Business Process Transformation - Spring 1997 Business Process Transformation - Spring 1997
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Today (at last!) I have added notes for some of this semester's lectures. I may add the others soon, but students have handouts for them anyway. These are only copies of presentation slides, so if you are visiting here from outside, you will find more detail in Stuff from Previous Years.
These pages support the subject Business Process Transformation (31737) which is an undergraduate subject offered by the School of Computing Sciences, UTS. The subject is a core subject for the Bachelor of Information Technology degree and an elective for other courses. Most of the other students are from the BSc (Computing Sciences) degree, with a few from the Bachelor of Business. Most, but not all, of the students have had some experience working in the IT industry.
The pages give a summary of the material covered in lectures, assignments, and random administrative advice. There are also links to other relevant sites and copies of some textual support material. For copyright reasons some material will have to be handed out on paper, and there will be paper versions of "official" documents such as the subject outline and assignment handouts.
In general this material is designed to be read on the screen. Navigation bars appear every couple of screens to help you find your way around. Please don't print stuff out "just in case" - be selective and download where possible.
In general the site will be usable for text-only browsing. I develop the pages on Navipress 1.1 and test them on Netscape Navigator 2.02 on a Macintosh LC630, so they should work on just about anything.
Each page will have my address for mailing comments and questions. I may also add a discussion page later.
Of the references, those drawn on most heavily to develop these pages were Davenport and Manganelli & Klein.
[Top of Page] [Page Index] [Welcome to BPT] [Questions and Comments] [References] [About this Page]
(This semester the lectures were given by Kylie Sayer and Jim Underwood,
both of UTS)
(This semester we have only put brief notes on the web.
For more detail on some topics, see previous
years.)
[Top of Page] [Page Index] [Welcome to BPT] [Questions and Comments] [References] [About this Page]
Welcome
to Business Process Transformation for Spring 1997. This section gives an
informal introduction to the subject. More formal stuff can be found
on the "Outline" page.
Your first question is probably "What is Business Process Transformation?". It is closely related to what is commonly known as business process reengineering, but is a term more commonly used in the UK. We deliberately chose a slightly obscure term because we did not want the subject connected to a particular author or proprietory methodology. Also we (or I) don't like the use of the term engineering when used in reference to organisations of people. So for me "Buisiness Process Transformation" refers to business process reengineering(BPR) , plus a lot more.
The site logo (courtesy of Microsoft PowerPoint Clip-Art) is meant to illustrate the type of problem we will be addressing, the "before". Organisations often seem to consist of a large number of sections which perform their functions (or don't) with little communication with the rest of the organisation. But what needs to be done to service a customer's needs (a process) often involves several functions. Delays and poor quality arise from the barriers between the sections. Business process transformation attemps to remove some of these barriers.
Of course people have been worrying about these types of problem for a long time. Business Process Reengineering claims to be different by emphasising processes rather than tasks or structures, by promising dramatic improvements through radical change, and by using information technology to support process designs which may not have been feasible previously. Most BPR books are written by great enthusiasts and are very much "made in the USA". We will try to get behind the rhetoric to see what is really proposed, see how it differs from previous efforts at organisation change, and look at other options.
The subject will involve a bit of theory, a bit of case study work, and hopefully a bit of fun.
Just mail them to me.
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Adams,James L. [1974] Conceptual Blockbusting W.H.Freeman, San Francisco
Argyris, Chris & Donald A. Schon [1978] Organizational Learning Addison-Wesley, Reading, Mass.
Ashby, W. Ross [1964] An Introduction to Cybernetics Methuen, London
Aungles, Stan (ed) [1991] Information Technology in Australia NSW University Press, Kensington, NSW
Austin, J. L. [1975] How to do things with words (2 edn) Clarendon Press, Oxford
Beer, Stafford [1985] Diagnosing the System Wiley, Chichester
Checkland, Peter & Jim Scholes [1990] Soft Systems Methodology in Action Wiley, Chichester
Davenport, Thomas H. [1993] Process Innovation Harvard Business School, Boston
Emery, Fred & Einar Thorsrud [1976] Democracy at Work M. Nijhoff, Leiden
Espejo,Raúl & Roger Harnden [1989] The Viable System Model Wiley, Chichester
Gause, Donald C. & Gerald M. Weinberg [1989] Exploring Requirements Dorset House, New York
Glasson, Bernard C. et al (eds) [1994] Business Process Re-Engineering Elsevier, Amsterdam
Grint, Keith et al [1996] "Business Process Reengineering Reappraised : The Politics of Technology and Forgetting" in Orlikowski
Hamilton, Doug & Martin Atchison [1996] "The COMIS Plan : IT-Mediated Business Reengineering in Telecom Australia during the 1960s" in Orlikowski
Hammer, Michael & James Champy [1994] Reengineering the Corporation Allen & Unwin, Australia
Hammer, Michael & Steven A. Stanton [1995] The Reengineering Revolution Harper Business, Australia
Hansen, Gregory A. [1994] Automating Business Process Reengineering Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs
Henderson, J.C. & N. Venkatraman [1993] "Strategic alignment: Leveraging information technology for transforming organizations" IBM Systems Journal, 32, 1
Hill, Stephen et al [1991] "White Collar Factory : The Transformation of Corporate Culture in an Insurance Corporation" in Aungles
King, Nigel & Neil Anderson [1995] Innovation and Change in Organizations Routledge, London
Manganelli, Raymond L. & Mark M. Klein [1994] The Reengineering Handbook American Management Association, New York
Orlikowski, Wanda J. et al [1996] Information Technology and Changes in Organizational Work Chapman & Hall, London
Pepperell, Mike [1996] "Transforming the Business With I/T" nni:opinion v2,n1
Peters, Tom [1992] Liberation Management Macmillan, London
Peters, Tom [1994] "So what's the matter with re-engineering?" Computerworld March 25, 1994, pp 12-13
Petty, Bruce [1972] The Penguin Petty Penguin, Ringwood, Vic
Porter, M.E. [1980] Competitive Advantage Free Press, New York
Scherr, A. L. [1993] "A new approach to business processes" IBM Systems Journal, v1, n1 pp 80-98
Schon, Donald A. [1973] Beyond the Stable State Norton, New York
Scott Morton, Michael S. [1991] The Corporation of the 1990s Oxford University Press, New York
Senge, Peter M. [1992] The Fifth Discipline Random House, Sydney
Tapscott, Don & Art Caston [1993] Paradigm Shift McGraw-Hill, New York
Thompson, James D. [1967] Organizations in Action McGraw-Hill, New York
Tomasko, Robert M. [1993] Rethinking the Corporation American Management Association, New York
Wood-Harper, A.T. et al [1985] Information Systems Definition : The Multiview Approach Blackwell Scientific, Oxford
Zuboff, Shoshana [1988] In the Age of the Smart Machine Heinemann, Oxford
There are also a number of useful references on the web:
Business Processes Resource Centre
Enterprise Reengineering Home Page
ISWorld: IT and Business Processes
BUSINESS PROCESS RE-ENGINEERING : A NEW STRATEGIC PARADIGM SHIFT IN CHANGE MANAGEMENT
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These pages support the subject Business Process Transformation. Extra pages will be gradually added. Please check the index and the notes page frequently.
Any suggestions are more than welcome.
This page is maintained by
Jim Underwood
who can be reached at
jim@socs.uts.edu.au.
This page was last updated on November 11th, 1997.
http://linus.socs.uts.edu.au/~jim/bpt/index.html
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accesses since
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