Critiquing Business Process Models to Facilitate the Identification and Selection of Optimal IT Systems

Abstract

In common with many SMEs, Space Engineering Services Ltd supports a number of business process variants found in different parts of the organisation for achieving the same organisational goals using non-optimal IT. In order to address these problems, the capability to use role activity diagrams (RADs) for organisational process modelling was introduced by this Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) using three knowledge transfer mechanisms: a short course on RADs, expert feedback on initial RAD models, and feedback on initial process elicitation efforts. The resulting learning was adopted and adapted by the KTP team into a process that is being used to improve many of the company’s critical strategic processes, and also to identify optimal IT support for those processes. It is expected that this process would benefit many similar SMEs.