Quality-Based Process Modeling

Quality-Based Process Modeling improves the completeness and thoroughness of
business process definitions through a rigorous adaptation of techniques and concepts
inherited from basic quality management practices. Using principles of customer-supplier
and requirement-conformance feedback loops, process models create business
definitions that can be easily verified and that reveal scope issues that normally create
project problems during the implementation phase.

The increased rigor in quality-based process models allows a project’s full scope to be
identified as early as possible on a project, allowing project and customer management to
plan more effectively based on well-scoped facts about the business processes being
analyzed.

This seminar explains how to define process models for information systems:

à Supplements traditional process modeling techniques with quality management
techniques to identify scope omissions and ambiguities early in the project lifecycle;
usually within the first few hours; allowing for better project estimate contracting and
customer satisfaction.

à Cross-checking techniques provide real-time quality control of all working analysis
models, preventing defects in one area of analysis from being carried into subsequent
design activities. Because each technique in this seminar focuses on a slightly
different perspective, individual defects are unlikely to remain hidden because it is
unlikely that the same mistake would be introduced multiple times across multiple
techniques.

à State transition path analysis allows separate independent sub-projects to be
identified and isolated; reducing the time and effort required to continue through
implementation with each piece. Critical portions of the project scope can then be
moved to design earlier, with fewer resources required.

à Offers clear unambiguous criteria for analysts to know when to stop applying an
analysis modeling technique to a problem. Productivity on traditional modeling projects
isn’t low because analysts don’t know how to start modeling; it’s often low because they
don’t know how and when to stop.

This seminar supports the broadest range of process analysis activities while avoiding the
class pitfalls of analysis paralysis and spaghetti models usually associated with traditional
process modeling techniques, models, and deliverables.

Seminar Rationale...

Organizations practicing process modeling
often find, even with the rigor supplied by the
process models, they still fail to achieve
many of the desired results. Changes of
scope are still common throughout the
downstream project life cycle, projects fail to
integrate with each other in spite of the use
of common process models, and the
productivity benefits of modeling fail to
materialize. This seminar emphasizes the
addition of quality management principles to
the process modeler’s toolkit to overcome
the obstacles that prevent the modeling
effort from having its desired impact.
Nowhere is this more true than in the
avoidance of the complex data flow analysis
that traditionally earns the reputation of being
“spaghetti analysis.”

Seminar Uniqueness...

Quality-Based Process Modeling does
more than simply assure that the process
models created by each analyst are of high
quality. Providing for quality-driven process
models that embed the concepts of
customer and supplier, requirement and
conformance, and prompt and response,
ensures that the analysis process enables
and encourages business reengineering and
improvement.

Table of Contents
A FRAMEWORK FOR PROCESSES
Zachman’s Conceptual Levels
DECOMPOSING THE ENTERPRISE
Criterion of Decomposition
Project Scoping Steps
Project Risk Assessment
PROJECT DEFINITION
Context Data Flow
Requirements & Conformance Flows
Implied & Aggregate Requirements
Process Model Paradigm™
External Control Paradigm™
PROCESS DECOMPOSITION
Data Flow Synchronization
Internal & Temporal Events
Data Stores & Junctions
Aggregate Process Paradigm™
PROCESS DEFINITION
Initial & Final State Transitions
Sub-Project Independence
State-Data Flow Synchronization
Stand-Alone Event Paradigm™
PROCESS SPECIFICATION
Pseudo-Code & Action Diagramming
Architecture Component Constructs
EVOLUTION OF PROCESS MODELS
Customer-Supplier Integration