Workflow modeling : tools for process improvement and application development

In todays fiercely competitive marketplace, it is of vital importance that work flows through an organization as efficiently as possible in order to achieve long-term success. This new hands-on book teaches business and technical professionals how to build visual models that illustrate the current workflow process, and show where improvement and development can take place.It provides proven techniques for identifying, modeling, and redesigning business processes, and shows how to make the transition into defining system requirements with Use Case Scenarios. This unique resource brings the two distinct disciplines of management and information technology together to help managers and analysts maintain a competitive edge. The book features real-world examples, clear summaries, project checklists, and other aids, making it a practical on-the-job guide for everyday use. If you're looking to create new workflow systems or redesign existing business processes for your enterprise, look no further than this concise, new hands-on book. Providing proven techniques for identifying, modeling, and redesigning business processes, and explaining how to implement workflow improvement, this book helps you define requirements for systems development or systems acquisition. By showing you how to build visual models for illustrating workflow, the authors help you to assess your current business processes and see where process improvement and systems development can take place.

This book brings the two distinct disciplines of management and information technology together especially for high-tech professionals who need to improve the way work gets done to maintain a competitive edge. Addressing such hot topics as enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications and enterprise application integration (EAI), you learn how to manage these complex, new schemes not as technology-based changes, but as the process redesign projects they truly are. Plus, understanding process workflow modeling allows you to get a better handle on implementing a complete business process for successful e-commerce initiatives.

Filled with real-world examples and practical techniques, you get a seamless methodology for process redesign and information systems development that integrates use-case analysis and process workflow modeling to easily span the gap between management and IT. What's more, the visual modeling you learn from this book shows you not only how to improve your enterprise, but where trouble spots might occur and how to avoid common pitfalls.

What'smore, because the book is structured as an on-the-job guide, you don't have to read it all before getting started. It features clear summaries, project checklists, and other aids that make it a logical guide to keep on your reference shelf and put to use every day.

Providing proven techniques for identifying, modelling and redesigning business processes, and explaining how to implement workflow improvement, this book aims to help define requirements for systems development or systems acquisition. Just when process orientation has become mainstream thinking for business people and systems people alike, it seems that the flow of process-oriented literature has pretty well stopped.