Which Comes First, the Process or the System?
Do you build a software system to fit a new or modified business process, or do you implement the system first and then change the process?
I sometimes receive interesting questions from readers looking for advice to solve a problem they have. This question is about an issue that many organizations might have faced:
I overheard a phone conversation this morning in which someone said, “You can’t build the system first and then see where it fits into the process.” I realized that in most of the system development projects that I have been involved in, we hardly ever investigate to find out where the system fits into the process that is to be supported.
So my question is: At what point should we take this into consideration? I would imagine that knowing this would improve the stakeholder identification and, maybe, fine-tune the development of use cases. However, this might have the effect of limiting the user’s creativity to the scope of the portion to which they are confined in the particular process to be supported. What do you think?
There’s kind of a chicken-and-egg problem here. I suggest that the time to contemplate how a new information system will fit into your business processes is before you…
