Analyzing Activities › Process Decomposition › Identifying Functions and Processes

Identifying Functions and Processes

Identify the functions as:

• Reviewing subject areas, described in the chapter "Analyzing Data," to identify those things with which the business must deal or manage.
• For example, sales includes customers and orders, which suggests the functions Customer Management and Sales Management.
• Identifying child activities that manage an object with which a function is concerned.
• For example, the Warehouse Management function include:
  • Warehouse Capacity Planning
  • Warehouse Acquisition
  • Warehouse Operations
  • Warehouse Performance Control
  • Warehouse Disposal
  • Considering the value chain of which a function is part.
  • Using value chain analysis is further described in the chapter "Building the Analysis Model."

Identify the processes as:

• Examining the life-cycles of entities that are managed to meet relevant business and organizational objectives. Entity type life-cycle analysis is described in the chapter "Analyzing Interactions."
• Comparing the activity hierarchy with current procedures identified from information gathering and current systems analysis.
• Identifying the events that affect the business, and identifying activities that are performed in response to those events. See the chapter "Event Analysis" for more information.

Further guidance on starting to identify activities appears in the chapter "Building the Analysis Model."

In analysis, process decomposition is recorded by building an Activity Hierarchy Diagram and continues until the lowest-level, or elementary processes, are identified.