1.17 Figure 6 sets out the reasons why, ideally, business processes and new IT need to be developed in parallel. The Department considered, nevertheless, that it is also possible to specify or purchase a standard IT system and modify business processes to the extent required during implementation.
6 |
| The need for business processes and new IT to be developed in parallel |
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| "IT applications support the operation of business processes. Standard IT systems need standardised business processes. If there are existing operations with differing processes, there must first be an agreement on a standard process, in order to specify the IT application. Whilst there can be some flexibility between business process and IT application design, there will be many situations where an IT application cannot support different business processes." "It is unrealistic to design new business processes in advance of their enabling IT applications, as the process design will depend to a significant extent on the content of the IT application. But the nature of the new business process must be understood in detail in order to specify the IT application. There is, therefore, no sensible route to improving operational effectiveness other than a parallel, integrated, design of process and application." Source: Professor Andrew Davies, Visiting Professor in Information Systems at Cranfield School of Management, October 2002 |
1.18 Business processes vary across and within Magistrates' Courts Committees, in part because of the different legacy systems in use but mainly because each Committee has developed its own processes. Some of these differences are inevitable because of the different sizes of Committees and local circumstances but the main case-management processes could be standardised. The Department was responsible for providing a single view of requirements for the new system across Magistrates' Courts Committees. To help to achieve this a large number of staff from the Committees was involved, but a single view was, inevitably, difficult to achieve. This contributed to the difficulties in developing the new system.