Process Scope within an organisation
Different levels of process within an Organisation
This section will show the different levels of process, which are made up broadly of:
Enterprise Process
An Enterprise Process has a very much broader set of activities and responsibilities. Starting at the highest level, the enterprise process covers all Business domains throughout the enterprise. Financial, HR, Production, Legal, Marketing, etc. At this level, it would describe how the whole enterprise functions.
This Enterprise Process though is being looked at in the context of information technology systems only, so the high level Enterprise Process really means the process the IT department is using. It concerns itself with items such as Planning and Deployment of Hardware for the Enterprise, Communications and Networks for the Enterprise, Support & Help desks, Training, Purchasing and Service Level Agreements, etc.
Software Process
Software Process is a sub-set of an Enterprise Process. Its scope is within the IT function within the Enterprise. As such it has a broader set of responsibilities than just developing Software. It concerns itself with making sure the IT function delivers a working product into the Enterprise, so items such as Planning and Deployment of Development Hardware, COTS software Evaluation & implementation, Training, Purchasing, Production Service Level Agreements, etc. are the responsibilities of this level of process.
Development Process
A Development process is a sub-set of a software process, in that the software development process only concentrates on developing software, and not responsible for how it will be put into production, training, etc. This is the pure development of working tested software.
Figure 1.
Influences on the development process
The arrows on the left and right of Figure 1. depict the influences on the Enterprise which in turn have an impact on the processes within the Enterprise. These vary from issues like legacy tools and architectural decisions, which were obtained at cost and need to be used, through to external legislation on the Enterprise, with which it has to conform.
All of these factors go towards making up the requirements within which the Enterprise Process has to work. The external factors filter down into the different levels of process added to by the internal factors such as policy, politics, team size and enterprise culture. The whole lot ends up affecting how the development process has been constructed and works.
References
Ambler, S. W. 1999-2000. Enterprise Unified Process: Enhancing the Unified Process to Meet the Real-World Needs of Your Organization.
Edwards, Charles. 2002. ProcessWave Limited.