Useful Descriptions of Organizational Processes: Collecting Data for the Process Handbook

Abstract

This paper describes a data collection methodology for business process analysis. Unlike static objects, business processes are semi-repetitive sequences of events that are often widely distributed in time and space, with ambiguous boundaries. To redesign or even just describe a business process requires an approach that is sensitive to these aspects of the phenomena. The method described here is intended to generate semi-formal process representations suitable for inclusion in a "handbook" of organizational processes. Using basic techniques of ethnographic interviewing and observation, the method helps users map decomposition, specialization, and dependency relationships at an intermediate level of abstraction meaningful to participants. By connecting new process descriptions to an existing taxonomy of similar descriptions in the Handbook, this method helps build a common vocabulary for process description and analysis.