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Dr
Keith Phalp: Questions and Replies on BPR Assignment |
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Hi all, as promised - here is a list of questions from you (anonymised) and edited slightly, and my replies.
Q: I have attached a copy of my RAD .... could you tell me if I have done it right.
A: No, I won't tell you what is right / wrong for an individual RAD, but I will answer general questions (of the type given below).
Q: What software should I use.
A: For simply drawing, and for Windows users, I would use Visio. A stencil is available from Martin Ould's site at Venice Consulting.
Q: Firstly, for the first role activity diagram (for tendering) do we need to include a system role? Or is it up to us?
A: You can decide either way. If you decide NOT to have system roles, the all you need to do is to say in your assumptions that you chose to model the system without system roles and give a reason for this choice.
Q: Do you have an example anywhere of a RAD with a process that could happen any time, for instance, a supervisor checking an employees work.
A: The insurance example we did has an anytime. For the person deciding to check I usually have the checking on a parallel thread. For the role being checked either have on a parallel, or, more common these days, have the thing that looks like a resistor for pre and post states.
Q: I would like to clarify a few things ... concerning the part where we identify ambiguities, benefits and risk of the process scenario. should each ambiguity be related a benefit and a risk?
A: No ambiguities are where the process description is not clear (ambiguous) in some way. In these cases you need to identify what is ambiguous and also describe what assumptions you have, therefore, been forced to make. Where you identify possible process improvements then, in many cases, there could be a risk or issue in making such changes, and you should try and describe these.
Q: Should we have a separate role for the Estimator and Chief Estimator?
In deciding what roles to have, you need to consider whether they have different tasks or responsibilities. If they do, then it is probably a different role.
Q: I have seen different answers on the web site for the same process ... and some parts are not represented, is this just interpretation?
The ones on the web site differ in at least a couple of way. One is a purist view, which does not show any 'mechanism, nor does it have reference to the system (or system roles). The other extreme is a literal view, which depicts the process as described. You need to adopt your view of what is reasonable and make this clear in your accompanying text.
Q: Do we need states?
A: States help where we
want to describe certain important points of synchronisation, or
dependencies among activities. They can, as with initial in some
examples, also act as points to which we can return, e,g,, for
checking, or to be available again for certain activities.
Q: What about the last part.
A: This was the subject of the lecture in my third week and the slides are all available from the web site, as is some additional material. The first set of slides provides an overview of different issues, and proposed solutions, in moving from process model to spec, and separate slides show this in more detail. In addition, there are a number of papers available from my web site (both my own) and, from teaching notes, links to proceedings on alignment. In addition, it would be good to illustrate with concrete examples, e.g., from the assignment scenario.
Q: The 2nd section and Analysis of Processes it asks for descriptions, are you also looking for any models to support our findings or do you want it just written?
This analysis of process section it is probably mostly text, describing either ambiguities or issues, or suggesting solutions (and risks) - but supporting models would definitely help here, even if these are bits of the process, e.g, those bits that we might wish to illustrate as issues, or potential process fragements to show suggested improvements.
Q: In the final section it asks for a discussion, again are you looking for any modelling with the write up or would you like a few paragraphs written?.
The discussion would also benefit from some models as illustrations, e.g., you might show how POSD allows you to bridge the modelling gap, or show how systems roles would work for a part of the given scenario, or how augemented use cases allow us to map from states in the RAD in order to capture information on dependencies.
