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One of the things I noticed going through the training is the stark
nature of the graphical elements used to represent the business
process. (There is a standard for creating BPM diagrams called, not
surprisingly, BPM Notation.) If there is anything that can get to the
heart of messed up practices, it is having it shown to you in black-
and-white. Then you can start deleting and rearranging the tasks so
they make sense.
It is also a good way to document what /is/ good practice and show
that to other libraries in a consistent and meaningful way. I guess
I'm taking an optimistic view of the process -- what will come out is
better than the sum of the parts that will make it up.
Peter
On Nov 13, 2008, at 8:14 PM, Jonathan Rochkind wrote:
I have to admit that I worry that too many of our libraries business
processes as currently practiced are completely irrational and
nonsensical, and that to model new requirements or systems off of
them all aggregated and averaged out... may not be optimal.
Certainly, you have to collect evidence about business process needs
somehow.
But how many of us have experienced library workflow that actually
makes sense, instead of being habits built over years of having to
do weird workarounds to work with systems that unreasonably
constrained us, built on top of each other layer upon layer,
combined in organizations siloed off so the right hand doesn't know
what the left is doing, sprinkle on top the natural inclination of
most people to be creatures of habit who don't like changing their
workflow unless forced---with the result that I'm not even sure we
know what makes sense anymore.
Jonathan
Tim McGeary <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 11/13/08 3:43 PM >>>
John Fereira wrote:
Tim McGeary wrote:
The Open Library Environment (OLE, pronounced oh-lay) Project
invites
you to apply to participate in a two day Regional Design Workshop.
The
purpose of this workshop is to provide a forum for representatives
of
local research libraries and related institutions to discuss our
work
surrounding the current Integrated Library System and ideas on what
this type of core system should incorporate. Workshops are being
held
in a variety of locations in the US over the next 2 months. For more
information and to find a location near you, go to:
http://oleproject.org/workshops.
That's quite a collection of workshops schedule. I've been
interested
in the project since John Little first mentioned it here. On
behalf of
the Spring 2008 JA-SIG conference committee I invited him (and he
accepted) to do a birds of a feather session at the conference.
There
are some things that I am working on that I think may fit well with
the
project (I was also a developer for a piece of Kuali Rice, so I know
some of the Indiana folks) but I can't really tell from the number of
workshops how the will inter-relate. Since there were a few dates
where
there are simultaneous workshops in different cities it would seem
to me
that some sort of video conference and a real time collaborative
system
(we used Macromedia Breeze for the Kuali project with developers at
Cornell and Indiana) would be useful.
With the current economy I know that travel budgets are undergoing
a lot
of scrutiny (I've even heard of a very large university system out
west
that may be halting all business travel for awhile) attending even
one
of the workshops may be problematic.
John,
I hear you about the travel elements of this. That is why this
process
will not just be closed off to these workshops. We are hoping to have
enough workshops to gather a wide range of business processes that we
can sift through to find commonalities to model the core business
practices. On top of that, we will model the differences so that
flexibility can be built into the OLE architecture.
There will be plenty of time and opportunities for public comment on
the
data gathered at the workshops and the models as they are completed
before the architecture stage is complete. So if you, or anyone,
cannot
attend a workshop, there will still be opportunity for comment, and we
want and need it!
Thank you for your interest - and please encourage others who show
interest to participate in any way that they can.
Cheers,
Tim
- - --
Peter Murray http://www.pandc.org/peter/work/
Assistant Director, New Service Development tel:+1-614-728-3600;ext=338
OhioLINK: the Ohio Library and Information Network Columbus, Ohio
The Disruptive Library Technology Jester http://dltj.org/
Attrib-Noncomm-Share http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/
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