ISO/TR 26122 -- Information and documentation -- work process analysis for records

Another day, another standard (courtesy of the Dept. of Justice). Let's see what this thing has to say:

• "To fully understand these 'business records', it is necessary to understand the work processes that generated them."
• Work process analysis involves identifying:
• The relationship between work processes and their business context
• Relationship between work processes that the rules governing their application
• Hierarchical decomposition of work processes into their component or constituent parts
• Sequential interdependence between discreet work processes
• Two types of analyses: functional (functions into processes), sequential (flow of transactions)
• 
  
• 2
• Contextual review:
• Statute and case law, regulations
• Mandatory standards of practice
• Voluntary codes of practice
• Codes of conduct and ethics
• Identifiable expectations of the community
• Domain or organization policy directives
• Organization rules and procedures
• 3
• Functional analysis --
• Identify goals and strategies of the org
• Determine functions by which these goals are achieved
• Identify the processes that constitute these functions
• Analysis of process elements to identify transactions
• 4
• Sequential analysis --

• It is as the transactional level, workplace and time specific
• Establishes routine performance of the process, frequent variations, identification of other variations that require non-standard interventions
• Identify triggers for record creation; link transactions with organizational authorities; establish which meta data is created
• Elements of the analysis include: ID sequence of transactions; identify and analyze variations; establish the rules base; identify links to other systems.
• 5
• Processes need to be validated with participants
• 6
  
• It references the Workflow Manage Coalition.
• The standard does not really give us any perspective on how to actually monitor process flows. Better than the WMC in this regard is perhaps the OMG. See, for example, this paper by White: Process modeling notations and workflow patterns. It compares the BPMN and UML notations for diagramming.
• The BABOK from the IIBA notes that UML is most common but that BPMN is becoming more common
• Both specs are available from the OMG:
• UML: http://www.omg.org/spec/UML/2.5/Beta2/
• BPMN: http://www.omg.org/spec/BPMN/2.0/
• Ishikawa noted that flowcharts are one of the seven tools of quality control along with the histogram, pareto chart, check sheet, control chart, cause-and-effect diagram, and the scatter diagram.
• Wikipedia notes that process charts were first used by Gilbreth and were integrated into the 1947 "ASME Standard: Operation and Process Flow Charts".
• There also might be some applicable standards:
• ISO 5807:1985 Information processing -- documentation symbols and conventions for data, program and system flowcharts, program network charts and system resources charts
• ISO 10628 Flow diagrams for process plants -- general rules
• ECMA 4: flowcharts