Que Es Un Proceso

What is a Process?
principle
drives

process

is elaborated in

procedure

is supported by

formalism tool template

abstract

specific and executable

Gerrit Muller
Buskerud University College Frogs vei 41 P.O. Box 235, NO-3603 Kongsberg Norway
gerrit.muller@embeddedsystems.nl

This paper has been integrated in the book “Systems Architecting: A Business Perspective",http://www.gaudisite.nl/SABP.html, published by CRC Press in 2011.

Abstract
This article is defining the concept of a "process" for the context of the Gaudí project, since this word is heavily overloaded and heavily used in the Gaudí articles. It also discusses the relationship of processes with organizations and the drive for process improvement.

Distribution This article or presentation iswritten as part of the Gaudí project. The Gaudí project philosophy is to improve by obtaining frequent feedback. Frequent feedback is pursued by an open creation process. This document is published as intermediate or nearly mature version to get feedback. Further distribution is allowed as long as the document remains complete and unchanged. All Gaudí documents are available at:http://www.gaudisite.nl/

version: 1.0

status: concept

June 19, 2012

1 Introduction
We rely in this part heavily on the notion of a process. This intermezzo is defining “process” for the context of this book. We define “process”, since this word is heavily overloaded in our daily world. We also discuss the relationship of processes with organizations and the drive for process improvement.

2 What is aprocess
We use process as an abstracted way of working. A process can be characterized the attributes shown in Figure 1
Purpose What is to be achieved and why Structure How will the goal be achieved Rationale What is the reasoning behind this process Roles What roles are present, what responsibilities are associated, what incentives are present, what are the criteria for these roles Ordering Whatphasing or sequence is applied

Figure 1: Process Attributes In [1] the following definition is given: A process is an activity which takes place over time and which has a precise aim regarding the result to be achieved. The concept of a process is hierarchical which means that a process may consist of a partially ordered set of subprocesses.

This definition parallels the characterization above.It adds explicitly the potential hierarchical decomposition of the process itself. The notion of a process can be seen as one step in an abstraction hierarchy, as shown in 2. The most abstract notion in this hierarchy is the “principle”. A principle is a generic insight that can be used for many different purposes. An example of a principle is decomposition: Whenever we have something big, e.g. aproblem or project, then we can decompose it in smaller pieces. These smaller pieces are easier to solve or create than the original big one.

Gerrit Muller What is a Process?
June 19, 2012 version: 1.0

Buskerud University College

page: 1

principle

drives

process

is elaborated in

procedure

is supported by

formalism tool template

abstract

specific and executableFigure 2: A process within an abstraction hierarchy A process is rather abstract. It describes the essentials of the purpose, structure, rationale, roles and timing, leaving plenty of implementation freedom. The power of a process is its abstraction, which enables its application in a wide range of applications, by tailoring its implementation to the specific application. A process can betailored and elaborated in one or more procedures that describe cookbook-like what needs to be done when and by whom. The why in a procedure has often disappeared, to be replaced by practical information for the execution. The implementation of a procedure can be supported by tools, notations, templates and other means. In practice managers and employees ask for tools (means) and procedures (what and...