A framework for evaluating organizational choice and process redesign issues

This paper presents a new framework for the evaluation of organizational ch oice primarily within the context of process redesign issues and the inform ation technology support of those ideas. Through a process of scenario gene ration,the framework is designed to identify and evaluate choices in work o rganization and to make more explicit the implications that such choices mi ght have for people and work roles. A central aim is to encourage the parti cipation of different organizational stakeholders in the evaluation process . Process redesign has hitherto tended to be explored predominantly through software engineering and functionally driven approaches. The framework pre sented here offers a counterbalance to those works by offering an organizat ional perspective. It is based on a broad, scenario-generating technique wh ich is firmly rooted in the organizational vision of a broad range of inter est groups. Some work has already been undertaken in this field. Previous r esearch has demonstrated the value of taking a broader organizational appro ach to workplace technology redesign and shown that the involvement of a vi ride range of stake holders during evaluation can result in some very creat ive, practical and productive solutions. Nevertheless, this paper identifie s some potential weaknesses in that previous body of research and proposes a new approach. The author draws upon earlier work in order to develop a fr amework which will provide more guidance to stakeholders during the scenari o-generating process and which will make even more explicit the values and assumptions underlying alternative choices. The framework enables an evalua tion of those technological choices at a fairly deep level, whilst remainin g relatively simple to apply. The new approach presented in this paper is c urrently being adopted by an EPSRC-funded research team exploring issues of the relationship between business processes and legacy systems (for detail s of the project, please see web site: www.dur.ac.uk/CSM/SABA). Future work will concentrate on producing further, industry-based case studies of its application and assessing its value when applied alongside traditional and technically focused software engineering methods of technological evaluatio n and development.