This section provides definitions of words, terms, phases and acronyms, frequently used or referenced in the business process change community. As the business process change market evolves, these terms evolve and change, as well. Formal business process languages like BPML have semantic definitions that are enforced by the language standard. Other groups, such as the Workflow Management Coalition (WfMC), publish formal glossaries. Still other groups define terms in ways specific to their particular community. Most of these communities use or define these terms in slightly different ways. Old terms take on new and varied meanings, new terms emerge, and it is often confusing to business managers trying to communicate across the various business process change communities. This glossary recognizes these differences, seeks to provide generic definitions and suggests a common language. In cases where we know that communities use these terms in ways significantly different from those we provide, we note the fact. We hope our members and visitors find this glossary helpful and we pledge to work hard to keep it current.

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O

OMG (Object Management Group)

An international consortium of companies that work together to create standards for advanced software engineering technologies. The OMG has developed middleware standards, like CORBA, the Unified Modeling Language (UML) for diagramming software and business systems, and the Model Driven Architecture (MDA) a systematic way of maintaining reusable software components and using them to generate code for specific applications. (See UML and MDA.) For more information, check www.omg.org

Object-Oriented

An approach to structuring software applications. Instead of thinking of an application as a process with steps, we think of it as a set of objects that exchange messages. Now the dominant approach to software development. Java and Visual Basic are object-oriented software development languages.

Operational Effectiveness

A strategy, or lack of strategy that commits a company to constantly trying to improve the effectiveness of its processes. Taken to the extreme it results in hypercompetition. (Compare with Positioning.)

Organization Chart

Traditional way of showing the relationships between departmental and functional units or the reporting relationships between managers within an organization. Organization charts tend to emphasize that each department is independent and to ignore the many relationships that exist when activities in one department interact with activities in other departments.

Organization Diagram

One of the two basic diagrams used in this book. A system diagram that shows either functional units or processes inside the company box and shows how they link to each other and to entities outside the company. See below.

Organization Diagrams

Generic use of term. Diagrams that depict the organizational structure of a company or agency. An organization chart is one kind of organization diagram, but in this book we emphasize systems diagrams that show flow between entities rather than organizational charts, that simply focus hierarchical relationships.

Outsourcing

Occurs when one company hires another company to manage, maintain and run some portion of its business. A catalog company, for example, might outsource the warehousing and delivery of the products it sells to another company. Many companies outsource standard software applications. See Business Process Outsourcing.