Effort Engineering Quarter

Process Engineering Quarter (hereinafter, the Quarter) is the first of four lectures of Effort Quadrivium (hereinafter, the Quadrivium):

• The Quarter is designed to introduce its learners to enterprise discovery, or, in other words, to concepts related to obtaining data needed to administer the enterprise effort; and
• The Quadrivium examines concepts of administering various types of enterprises known as enterprise administration as a whole.

The Quadrivium is the first of seven modules of Septem Artes Administrativi, which is a course designed to introduce its learners to general concepts in business administration, management, and organizational behavior.

Outline

The predecessor lecture is Controlling Quarter.

Concepts

1. Process. An action that individuals, groups, and organizations engage in as a result of inputs and that leads to certain outputs.
   • Input. A variable that leads to processes.
   • Output. An immediate and direct result of a process.
2. System. A set of interrelated and interdependent parts arranged in a manner that produces a unified whole.
   • System. A collection of interrelated elements that interact to achieve an objective. System elements can include hardware, software, and people. One system can be a sub-element (or subsystem) of another system.
   • System. A set of interrelated components working together to produce a desired result.
   • Mission. An undertaking that is supported by the system to be designed to be successful (e.g. space mission).
   • Open system. A system that interacts with its environment.
   • Closed system. A system that is not influenced by and does not interact with its environment.
   • External interface. An interface with other systems (hardware, software, and human) that a proposed system will interact with.
   • Boundary. A separation between the interior of a system and what lies outside.
   • Context diagram. An analysis model that illustrates product scope by showing the system in its environment with the external entities (people and systems) that give to and receive from the system.
     1. Context. The users, other systems and other features of the environment of the system that the system will interact with.
3. Business event. A system trigger that is initiated by humans.
   • Event. An event is something that occurs to which an organizational unit, system, or process must respond.
   • Temporal event. A system trigger that is initiated by time.
   • Event response table. An analysis model in table format that defines the events (i.e., the input stimuli that trigger the system to carry out some function) and their responses.
4. Feedback. Information about the output of a system that can be used to adjust it.
   • Output. What is produced by a system.
   • Desired outcome. The business benefits that will result from meeting the business need and the end state desired by stakeholders.
5. Systems engineering. The orderly process of bringing a system into being using a systems approach.
   • Engineering. The application of scientific principles to practical ends.
   • Systems approach. The application of a systematic disciplined engineering approach that considers the system as a whole, its impact on its environment and continues throughout the lifecycle of a project.
   • System design. The identification of all the necessary components, their role, and how they have to interact for the system to fulfill its purpose.
   • System integration. The activity of integrating all the components of a system to make sure they work together as intended.
   • Human factor. Also called ergonomics. The scientific discipline of studying interactions between humans and external systems, including human-computer interaction. When applied to design, the study of human factors seeks to optimise both human well-being and system performance.
   • Interdisciplinarity. People from different disciplines working together to design systems.
   • Specifications. The technical requirements for systems design.
   • Datapoint-device architecture.
6. Informational architecture (IA). The art and science of organising and labeling websites, intranets, online communities and software to support usability.
   • Usability. The ease of use and learnability of an object, such as a book, software application, website, machine, tool or any object that a human interacts with.
   • Usability engineering. The practice of assessing and making recommendations to improve the usability of a product.
   • Industrial design. The application art and science to a product, in order to improve its aesthetics, ergonomics, functionality, and usability.
   • Information scent. An important concept in information foraging theory referring to the extent to which users can predict what they will find if they pursue a certain path through a website. As animals rely on scents to indicate the chances of finding food, so do humans rely on various cues in the information environment to achieve their goals.
7. User interface (UI).
   • Interface. A shared boundary between any two persons and/or systems through which information is communicated.
   • Dialog hierarchy. An analysis model that shows user interface dialogs arranged as hierarchies.
   • Dialog map. An analysis model that illustrates the architecture of the system's user interface.
   • Interaction design (IxD). Sometimes referred to as IxD, interaction design strives to create meaningful relationships between people and the products and services that they use.
8. UX design.
   • Adaptive design. Like Responsive web design it is an approach to web design aimed at crafting sites to provide an optimal viewing and interaction experience on different screen and devices. The difference is that adaptive design is less fluid then RWD, and ‘serves’ few fixed width versions of the design depending on viewport size. It can utilize server side techniques to ‘detect’ viewport size prior to rendering html. The advantage for designer is that it gives more control over images and typography, and hence is easier approach to ‘retrofit’ fixed width websitest to work on mobile devices.
   • Responsive design. A design approach that responds to the user’s behavior and environment based on screen size, platform and orientation. The practice consists of a mix of flexible grids and layouts, images and an intelligent use of CSS media queries.
   • User-centered design (UCD). A design process during which the needs of the user is considered at all times. Designers consider how a user is likely to use the product, and they then test the validity of their assumptions in real world tests with actual users.

Roles

1. Architect. There is no architect role in Agile development, instead all Agile team members are responsible for emerging the architecture.
   • Informational architect.
   • UX designer.
   • Graphic designer.

Methods

1. Card sorting. A technique using either actual cards or software, whereby users generate an information hierarchy that can then form the basis of an information architecture or navigation menu.

Instruments

1. • Axure. A wireframing and interactive prototyping tool, available for both Windows and Mac.
   • Balsamiq Mockups. A wireframing and interactive prototyping tool, available for both Windows and Mac.

Practices

The successor lecture is Operations Management Quarter.