The international standards organization (ISO) refers to a “business workflow” as “A sequence of Operations and or Work for an individual or group of persons either itself or as a process”.(ISO) [i] The origins of business workflows and workflow analysis are rooted in Operations Management. (Pilkington et al.)[ii]
Requirements Analysis and Engineering is a method utilized within software engineering to elicit conditions and needs of the clients for a proposed software solution to a business issue in a structured manner as to facilitate the primary development stages of software design. (DoD)[iii] This method utilizes “Stakeholder Identification”, “Interviews”, “Requirements Lists”, “Measureable Goals” and various forms of “Prototyping”.
Since all web forms are implemented in software; they should meet software engineering standards and requirements gathering should be conducted beforehand; in reality this is not always the case. However for the purposes of this argument; we will assume that all web-sites and forms are software and therefore should be developed according to existing models to reduce the risk of project failure and price overruns. (Jain)[iv]
There are many software development models and for the purposes of brevity we will not open a discussion to them here; we will simply state that these models exist and each model has its own method for development and lifecycle control; this includes where data may be gathered and determining at which points within the workflow process data should be elicited from the client using said developed application. These models include the Waterfall (Boehm)[v], Agile (Cockburn)[vi], Extreme (Beck)[vii] and Iterative (Basili)[viii]: Each of these models is impacted by the Bohem Spiral where cost and complexity is proportional to the software version and its history in development e.g. the longer the development cycle and the older the software the more it costs in both man-hours and monetary terms to maintain.
Just as there are software development models; the world of Business Analysis would not be complete without project and workflow management models and standards. These include the Project Management Institutes PMBok (Jaeger)[ix], IBM’s Rational Unified Process (Krebs)[x] and to a certain degree Unified modeling Language (UML)[xi], the IEEE and ISO have derivatives of the previous processes; such as the ISO 9000 certification; however these are accreditations for institutions regarding management and not the frameworks and models themselves.
Data Collection and Workflow Management
The methods used to identify how data is collected, stored, and used to generate business intelligence, Income, sales leads and revenue has been impacted in an immensely by the advent of the information age. eCommerce and B2B systems have emerged as new markets for previously location limited businesses in the worlds of retail sales, software development, business consultation, bookkeeping and accounting as well as entertainment. Communcaitons across all businesses have been forever changed to require a web-site and e-mail based communications. The global software market alone is valued at $203.4 billion as of 2006 and is expected to grow to $271 billion by 2011. (Datamonitor)[xii], this does not include other business sectors such as retail sales, mining and manufacturing, consumer electronics, et cetera, ad nosium. Each of the market segments benifits in various ways from a web presence and workflow integration with business intelligence has given rise to the “BI” sector within the ERP and CRM software markets.
How workflows relate to a given web-form is dependent upon the web-sites parent’s companies core business; a car manufacturer may use the web form for marketing and price quotation; thus generating potential business and valuable marketing information regarding their products in real-time. Where as an online music store such as iTunes, Beat port or Napster utilize web forms as a method to interface directly with their clients thought the entire sales process. Some of the world’s most valued companies exist exclusively online and function around a core web-site; these include search engines such as Google, eCommerce sites such as E-bay and payment processors such as Paypal. Although their per-capita margins are small, the volume of transfer for each of these sites is in the billions; and therefore even though they may only make a 1% margin on sales: google sells adwords, E-bay charges $3.99 per auction, and Paypal has moderate service fees) due to the sheer volume of clients these businesses are worth billions individually; as we can see Google alone is worth 135 Billion dollars. (Google Finance)[xiii]
Therefore not only are web forms important to a business but how they generate data; the methods used to manage and leverage that data and very nature of the paradigm of a given workflow has been forever changed for most if not all industrial and non-industrial businesses. Previously you had to purchase advertizing space in a given market from various publications; today you may simply setup a website and send out advertizing referring back to said site; or if the site is a service let the word of mouth carry the burden of marketing.
Thus the paradigm has changed, the nature by which businesses function; how software as a platform functions; the nature by which we collaborate and maintain our businesses and their respective communications have forever been changed by the web.
References
[i] N.a. (ISO 2006) Health informatics -- Digital imaging and communication in medicine (DICOM) including workflow and data management [Online] PDF Document, Available from: http://www.iso.org/iso/iso_catalogue/catalogue_tc/catalogue_detail.htm?csnumber=43218 (Accessed on: June 11th 2009)
[ii] Pilkington, Alan; Meredith, Jack (University of London, Wake Forest University, November 2008) The evolution of the intellectual structure of operations management—1980–2006: A citation/co-citation analysis [Online] PDF Document, Available form: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6VB7-4T84K5P-1&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=dcda044cc1d0bcf78c8f9a38c50f1770 (Accessed on: June 11th 2009)
[iii] N.a. (Department of Defence, Systems Management College, January 2001) Systems Engineering Fundamentals [Online] PDF Document, available from: http://www.dau.mil/pubs/pdf/SEFGuide%2001-01.pdf (Accessed on June 11th 2009)
[iv] Jain, Deepak (Code Project, January 11th 2007) Importance of Processes and Standards in Software Development [Online] World Wide Web, Available from: http://www.codeproject.com/KB/work/Process.aspx (Accessed on June 11th 2009)
[v] Boehm, B; (ACM, 1986) A spiral model of software development and enhancement [Online] PDF Document, Available from: http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=12944.12948 (Accessed on June 11th 2009)
[vi] Cockburn, A (A Cockburn, 2001) Agile Development [Online] PDF Document, Available from: http://www.imamu.edu.sa/Scientific_selections/Documents/IT/AgileSwDevDraft3.pdf (Accessed on June 11th 2009)
[vii] Jeffries, R; (XP Programming.com, November 8th 2001) What is Extreme Programming? [Online] World Wide Web, Available from: http://www.xprogramming.com/xpmag/whatisxp.htm (Accessed on June 11th 2009)
[viii] Basili, V, R; (IEEE 1990) Viewing Maintenece as Reuse-Oriented Software Development [Online] PDF Document, Available form: http://www.cs.umd.edu/projects/SoftEng/ESEG/papers/82.37.pdf (Accessed on June 11th 2009)
[ix] De Jager, J-M; (12Manage, 2004) PMBOK information Page [Online] World Wide Web, Available from: http://www.12manage.com/methods_pmi_pmbok.html (Accessed on June 11th 2009)
[x] Krebs, Joe (IBM, January 15th 2007) The value of RUP Certifiacation [Online] World Wide Web, Available from: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/rational/library/jan07/krebs/index.html (Accessed on June 11th 2009)
[xi][xi]N.a. (UML Organization, February 2009) UML Version 2.2 Formal Specification [Online] PDF Document, Available from: http://www.omg.org/spec/UML/2.2/ (Accessed on June 11th 2009)
[xii] N.a. (Datamonitor, 2006) The global software market report [Online] World Wide Web, Available from: http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:Yhs8myEjdJ8J:www.infoedge.com/product_type.asp%3Fproduct%3DDO-4959+global+market+value+software&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=ca&client=firefox-a (Accessed on June 11th 2006)
[xiii] N.a. (Nasdaq, June 11th 2009) Google Finance Quote for GOOG [Online] World Wide Web, Available from: http://www.google.ca/finance?client=ob&q=NASDAQ:GOOG (Accesssed on June 11th 2009)
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