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.

• Big visible chart. A large chart displayed near the Agile team that show how the team is progressing. You could make a big visible chart to show defects, velocity (burndown chart), customer acceptance tests, or to find out how much time the team is wasting.
• Cycle. refers to the total amount of time it takes for a single task or work item to travel through the workflow from the beginning of work until it ships.
• Sprint plan. The tangible outcome of a Sprint planning meeting. The Sprint plan is a written document assembled by the development team and includes 1) the goal for the sprint—a brief description of the product or deliverable to be completed by the end of the sprint, and 2) a detailed list of the Product Backlog Items (PBIs) or user stories the team has committed to completing by the end of the sprint, based on the team’s availability and velocity. Each PBI or user story is broken down into tasks according to the priority set by the product owner and assigned to a team member.
• Sprint task. A single small item of work that helps one particular story reach completion.
• Work breakdown structure (WBS). A deliverable-oriented hierarchical decomposition of the work to be executed by the project team to accomplish the project objectives and create the required deliverables. It organizes and defines the total scope of the project.
• Workflow diagram. A graphical representation of activities and actions conducted by users of a system. (Sometimes called an activity diagram.)
• Work-in-progress limit (WIP). refers to work that is currently being developed and not yet ready to be released as a deliverable. For Scrum teams, this would apply to the work being accomplished during a sprint. For Kanban teams, this refers to work that has been pulled from the backlog and is being developed, indicated by cards in the ‘Doing’ or ‘Work-in-Progress’ column of the Kanban task board.

1. Activity. The smallest portion of an enterprise effort that has its own name, input, description, timeframe, and measurable result.

• Activity. A unit of work performed as part of an initiative or process.
• Activity diagram. A model that illustrates the flow of processes and/or complex use cases by showing each activity along with information flows and concurrent activities. Steps can be superimposed onto horizontal swimlanes for the roles that perform the steps.
• Burndown chart (or Burndown chart). The chart that represents all outstanding work. The vertical axis represents the backlog, while the horizontal axis represents time. The work remaining can be represented by story points, ideal days, team days, or other metrics.
• Burnup chart (or Burnup chart). The chart that tracks how much work has been completed. There are two lines on the chart—one line represents total work and the other represents work completed. The vertical axis represents the amount of work and can be measured in number of tasks, hours, or story points. The horizontal axis represents time, usually measured in days.
• Business process. A set of defined ad-hoc or sequenced collaborative activities performed in a repeatable fashion by an organization. Processes are triggered by events and may have multiple possible outcomes. A successful outcome of a process will deliver value to one or more stakeholders.
• Continuous integration (CI). A software engineering practice that involves continual integration of new development code into the existing codebase.
• Entity-relationship diagram. An entity-relationship diagram is a graphical representation of the entities relevant to a chosen problem domain, the relationships between them, and their attributes.
• Input. A material, service or support item that is processed by the system.
• Process map. A business model that shows a business process in terms of the steps and input and output flows across multiple functions, organizations, or job roles.
• Process model. A visual model or representation of the sequential flow and control logic of a set of related activities or actions.
• Process. A set of activities used to convert inputs into desired outputs.
• Process. simply the way someone works. Everyone has a process. It can be pre-defined, empiric or merely chaotic.
• Red route. The frequent and critical activities that users will perform on your site. They are complete activities, not single tasks, and will probably require several pages to execute. Defining the red routes for your site means that you’ll be able to identify and eliminate any usability obstacles on the key user journeys. (Important roads in London are known as ‘red routes’ and Transport for London do everything in their power to make sure passenger journeys on these routes are completed as smoothly and quickly as possible.)
• Relationship map. A business model that shows the organizational context in terms of the relationships that exist among the organization, external customers, and providers.
• Relationship. A defined association between concepts, classes or entities. Relationships are usually named and include the cardinality of the association.
• Sequence diagram. A type of diagram that shows objects participating in interactions and the messages exchanged between them.
• Task board. A physical or online visual representation of user stories broken down into tasks or work units. A physical task board can be as simple as a whiteboard with three columns labeled To Do, Doing, and Done; colored post-it notes or index cards representing tasks are placed in the column that reflects the task's current state. A task board can be expanded to hold more columns and can also include horizontal swim lanes.
• Task list. A list of tasks needed to complete the set of stories committed to a sprint.
• Task. A single unit of work broken down from a user story. A task is usually completed by just one person.
• Quality. The degree to which a set of inherent characteristics fulfills requirements.
• Total quality management. A philosophy of management that is driven by continuous improvement and responsiveness to customer needs and expectations.
• Quality assurance (QA). (1) The process of evaluating overall project performance on a regular basis to provide confidence that the project will satisfy the relevant quality standards. (2) The organizational unit that is assigned responsibility for quality assurance.
• Quality assurance. Activities performed to ensure that a process will deliver products that meet an appropriate level of quality.
• Unit production. The production of items in units or small batches.
• Slack time. The amount of time an individual activity can be delayed without delaying the whole project.
• Six Sigma. A quality program designed to reduce defects and help lower costs, save time, and improve customer satisfaction.
• Operational plan. A plan that encompasses a particular operational area of the organization.
• Process consultation. A meeting in which a consultant assists a client in understanding process events with which he or she must deal and identifying processes that need improvement.
• Process production. The production of items in continuous process.
• Process conflict. Conflict over how work gets done.
• Process conflict. A conflict over how work gets done.
• Specific plan. A plan that is clearly defined and leaves no room for interpretation.
• Standing plan. An ongoing plan that provides guidance for activities performed repeatedly.
• Short-term plan. A plan covering one year or less.
• Single-use plan. A one-time plan specifically designed to meet the needs of a unique situation.
• Budget. A numerical plan for allocating resources to specific activities.
• Budgeting. The process of allocating resources to pay for designated future costs.
• Directional plan. A plan that is flexible and sets out general guidelines.
• Formal planning department. A group of planning specialists whose sole responsibility is helping to write organizational plans.
• Long-term plan. A plan with a time frame beyond three years.
• Planning. Management function that involves setting goals, establishing strategies for achieving those goals, and developing plans to integrate and coordinate activities.
• Planning. A process that includes defining goals, establishing strategy, and developing plans to coordinate activities.
• Zero-balance budgeting. Process starting with an established point of zero rather than using the current budget as the basis for adding, modifying, or subtracting resources.

Practices

The successor lecture is Operations Management Quarter.