Glossary

A generic term for work that is performed as part of a business process. The general types of activities used in business process modelling are tasks and sub processes.

An Actor is any external entity that interacts with a system under consideration, e.g. a human in a specific role or another system or component

Architecture principles define the underlying general rules and guidelines for the use and deployment of all IT resources and assets across the enterprise. They reflect a level of consensus among the various elements of the enterprise, and form the basis for making future IT decisions.

The general term for any work product including text documents, diagrams, models, database schema, web graphics, software code, and so on.

Replacing manual processes with processes managed by ICT solutions, reducing manual effort.

A technique or methodology that, through experience and research, has shown to reliably lead to a desired result.

A set of related work tasks or activities designed to produce a specific desired programmatic (business) result. The process can involve multiple parties internal or external to the organization and frequently cuts across organization boundaries.

The effort to understand an organization and its purpose while identifying the activities, participants, and information flows that enable the organization to do its work. The output of the business process analysis phase is a model of the business processes consisting of a set of diagrams and textual descriptions to be used for design or redesign of business processes.

The effort to improve the performance of an organization’s business processes to achieve specific goals, including restructuring tasks and workflow to be more effective and more efficient.

Business requirements define what a business needs in order to complete its core functions.

A set of statements that define or constrain some aspect of the business process. Business rules are intended to assert business structure or to control or influence the behaviour of the business.

Data Dictionary is a set of information describing the contents, format, and structure of a database and the relationship between its elements, used to control access to and manipulation of the database.

Deployment refers to all of the different processes involved in getting new computer hardware or software running effectively in its environment according to the specifications, including installation, configuration, operations, testing and maintenance.

Enterprise architecture can be defined as the practice of analysing and documenting an enterprise in its current and future states from a strategy, business and technology perspective, where the enterprise refers to any collection of organisations with a common goal.

A person or a group of people who performs one or more tasks involved in a process. The entities are the participants in the process. Entities are represented in context diagrams.

An Entity-relationship diagram (ERD) is a graphical representation of an information system that shows the relationship between people, objects, places, concepts or events within that system.

A defined support structure in which other components can be organized and developed. A logical structure for classifying and organizing complex information. A system of rules, ideas, or principles that provides a unified view of the needs and functionality of a particular service.

The major goal that the business process supports. The goal is the end state to be achieved by the work of the agency and should be defined in terms of the benefits provided to the community/population or individual/client.

An information system is software that helps you organise and analyse data making it possible to answer questions and solve problems relevant to the mission of an organisation. 

Information received by the business process from external sources. Inputs are not generated within the process.

Logical design describes textually and graphically how an information system must be structured to support the requirements. Logical design is the final step in the process prior to physical design, and the products provide guidelines from which the programmer can work.

A logical entity within a logical data model is any person, place, thing, event, or concept about which information is kept.

Metadata is “data about data”. To relate data from multiple sources, it is essential to develop common definitions and understand the characteristics of each data element. The tool for achieving this is the metadata dictionary. It covers definitions of data elements/variables, their use in indicators, data-collection method, time period of data-collection, analysis techniques used, estimation methods and possible data biases.

A concrete statement describing what the business process seeks to achieve. The objective should be specific to the process such that one can evaluate the process or reengineer the process and understand how the process is performing towards achieving the specific objective. A well-worded objective will be SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable/Achievable, Realistic and Time-bound).

The resulting transaction of a business process that indicates the objective has been met. Producing or delivering the outcome satisfies the stakeholder of the first event that triggered the business process. Often, measures can be associated with the outcome (e.g., how much, how often, decrease in incidents, etc.). An outcome can be, but is not necessarily, an output of the process.

Information transferred out from a process. The information may have been the resulting transformation of an input, or it may have been information created within the business process.

A project charter is a statement of the scope, objectives and participants in a project and is a critical document to ensure that all those involved in the project are aware of its purpose and objectives.

A method for defining roles and responsibilities during an organizational change process. Responsible (Who is/will be doing this task? Who is assigned to work on this task?) Accountable (Who’s head will roll if this goes wrong? Who has the authority to take decision?) Consulted (Anyone who can tell me more about this task? Any stakeholders already identified?) Informed (Anyone whose work depends on this task? Who has to be kept updated about the progress)

The specific things the information system must do to make a process efficient and achieve its purpose.

The purpose of a requirements definition is to refine our understanding of the workflow and then to define database outputs needed to support that work. The requirements definition serves to specifically define the functionality to be supported. In addition, the physical constraints are examined and the specific project scope determined. The requirements definition answers the question, “How would an information system support the performance of activity X?”

A logical, step-wise approach to think through the tasks that are performed to meet the specific objectives (analyse business processes), rethink the tasks to increase effectiveness and efficiency (redesign business processes), and describe what the information system must do to support those tasks (define system requirements).

A task output that may be used in one of three ways: (a) as an input to the next sequential step, (b) as an input to a downstream step within a task series; or (c) as the achievement of an organizational objective.

A person, group, or business unit that has a share or an interest in a particular activity or set of activities.

A process that is included within another business process.

Systems Analysis can be defined as a set of activities aimed at understanding and describing the components and organisation making up an existing system to meet a goal.

Systems Design can be defined as a set of activities aimed at designing the components and organisation of a system to meet a desired goal and possibly based on an existing system.

A definable piece of “work” that can be done at one time; i.e., what happens between the “in-box” and the “out-box” on someone’s desk. A business process is made up of a series of work tasks. The term task is often interchangeable with activity.

A description of system behaviour in terms of sequences of actions. A use case should yield an observable result of value to an actor. A use case can be described in a wide spectrum of detail from very brief to very extensive, technical, and detailed. It may also contain a set of alternate flows of events related to producing the “observable result of value.”

User centred design is the process and design philosophy focused on placing input from user research as the focal point of design decisions.