Decision WP5

What communications should be implemented between actors?

 

Decided characteristics	Communications
Input characteristics	Business activity, business event, dependency, organisation position, organisation unit, external agent, location, basic task, co-ordination, co- operation
Guidance	The performance of a process involving several actors requires some communication between these actors. If these actors are not in the same location, communication requires appropriate technological services to transfer messages over some distance.  This decision consists in defining the changes of communications required by actors to perform their processes.  New communications can be created between actors which did not use to communicate before, or existing communications may be improved. This last case is the most frequent; in particular, for essential flows of business processes, communications must always exist otherwise the process would not be executable.  Three justifications for changing communications are presented hereunder.  (1) Changing communications for essential flows of the process  Essential flows are the flows of information which are necessary for the execution of the process, e.g. the flows of orders and invoices in an invoicing process. They constitute dependencies between business activities. Essential flows exchanged with the external world are carried by business events.  Other flows of information may be useful but not necessary, e.g. the flow of information about customer history in the car rental process.  Essential flows are always supported by communications when the different tasks of a process are performed by different actors. If these actors are not located in the same place, there is a need for remote communications.  The decision on the location of the business activities and actors (« WP1. Where should the business activities be executed? » and « WP2. What should be the actors responsible for the business activities? ») have always an impact on communications.  The characteristics of the communications (see sub-decisions) depend on the requirements to the measures of performance of the concerned business activities.  Communication can be a bottleneck during process execution: it may slow down the process, be unreliable, require to many resources from the actors, cause customer dissatisfaction, etc.  An analysis of the causes of non performance of the business process will determine whether communications should be incriminated and in which respect.  Improvement of communications will eventually be assessed against costs, benefits, risks.  (2) Improving the information of the actors  Non essential flows contribute to the better information of the actors and therefore their capabilities to perform their processes.  E.g. the flow of information about customer history in all branches may help the branch employee to make better decisions within the car rental process; he could recommend a customer to take a special insurance if he has a past record of accidents or he could simply refuse to rent a car !; he could better select the car on the basis of customer’s preferences, etc.  The performance of a business process may often be enhanced by providing relevant information to the actors; this requires to improve the communications between certain actors.  However, to communicate costs some time; the actors should be motivated to spend that time and be convinced that it is good for them and for the enterprise. The institutionalisation of communications, by the implementation of formal communication channels may contribute to assign a positive value to the communications within the enterprise culture, thereby encouraging people to communicate.  (3) Improving co-operation or co-ordination between the actors  Communication supports co-operation and co-ordination. Co-operation and co-ordination cannot happen without communication.  Therefore, requirements for co-operation and co-ordination place requirements on communications. Whichever justification the decision is based upon, one should identify:  the actors among which communications are required,  the tasks for which communication is required,  and the required characteristics of the communications (refer to sub- decisions). The following two attributes of communication must be defined:  The interaction type indicates what is the level of aggregation of the interacting actors: individuals, groups, etc.  The interaction hierarchy indicates whether the interacting actors are considered as being peers or as having a hierarchical relationship with each other.
Sub-decisions	Should communications be formal ?  Should communications be informal ?  Should communications be implicit ?  Should communications be explicit ?  Should communications be asynchronous ?  Should communications be synchronous ?  What should be the interaction modes ?  Is the event ordering consistency important ?  What should be the communication supports ?  What should be the communication efficiency ?  What should be the communication reliability ?  What should be the communication compliance ?  What should be the communication security ?  What should be the communication traceability ?  What should be the communication portability ?  What should be the communication maintainability ?
Input work products	Basic Task Description, Organisation Interaction, Location Interaction
Output work products	Basic Task Description

 

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