From a Cloudy View towards a More Structured Approach for

Business Process Related Concepts

Necmettin Ozkan

IT Governance Division, Turkiye Finans Participation Bank, Istanbul, Turkey

Keywords: Business, Process Management, Concept, Model, Structure, Ontology.

Abstract: In today’s information era, one of the greatest areas of confusion is the terminology used to name abstract

business process concepts which are mostly unclear, blurred and ambiguous among people. This study

attempts to remedy the problem of the often-occurring issue of terminology confusion in business process

domain. Following a nested approach, from mission to event, the work firstly defines essential terms used in

the area of research in order to create a common understanding. The paper then formalizes the relations

between the terms represented within a consolidated class diagram. Therefore, the study aims to contribute

the body of knowledge in this area especially for people from practice by consolidating all relevant terms and

providing a meta-model from a consistent point of view.

1 CHALLENGE OF CONCEPTS

In today’s information era, one of the greatest areas

of confusion is the terminology used to name abstract

business process related concepts which can be

unclear, blurred and ambiguous (Alter 2001; Harmon

2007; Jeston and Nelis 2014; Josey 2012; Parry,

Newnes and Huang 2011; Winniforda et asl., 2009).

In an environment where concepts do not imply same

meaning for everyone, expecting people to attach

shared points is meaningless. Furthermore, people

commonly create their own definitions and use them

in their ways. At the end of the day, they are not only

unable to communicate properly but also, even worse,

misunderstand each other. Thus, the concepts which

have blurred relations, and are used in arguable

contexts keep producing imperfect and deficient

results, unable to cover expectations.

All these factors have set off and led to this study.

This study attempts to remedy the problem of the

often-occurring issue of cloudy-defined terminology

in the business process domain. The term "business

process" is used as defined by Sheer, and Nüttgens

(2000) as “a procedure relevant for adding value to an

organization”. Attached to this meaning, following a

nested approach, from mission to event, the work

defines comprehensive and essential terms used in the

area of the research in order to create a vocabulary-

like reference model with enriched contents for a

common understanding. The course of the study starts

with the identifications of the related concepts and

their descriptions, and goes through presenting a

consolidated class diagram for these interdependent,

cascading, and related concepts formalizing the

relations between the terms.

2 RELATED WORK

One of the major goals in every discipline is to define

and categorize terms, concepts, and phenomenon of

the field in order to create a common language and to

advance knowledge in the discipline (Kishore,

Sharman & Ramesh 2004). As a result, there is a

wealth of research providing their definitions on this

subject that points out a part of this study. Some

examples include ArchiMate, BMM, BPMN, CBM,

EBA, ARIS, EPC, and EBMM, listed by Glissman

and Sanz (2009).

The attempt of studies in literatures on business

process area fall into one of the two domains:

information system or business context. Bart, Bontis

and Taggar (2001), Collins and Porras (1996),

Duncan (1999), Gupta, Gollakota and Srinivasan

(2007), Hitt, Ireland and Hoskisson (2013), Johnson

and Scholes (2002), and Thompson and Strickland

(2003) are some examples covering the business side

of this study, while Alter (2001), Kishore, Sharman

Ozkan, N..

From a Cloudy View Towards a More Structured Approach for Business Process Related Concepts.

In Proceedings of the 7th International Joint Conference on Knowledge Discovery, Knowledge Engineering and Knowledge Management (IC3K 2015) - Volume 3: KMIS, pages 315-324

ISBN: 978-989-758-158-8

315

and Ramesh (2004), Pflaeging (2014), Sheer, and

Nüttgens (2000), Weber (1999), and Weske (2007)

examine information system deeply, not at

meaningful or understandable level for business

managers. However, from a strategic business

viewpoint, business process works must be easy to

understand so that they can be used as a platform for

communication with business people (Green and

Rosemann, 2000), for many of the phenomena are

enacted by a human rather than a machine (Curtis,

Kellner and Over, 1992). Different from them, this

work does not hold a purpose of creating a new

process modelling notation or a deep and heavy

weight content. Preferably, the main purpose is to

revisit business process centric terms from a broader

spectrum and refresh the link between information

system or business context. Thus, one of the

distinguishing advantages of this study, over the

others, is to provide a ground to see a comprehensive

list of the related concepts all together in one picture

and their links to each other from a single and

consistent point of view. The other works have a

focus on relatively narrow areas. While this study

discusses 19 concepts, the maximum coverage of the

rest examined is 40% of terms discussed in this study.

Another advantageous side of this study is the

class diagram provided with relevant attributes,

relations and classification of layers. Similarly,

Weske (2007) also defines relatively narrow set of

terms, with the perspective of information system

only and provides a similar usage of class diagrams

but relatively simple with less attributes of class

diagrams notations. The class diagram can be

regarded as ontology, but in a language with limited

expressiveness. The rest of ontology models as a

mean which is over-specified are not preferred in this

study. Instead of defining the entities from scratch,

resulting to add a new proposal to the universe of

business process area, the study rather prefers to focus

on adding clarity to the field. Briefly, this manuscript

does not hold the purpose of finding a new definition

of the terms but the best ones instead.

The study outlines its own scope by process

centric thinking. Among the process, human, and

technology dimensions, only the process dimension

has been examined. The human is the primary impact

on emerging of these concepts. On the other hand, the

human part independently is a separate and huge

study subject. Technology is a means which serves to

provide alternative methods and acceleration for

processes; it does not produce a variation by itself in

this context. What remains is the main subject of this

study: process and its related concepts. This scope is

also regarded as a criterion in selecting for the set of

concepts the paper covers. This process thinking,

which is isolated from people and technology that is

hard to understand for majority of people, is believed

as a way of keeping the study more focused and more

understandable.

3 IDENTIFYING, DEFINING AND

CLARIFYING CONCEPTS

In identifying the concepts, a complete and general

list is targeted. Being general here means free of

sector and size of organizations. Completeness on the

other hand is for covering all relevant and

comprehensive entities of business process field

serving for the objective of this study. It is believed

that a primary list of the business process terms can

be reached from IT related reference models for IT

can be regarded as a kind of representation of real

(business) world in another platform. This relation

also requires and provides a strong link between

business and IT. ITIL (Information Technology

Infrastructure Library) and COBIT (Control

Objectives for Information and Related Technology)

have domination in information technology with its

integrated standards worldwide and are de-facto

frameworks. They deliver a generic process model

that represents all the processes normally found in IT

functions, and provide a common reference model

understandable to IT and business managers. Both

COBIT and ITIL are free of sector, size and integrate

good practices to ensure that any enterprise’s IT

supports the business objectives. Therefore, the list

was achieved by a throughout scanning in ITIL v3

glossary. COBIT v4.1 framework glossary was used

for possible extensions (coloured in a red line in the

figure.1).

The concepts were selected in a nested approach.

Mission statement was selected for the starting point

as organizations should start with setting a mission

first and foremost. All the other including processes

exist to realize it. On these nested links starting from

the concept of mission and going on node by node, if

any new concept is encountered in the description text

of the current concept (node), the next node in the

glossary was selected according to that. By this way,

the nested links were crawled until reaching all dead

nodes that do not include any new term to go further

with. Only one way direction (from-top-to-bottom)

was used to keep the study within reasonable bounds

with a consideration of that there can be many terms

unrelated to the context which contains, let’s say, the

word of process in their descriptions. Thinking

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process at the core and adhering to the scope of the

study, the terms related to human/organization side

(such as organization, role, manager, customer and so

on), the terms related to a specific technology (such

as IT infrastructure, configuration management

database, and so on), and the terms related to a

specific method (such as brainstorming, balanced

scorecard and so on) were omitted. The full list of

items excluded by this way includes senior

management, organization, resource, role,

responsibility, customer, team, person, configuration

item, IT infrastructure, requirement, standard, target

and methodology. Instead of devoting a dedicated

title, the terms of target, methodology, requirement

and standard were mentioned in proper places of the

corresponding titles. The final map of targeted

concepts was reached as the following:

Figure 1: Map of the concepts.

In the description phase of the concepts, to reach

proper and common definitions, additional to COBIT

and ITIL resources, a literature review was performed

for possible extensions. Thus, a systematic literature

review was used as the method for getting the

complete spectrum of available definitions. The

fruitful resources obtained were scanned by a single,

holistic and integrated point of view of the researcher

until a consensus of resources for the particular term

was reached. And the best and proper descriptions

according to the researcher’s point of view were

selected and used in the study. Thus the descriptions

were clarified, intensified, and enriched. Moreover,

various methods were applied in order to make the

content more understandable. One of the methods

used is the aspect of “who”, “what”, “where”,

“when”, “why” and “how” questions to helps us

understand and properly define the concepts. “Why”,

“what” and “how” questions are used to determine the

positions and precedence of the concepts. As another

method, various analogies related to the human were

made, for the human is the creator of all these

concepts as he causes to emerge them in

organizations. And all creators bestow their own

essence to what they create, and make them similar to

themselves. The most typical example of this is

technology. Technology is indeed a regeneration

process of the human. Products created are getting

more similar to the human. Technologic products

which can speak, reason, understand, see, and be

touched as the human does are just like a copy of the

human behaviours. Organizations created by the

human similarly behave like a human: grow, evolve,

change, and become deformed and complicated. This

indeed feeds both the problem addressed in this study

and a solution to it. Using the solution side, the study

goes to the origin of the subject and aims to bring the

content up to a more familiar and coherent level.

3.1 Mission

Let’s go back to the beginning when the organization

desires to exist to produce the values necessary to

answer its demands and needs (which are listed by

Maslow (1943) and expanded later on by other

researchers). The mission statement addresses this

reason of existing (Gupta et al. 2007). Dictionaries

state that, “mission relates to that aspect for which an

individual has been or seems to have been sent into

the world”. For organizations, a mission statement

explains why an organization exists by the description

of the overall purpose and intentions of the

organization (Office of Government Commerce

2007).

The purpose mentioned sits at the core of

organizations; that is it inspires and stimulates

changes and progress on the way. When it stops

existing, moving also stops. This is why mission sits

near and next to the organization and is for yesterday,

today and tomorrow, different from vision which is

for tomorrow only. The concept of purpose, itself, is

not a target position or a destination point for the

future or a course to be taken. Whereas an

organization might reach a goal or achieve a strategy,

it pursues but does not reach a purpose which makes

a mission like a guiding star on the horizon (Collins

and Porras, 1996) lasting at least long years with no

change. If a mission shows an end, it creates a point

at which the organization may complete its mission.

This means to determine a point to finish its doing of

business. However, weirdly this result may be

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317

intended, because the needs which produce the

mission may have a limited life. Determining a

limited life to the mission may enable many

organizations to pull out of the market before

bankruptcy or at a good point on the curve.

A well-conceived mission statement provides a

basis for many other features of the organization.

Different from vision, mission considers social

matters and its social oriented dimension divulges the

intention of organization for the society in terms of

products and services (Gupta et al., 2007). These

products and services provide an input for

determination of processes and functions of the

organization. Mission also establishes individuality

of organizations (Duncan, 1999) by reflecting

corporate identity and image of organization (Gupta

et al., 2007). This side of mission statement serves for

business definitions of organizations that specify the

customers to serve, the business area and the scope in

which the organization intends to compete (Ireland

and Hitt, 1992). And it reflects corporate philosophy

and character (Gupta et al. 2007). Similarly,

philosophy and character, in this context, provide a

baseline for core values of organization. Besides,

mission statements influence organization’s policies

by this way.

The mission statement gives some clue about the

scope of business, core functions to operate,

customers, products and technology, but not a direct

answer for the question of “what a particular

organization is”. Business definition must clearly

define identity of organizations as a part of it.

Furthermore, it defines what an organization stands

for, its business area, its scope, and its targeted

customers, by defining two features: (1) Focus of

business which is defined in terms of the type of core

functions the organization performs (2) Features that

specifies how the organization differentiates itself

from others (Hitt et al., 2013).

3.2 Vision

The mission statement answers the question of “why”

(the organization exists), and business definition

defines “what it is” and its environment.

Nevertheless, they are not enough to make an

organization move without a vision. A vision

statement clearly illuminates the direction in which

the organization is headed (Gupta et al., 2007),

provides guidance about what the organization

aspires to become, to achieve, and to create in the

distant future (Thompson and Strickland, 2003) for its

mission. Whereas it may seem unreal to actually

attain it even in the long term; yet, it provides a

direction and aspiration to move and energy to strive

and exert to achieve it (Gupta et al., 2007). By

articulating the future position of an organization, it

points the destination and creates a voltage difference

between today and tomorrow. However, it does not

draw the course to be taken. Therefore, it is away

from addressing the questions of “how” or the

implementation details. Instead, vision influences

strategic planning in this way. While vision states

“where” (want to be), strategy, at some level, defines

“how” (to head there) in the current environment.

3.3 Core Values

Some resources (such as by Thompson and Strickland

(2003), Collins and Porras, (1996)) include core

values into vision. Yet, vision puts the organization

into motion by addressing the destination it aims to

be in the future. Core values, on the other hand, do

not function as an impulsion, but a static reference

point. So, core values are discussed as a different

subject in this study.

By definition, core values are organization’s

timeless character (Collins and Porras, 1996). It is

derived from mission statement and aids in

differentiating the organization from others (Gupta et

al., 2007). Core values are determined according to

the value the organization attributes both to customers

and its own personnel. It includes guidance on

expected behavior, business principles, ethics and

deeply held values of organization (Gupta et al.

2007). It defines organization culture. They are basic,

essential, central, enduring, steady, often un-stated

tenets and serves as standards to weigh actions and

decisions (Gupta et al., 2007). While an organization

must continually adapt to its environment, and its

practices and strategies should change continually,

core values should remain fixed (Collins and Porras,

1996). It is a need to develop policies to ensure that

the organization’s values are accepted and penetrated

to the heart and mind of each employee (Hitt et al.,

2013).

3.4 Goal and Objective

Goal and objective both are about moving forward.

However they are different in the meaning and usage.

First of all, for their meaning, think of a touchable

"object" for objective and “go” for goal. Goal has the

power of defining a destination, changing the

direction to move toward this destination, changing

the mindset to adjust to and support the new direction

(InvestorWords, 2014). It provides a big picture for

actions toward the achievement of the organization’s

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mission and vision (Gupta et al., 2007). This usually

makes goal at strategic level and general, not easily

obtainable in the short term, which creates the

necessity to develop specific tactics that break big

goals down to a series of specific action steps. In this

case, setting objectives and linking them with goals

to accomplish them is a must. It is like a divide-and-

conquer strategy aiding in delineating goals.

Objectives are a series of smaller and specific targets

that need to be hit in order to achieve a goal. As a

result, objectives are positioned at tactical and

operational levels, and in short-terms in their nature.

Objectives must be supported by well-designed plans

(Gupta et al., 2007), and thus objectives become

something that can be planned to achieve.

A plan specifies results to achieve, resources to

obtain it, within a time frame, as objectives should do

the same. This time-based, concrete, and specific

attributes of objectives make them measurable

parameters for monitoring and evaluating

performance. Objectives can thus apply to system,

process, activity, project, product, or service.

Through this way, all these form a hierarchy. It begins

with broad statement of mission and vision, takes

form in goals, and ends with specific objectives at the

lower level (Gupta et al., 2007). Processes, plans and

projects run for these objectives to reach.

3.5 Strategy

Together, vision, mission and business definition

provide the foundation organizations need to choose

and implement one or more strategies (Hitt et al.

2013). Organizations must create a strategy intended

to achieve the vision and thus to fulfil the

organization’s mission. By definition, strategy is an

overall plan for deploying resources to establish a

favourable position (Thompson and Strickland, 2003)

and to set a direction for the organization towards the

overall vision. Besides this internal dimension,

strategy has an environmental dimension as

Thompson, and Strickland (2003) pointed out: “A

company’s strategy consists of the combination of

competitive moves and business approaches that

managers employ to please customers and compete

successfully and achieve organizational objectives.”

From this point of view strategy is a game plan and

an organization is not alone in this game. Johnson and

Scholes (2002 merge these two aspects of strategy as:

“… the direction and scope of an organization over

the long-term: which achieves advantage for the

organization through its configuration of resources

within a challenging environment, to meet the needs

of markets and to fulfil stakeholder expectations”.

After defining the strategy, it must be supported

by adequate processes. Somewhat, choosing a

strategy means making tradeoffs between different

activities and creating a preference among these

activities (Thompson and Strickland, 2003). Besides

the strategy, goals and objectives should be aligned

with vision and mission (Bart et al., 2001) for judging

the progress and success towards defined mission,

vision and strategy.

3.6 Policy

Business policy is a vital part of organizations to

ensure that organization’s mission, vision, and values

are accepted and supported by interested parties

(Pearce and Doh, 2005). Policies record decided upon

business rules, guiding principle or course of action

intended to influence and determine decisions,

actions, and other matters to ensure consistency and

compliance with the company’s strategic direction

(IT Governance Institute, 2007).

Policies address what the policy is and its

classification, who is responsible for the execution

and enforcement of the policy, and why the policy is

required (Kcggroup, 2014). In addition to policy

content, policies need to describe the consequences of

failing to comply with the policy, the means for

handling exceptions, and the manner in which

compliance with the policy will be checked and

measured (IT Governance Institute, 2007). Policies

engrave on every part of organizations. Among them,

processes/procedures are governed by policies that

ensure consistent and appropriate development and

implementation of processes, standards, roles (a set of

responsibilities), activities etc. (Office of

Government Commerce 2007).

3.7 Practice

In this hierarchy, none of vision, mission strategy,

policy, goal, and objective is a manner of action. Yet,

an organization is expected to take actions by which

it exercises its practices. A practice is a way of

working or a way in which work must be done to fulfil

needs and requirements and can include activities,

actions, processes, functions, and guidelines (Office

of Government Commerce 2007).

3.8 Function

Functions are core activities supporting

organization’s existence. In other words, a function is

a discrete activity organization wants to pay attention

(e.g. by putting energy into, structurally committing

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resources to) in order to meet its business objectives

(Josey, 2012). A business function can therefore be

positioned as a grouping of internal behaviour based

on a certain criteria like location, communication,

required skills, shared resources and shared

knowledge (Josey, 2012). So, a department within an

enterprise is not a function rather a function is core of

business activities carried out by a certain

department.

A function is internal and limited with the

boundary based dimension in the organization. To

deliver a value to customer, it must break away

conventional wisdom and the constraints of

organizational boundaries and should be broad and

cross functional in scope (Hammer, 1990). Function

also means to view from top to down. In this

direction, there are specialization, narrowing,

deepening, and an end which is static and

unchanging. Yet the customer is not on this side. S/he

waits at the end of horizontal way. So, the process

provides value to the customer by intersecting with

the functions vertically and using different functions

on the horizontal. This means that, processes are built

according to concern of creating value with elastic

limits.

3.9 Process

A business process is a way delivering a service or

product to a customer, or partial products or partial

services that are used as part of a service or product

for a customer (Josey, 2012). It does this by relating

activities. It takes inputs from a number of sources,

including other processes, manipulates the inputs, and

produces outputs. Processes may cross functional

areas to connect those points, probably, of different

departments.

Processes have clear business reasons for existing

(IT Governance Institute, 2007). Processes should be

a function of strategy, vision and mission by

producing sustainable success. By doing this, goals

and objectives of organizations are elaborated in

process by defining what value processes create, in

what quality and performance. Validation of the

creation of this value shall be performed in a way

production of the value throughout the organization is

assured.

As a complex dynamic system, business process

represents an organic view because of the human

factors as a part of it. This human factor is the weakest

link for ensuring the sustainability of the process.

People are involved in decisions. Leaving the

decisions up to the people involved may have

unsustainable consequences. It is likely that in the

absence of clear guidelines, the decisions taken by

different people will be different. This will create

inconsistent experiences for the customers and bring

down quality. That is why there are policies and

procedures (methods and rules) built according to the

policies. Procedure comes to ensure process activities

are delivered in an effective, efficient and consistent

manner serving for the common objectives.

The process, in general sense, is an element which

answers the question “how”, not in detail, by relating

activities to produce a service or a product for

customers. When it comes to each activity in a

process, procedure comes in to detail the “how”, by

providing practical information for the execution.

Yet, the “who” in a process/procedure should be a

role, not a specific person. It means there is still a

need of specifying the “who” to a person. A business

role can be assigned to a business actor by tasks

therefore the practice becomes actually an applicable

form.

3.10 Procedure, Work Instruction, and

Guidance

A process is abstract, and the power of it comes from

its abstraction. It describes the essentials of the

purpose, structure, rationale, roles and timing, leaving

plenty of implementation freedom (Bart et al., 2001),

enabling a wide range of its applications to be tailored

by procedures. A process tells “what” is necessary to

be done and the “how” part of it can be tailored and

elaborated in one or more procedures that describe the

means (formed by using method, methodology and

mechanism) of what is needed to be done, when and

by whom (Muller, 2011).

Even though procedures are part of processes, the

“why” in a procedure has often disappeared, replaced

by practical information for the execution (Muller,

2011). However, without understanding of the

thinking behind the procedure (the “why” part),

procedures can be meaningless. The process should

convey this rationale behind to procedures (Muller,

2011).

Similar concepts to procedures are workflow,

work instruction and guidance. Weske (2007) defines

workflow well as “the automation of a business

process, in whole or in part, during which documents,

information, or tasks are passed from one participant

to another for action, according to a set of procedural

rules”. Work instruction is created if very detailed

instructions are needed (Office of Government

Commerce 2007). It includes detailed instructions

that specify exactly what steps to follow with more

detail than a procedure (Office of Government

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Commerce 2007). Guidance, on the other hand,

recommends describing best practices of what should

be done. Different from procedures and work

instructions, compliance to a guideline is not

normally enforced (Office of Government Commerce

2007). With a combination of underlying procedures,

work instructions, and guidance, the process will

become more controlled and consistent. The common

point of them is that they assure the standard way of

doing. It is likely that in the absence of them, the

decisions taken by different people will be different.

In the light of this view, one of the good example

delineating relations between policy, process and

procedure are provided by Kcggroup. com (2010) as

below:

Figure 2: Relations between policy, process and procedure.

3.11 Service and Product

A business service represents the added value to

customers by facilitating outcomes customers want to

achieve without the ownership of specific costs and

risks (Office of Government Commerce 2007; Josey

2012). While business functions and business

processes describe the inner way of working, a

business service hides implementation details and

describes the parts of business processes and

functions that are externally visible and usable (Josey,

2012). A service is realized by one or more business

functions or processes and a business function can

realize multiple business services (Josey, 2012).

From the customer point of view, it is enough to know

a certain service is being offered and how the

consumer must use the service (Josey, 2012).

While the thinking has shifted from a pure service

or pure product focus to a combination or product-

service system (Parry et al., 2011), the difference

whether the outputs of the process are a service or a

product shall change the approach to the

corresponding process. As stated by Parry et al.

(2011), service is an act rather than a thing, products

are tangible but service is not and value of experience

of customer is more significant for a service than a

product. For example, the gaps between expectation

and the perception of the service and product may

vary significantly. To exemplify, imagine two people

who can easily have different perceptions for same

service (Bowen and Ford, 2002). Different from

products, even the same person may have different

opinions about the service experience at different

times (Bowen and Ford, 2002). With all these aspects,

the differences between products and services should

affect process approach and design.

3.12 Activity

Activity is a set of actions designed to achieve a

particular result and usually defined as part of

processes or plans, and documented in procedures

(Office of Government Commerce, 2007). Every

activity is part of a business function (Josey, 2012). A

process combines a chain of activities each of which

is part of business functions (Josey, 2012). A single

process will not always belong to a single business

function: a business function will almost always

consist of multiple activities and process steps and a

process will often be realized by multiple business

functions (Josey, 2012).

3.13 Action

Activity consists of actions and events. Whereas an

activity is like a movie, event is like a picture in it. In

contrast to activity, event/action is in a form atomic

and non-decomposable granulation meaning that it

cannot be interrupted (Dennis et al., 2005). From a

practical perspective, events take zero time. The main

difference between event and action is that an event

is an occurrence at information level without a

sentient force causing it to occur. An action, on the

other hand, is an occurrence caused by a sentient

force with knowledge at DIKW (data, information,

knowledge, and wisdom) Pyramid. While an event is

usually stationary, an action is regarded as an event

requiring a reaction.

3.14 Plan

Plan is an intended future course of action which

describes, prioritizes and schedules various activities

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and resource allocation aimed at achieving specific

goal(s) or objective(s) within a specific timeframe

(Business Dictionary, 2014; Gupta et al., 2007). It

explains in detail what needs to be done, how, when,

and by whom (Business Dictionary, 2014). Plan

consists of tasks that are feasibly the smallest unit of

work into which the activity can be broken down.

3.15 Project

Projects include a structured set of activities, a

temporary organization, with people and other assets

required to achieve an objective or other outcome

based on an agreed-upon schedule and budget (IT

Governance Institute, 2007). A project is a set of

certain changes (delta) that are designated to change

as-is capabilities of people, processes or technology

of an organization. Program, on the other hand,

consists of a number of projects and activities that are

planned and managed together to achieve an overall

set of related objectives and other outcomes (Office

of Government Commerce, 2007).

4 CLASS DIAGRAM OF THE

CONCEPTS

After the detailed description of each concept, this

class diagram presents the big picture to illustrate

these interdependent, cascading, and related

concepts. Each class has an attribute list, the

classification of strategic, tactical and operational

level, information of abstraction (boxes in italic text)

or whether being in executable form and its relations

with other concepts in terms of name of relations and

the numbers of possible objects that can be related.

All attributes and relations can be driven from the

definition part of the terms mentioned above. The

remaining is the number representation on the

connections such 1-1 and n-1. All notation of classic

class diagram is not fully used, kept at appropriate

level for this study.

Because of the nature of this structure, concepts

change less frequently and in fewer amounts upward.

From top to bottom, it follows a more concrete, more

specific, more applicable, more changeable, and more

granular way; which at the bottom takes an atomic

form.

Strategic, tactic and operational hierarchy is not

only a positioning effort but also an elaboration

method. For instance, an operational act is expected

to serve for a strategic target and vice versa a strategy

must be elaborated and supported at operational level.

Figure 3: Class diagram of the concept.

This expectation necessitates such a mechanism

in which each element at the operational level

(procedure, work instruction, tasks etc.) must either

include “what”, “when”, “where”, “how”, “who”,

optional but critically better “why” dimensions or

acquire them by inheritance from an upper level in

order to be comprehensive. Hence, the first question

to ask before everything is “why”. While all other

questions feed the information and knowledge, the

“why” question feeds the conscious. If someone in the

bottom knows the answer of the question “why” then

s/he becomes conscious. Consciousness increases the

urge to embrace. This way, different and probably

better ways to serve can be captured at the point

where “the subject is best known by the person who

performs it.” Although having information/

knowledge to apply work seems enough,

consciousness enables a person to pass from reactive

to proactive position. Otherwise, this distinction

between “thinker” (who strategize, steer, control,

decide, and thus who has the “why”) and “doer” (who

execute, obey, follow) (Pflaeging, 2014) adds a layer

producing a disconnection between the parts of

diagram.

Achieving to manage effects of a change across

the diagram up and down which occurs in any part of

the diagram as a result of the dynamism of time and

how to penetrate the change through the elements of

the diagram is an important issue.

In this structure effectiveness and efficiency are

distributed to different levels. In the picture,

effectiveness shall be pursued in the levels which

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directly include the question “why” and efficiency

shall be pursued in the objects which answer the

question “how.” The conscious which designs and

assesses the quality of results is at upper levels. For

this reason, innovation in goals and strategy may

produce effectiveness. On the other hand, let us say a

change in a project or process, may improve only

efficiency as the right thing in “doing the right thing”

has already set before. The remaining part for the

process or project is doing things right.

5 CONCLUSIONS, LIMITATIONS

AND FUTURE WORK

Despite the fact that it is not easy to reach a

commonly accepted reference model in this field and

this study eventually is another suggestion, the

contribution of the study should be sought in the

method of thinking to make things simple especially

for practice, in the aim connecting the two interrelated

parts (business and information system) and in the

class diagram illustrating the outcomes of the work in

a comprehensive and simply manner.

In order to assess the value of the work, expert

judgment and evaluation of practitioners who suffer

from the addressed problems may consider clarity,

amount of value, coverage, completeness,

effectiveness and consistency of content in the study

as criteria.

In any structure, the whole is greater or smaller

than sum of parts of the whole because of the human

factor. While conducting exercises, one must

therefore have a people view. However, the human

part of this whole that produces and uses all these

concepts, is complex, unpredictable, exhibits

uncertainty, and live and change with many

parameters, remains, on its own, as a huge further

study area.

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