Comment on Macro and Micro Processes by Ed Johnson
Blog: BPTrends - Harmon on BPM
If we are to entertain the idea of nano-process unit, might we as well entertain the idea of pico-, femto-, atto-, zipto-, yocto-, and so on for names for ever smaller process units? The point being, why only the name “nanoprocess unit?”
Similarly, going upward from a nano-process unit, might we also entertain the idea of micro-, mili-, centi-, deci-, deca-, hector-, kilo-, mega-, giga-, tera-, penta-, exa-, zetta-, yotta-, and so on for names for ever bigger process units?
Or, might we just stick with the highly practical and practicable recursive idea that every bigger process comprises two or more smaller processes and ever smaller process is a component of a bigger process? So why have what can only be arbitrarily named “Level 7+, called a nanoprocess,” when a nano-process unit could be the top-level Level 0 process, representing the whole process of interest?
A beautiful aspect of IDEF0 is that it imposes no cut-and-dried names to process levels, except the generically named “Top Level, Context,” at Level 0 (L0), representing the single L0 process and the external environment within which it exists hence constrained. From there, we could have decomposition of the L0 into L1 processes, then each L1 process decomposed into L2 processes, then each L2 process decomposed into L3 processes, then each L3 process decomposed into L4 processes, and on down to whatever levels of greater specificity required for particular purposes.
And, if progress upward is needed so as to expose ever more expansive context for the top-level L0 process, we could go up from the L0 to include L-1 context processes, then from each L-1 context process go up to include L-2 context processes, then from each L-2 context process go up to include L-3 context processes, and on up to whatever more encompassing levels of contextualization required for particular purposes.
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