activate the weld for a second (one minuscule step in the car's en-
gine preparation). In other words, a business process can be composed of multiple subpro-
cesses.
Once you select a perspective or level for a particular process definition, you should stick
to it for describing all activities regarding that specific process. You can call other lower-
level processes from activities, so you can always go into more detail later. Besides, high-
level strategic processes and low-level more technical processes will surely have different
roles and experts behind them. A manager in a car factory might not be interested in having
so much detail in their perspective, but an engineer would. Also, managers prefer to see the
bigger picture, and tend to simplify their views to be able to cope with everything at once.
Usually, the low-level perspectives end up driving the operative end of the company, per-
forming work such as the following:
• Handling customer information
• Documenting specific metadata
• Invoking service notifications
In the end, all processes are tied together by high-level perspective processes, which end up
providing information for decision making, managing, and coordination. High-level pro-
cesses usually aggregate information about the general performance, possible improve-
ments, or any sort of relevant information for management. We will see examples of sub-
processes, role assignment, and different activity type handling when we cover process
